Freebox, and wireless music transfers?

[DavGerm4]

So I'm planning on making a Jukebox, which will have E-Touch (Freebox) installed on it, and I just had a question.  Is it possible to set it up with wireless, so that I can transfer new music to it?  I mean, the jukebox will have like Windows XP installed or something like that, and then is Freebox just like a loader or something?  I would really like to know if it's possible for wireless, so that I can make it easier to transfer new music to the Jukebox HDD.

Thanks!

[BobA]

If your music is on another computer with wireless then you can just use copy to move new music files from one computer to another for E touch.  You then have to run the E touch config so the new files are recognized and put into the database.

[DavGerm4]

Ok, that helps! 

Also, is it simple to get out of E-Touch, and go back into Windows, so you can configure everything?

Or do you configure it all through E-Touch?

[Barry Barcrest]

If you do not store the music locally on the jukebox then it will not play too well over wireless. I had issues and so have other people that have tested it, however over a cat5 cable there are no issues even playing audio.

As for configuring you can drop back to the desktop if you need to via the power off button in the freebox options screen. However most people tend to boot straight into freebox and let freebox power the juke down when it is powered off itself. You will have to have a play and see what config suits you the best.

[DavGerm4]

Ya ok! I wasn't planning on streaming the music, I would rather have it all stored inside the Jukebox instead!  I was just going to use the wifi, to transfer the music from my PC to the Jukebox, like to add music!  I understand it now.  Thanks for the help!

[hattrick10]

I dont understand why wireless would be a problem?  I built a 'portable' jukebox that I use for outdoor parties in my back yard.  The jukebox only had an old 20 gig hard drive in it so adding my music collection locally to the jukebox was out of the question.  I ran wireless (a good card with external antenna mind you) from about 50 feet away from my router (a linksys wrt-54gl with 3rd party firmware).  From there I was able to access my music share on my windows home server which is hard wired into my network.  What I did was create a network drive to the music share.  I run album player on my jukebox (highly recommended) and stored the database locally on the jukebox and accesses the music via the wireless and all works flawlessly.  I've never experienced any problems at all.

Just thought it was worth mentioning to you that it is possible to access your music collection from a share within your network.  No point in duplicating your music collection and wasting valuable HD space!   

[Barry Barcrest]

I dont understand why wireless would be a problem?  I built a 'portable' jukebox that I use for outdoor parties in my back yard.  The jukebox only had an old 20 gig hard drive in it so adding my music collection locally to the jukebox was out of the question.  I ran wireless (a good card with external antenna mind you) from about 50 feet away from my router (a linksys wrt-54gl with 3rd party firmware).  From there I was able to access my music share on my windows home server which is hard wired into my network.  What I did was create a network drive to the music share.  I run album player on my jukebox (highly recommended) and stored the database locally on the jukebox and accesses the music via the wireless and all works flawlessly.  I've never experienced any problems at all.

Just thought it was worth mentioning to you that it is possible to access your music collection from a share within your network.  No point in duplicating your music collection and wasting valuable HD space!   

How you finding that with videos?

There are too many factors that can prevent this being a reliable situation. Damn for me i can't even use wirless reliably for the web due to the fact i had 4 other hubs showing up and the interference makes it too slow.

[hattrick10]

I dont understand why wireless would be a problem?  I built a 'portable' jukebox that I use for outdoor parties in my back yard.  The jukebox only had an old 20 gig hard drive in it so adding my music collection locally to the jukebox was out of the question.  I ran wireless (a good card with external antenna mind you) from about 50 feet away from my router (a linksys wrt-54gl with 3rd party firmware).  From there I was able to access my music share on my windows home server which is hard wired into my network.  What I did was create a network drive to the music share.  I run album player on my jukebox (highly recommended) and stored the database locally on the jukebox and accesses the music via the wireless and all works flawlessly.  I've never experienced any problems at all.

Just thought it was worth mentioning to you that it is possible to access your music collection from a share within your network.  No point in duplicating your music collection and wasting valuable HD space!   

How you finding that with videos?

There are too many factors that can prevent this being a reliable situation. Damn for me i can't even use wirless reliably for the web due to the fact i had 4 other hubs showing up and the interference makes it too slow.

I didnt get a chance to play around too much with videos.  I think I did play a few and they worked fine.  The few music videos I do have are small files (40mb or so).  Im not sure how the wireless would handle the dvd rips or HD rips streaming from my server.  I do vaguely remember watching youtube videos towards the end of the night at one party.  I had my jukebow s/w minimized with youtube videos fullscreen on my 21" ELO and all played fine without stutter or excessive load time.  If you have a decent setup there really isnt any reason wireless wouldnt work fine.  That being said, there are many environmental factors that could pose a problem.  I know at my work wireless is not too reliable due to high voltage bus bars and machinery.  Personally, I always prefer to use a wired connection (I have a 10/100/1000 network at home) but when building a "portable" jukebox, wireless makes life so much easier!

[richms]

youtube has a massive buffer in it.

playing from files software normally reads as is needed, so a few 100ms of drop out and then the playback buffer runs out.

Thats quite often the norm with wireless when actually transfering stuff over it.