Main > Everything Else

Media Player Box for my TV

<< < (14/14)

SirPeale:
I see sticks of RAM offered up occasionally. 

I've asked for dead PCs before, but no one's ever come thru.

SirPeale:
Son of a...I find some RAM in a drawer I forgot about...install it...xLobby runs...for about five minutes.  Then I get a message "this version of xLobby has expired, please install the newest version."  Okay, sure.  Except it's not available without some kind of password.   :hissy:

Paladin:
I commend you on your choice of finding a low cost/free solution.  You're learning a lot about your computer and networking while you're getting it to work, which is always good.  I see that it's been 2 months and you're still not done.  I was impatient and bought a media player for around $200 last year.  I thought I'd chime in to let anyone reading this thread know that there are quick ways to do the same thing, even if they aren't free.

What I did was buy a DLink Media Lounge.  I hooked it up to the TV with the HDMI cable, and set up the built in wireless to my SSID and WEP security phrase.  My MAME cab has a P4 Celeron with 2 gigs RAM that's always on, and is connected to my network with CAT5.  It's got Windows Media Player 11 which natively streams - no setup necessary, and I didn't have to load the free streaming software that came with the Media Lounge.  All I do is turn on the media lounge via its remote, and it connects to my MAME PC.  I then choose what video, music or pictures I want and it plays on the TV.

Pretty much all I play are .avi .wmv and .mp3 files, but it plays them all fine.  I've never had a glitch using the wireless setup, but I admit that I haven't tried ripping a DVD to the machine and trying to play the VOB's.  If it didn't stream fast enough, I'm sure changing the connection to a wired one would solve that.

Like I said, I'm not trying to detract from what you're doing.  Saving money and recycling technology is great, I just wanted to share my solution.  I had my setup running in a few hours, and it was pretty much plug and play.  To me it was worth the money for the ease of setup.

SirPeale:
Really haven't learned much on this project.  I've been doing this kind of stuff since I was eight.  I'm 34 now.

Most of the problems I've had to deal with have either been bottlenecks or financial difficulties.  Since I want to work with what I already have, these go hand-in-hand.

I've got xLobby working well now.  Problem is it's an expired version.  Solution: set the calendar a year back.  ;)

I can't figure out how to get it to play my TV shows.  Movies were easy - point the dir at my movies folder, it organized them, gave them thumbnails, downloaded info about the movies.  I pointed the 'video files' towards my TV shows, but it doesn't play them.  Can't find the video files, I guess.  Still working on that.

bfauska:
If you want your calander to be correct you can search for the old free version of XLobby, they have just recently added the expiration aspect as they move into the commercial version of the product. Obviously there are new features to the new software, but many people had the old version set up to work great for what you are looking to do. If you can't find a download of it anywhere and want it let me know and I'll send a zip or rar to you.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[*] Previous page

Go to full version