Music searching and interface

[SRSALCEDO]

I’m very interested in this product, but I’m concern in the ability of this hardware to handle my large music collection.
I wish to know if this product will let me search by artist, song, or album. I would like to see how the interface looks.

thanks

[Alpha]

In short: It will handle it poorly.

The NMT-devices have a very poor system for browsing files, you can't jump directly to a folder, not search by artist, song, album, genre and so forth, even though it reads ID3 tags. Regular alphabetical browsing is also incredibly slow. The browser shows 12 items onscreen at a time. Scroll to the bottom, and the unit takes about 4-5 seconds to "page down" and show the next 12 items.

Before even seeing a file structure you must choose if you wish to browse movies, music, images or playlists. It is not possible to view all readable formats in a folder and simply select a movie to watch one, or an mp3 to just listen to music. So to switch from watching a movie to listening to a music clip you need to drop all the way back to the main menu, select which type of file to play and the browse all the way back to where the file is (still while only seeing 12 items every 5 seconds).

The other day I watched a backup of "The Matrix" from BluRay. It's 1080p with surround sound, the datafile is 37 gigabytes and my Popcorn Hour streamed the file via the local network and displayed picture and sound without stutter or problems of any kind. It's really impressive! What's more impressive is the fact that the very same unit takes 4-5 seconds to load a list of 12 files and display it onscreen.


In my opinion it's the biggest problem with the Popcorn Hour and the To-Do list for the next firmware update should consist of the following two items and ONLY these items:

* IMPROVE BROWSING SPEED!
* Never release a piece of firmware where you have to select music, video, images or playlist before browsing anything.



The Popcorn Hour is excellent for playing various media, but finding something to play is utterly hopeless.

(Yes I'm aware that there are ways to make i easier, like putting music in alphabetical subfolders (a, b, c, d, and so forth), but COME ON! This unit is for playing media so priority 2 (next after actually getting it to play something) should be easy selection of what to play).

[chris57]

The PCH is an excellent video player even if you have masses of video files you can use a videojukebox to sort into alphabetical/genre and give flashy covers and interface.
The PCH is very poor for music. There is ID3 tag info and coverart coming but its only a a half way step.

Presently I would not recommend the PCH for music as the poor interface makes your catelogue unmanageable. You have to manage it yourself with A-C,D-F, folder setup. Pity as there is FLAC support there etc.

Good news is that it will be changed, bad news is that it will take considerable time and effort. So presently ID3 tag, coverart only whilst the A110 has been launched and new Sigma 2008 libs are being incorporated into the firmware. Once they're in then we'll see what they bring and what/how is the music implementation going to be improved.

[Alpha]

Use a videojukebox..?

[excal]

there is a free jukebox available for music...that runs solely on the PCH. I'm not gonna lie to you it can be a little tricky. But once you've figured it out, its incredibly easy and needs nothing more then clicking a link to develop.

[chris57]

(10-22-2008 02:07 PM)Alpha Wrote:  Use a videojukebox..?

And have a look at post 14 onwards for the movie interface you can get now on your PCH:
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showth...p?tid=7929

[Alpha]

I'll look into it tonight, it looks interesting. Thanx!