Comments on: My Home Media Strategy is Evolving

By: Allen

Allen — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:04:00 +0000

Not sure if you get notified of comments on older posts but I’ll try this out. If all else fails, I’ll try email. I searched out this post because I remembered you discussing your music collection consisting of 100,000+ MP3′s and I find that staggering. I have more than a few songs in my collection but I was wondering if you’d dedicate a post (or shoot me an email) to discuss your collection. For example, I have about 10,000 songs which include complete albums (about 700 of them) and then a selection of other songs. Out of all this music I probably “like” about 50% of it, the rest I keep on the off chance that I might want to listen to some of the songs or someone I know might want some of the music. However, I have music spanning from the 30′s and 40′s through independent bands putting out new music today and I was wondering what a man with 100,000 songs in his collection would have!! You must have a pretty complete collection and there is really no way you could listen to all (or probably even half) of it.

Thanks for listening and hopefully responding!!

By: Robert P

Robert P — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:19:00 +0000

Dear Thomas:

Lat night I was thinking about your posts as my wife and I listened to music during dinner and long into the night. While the MCE and Apple TV strategies are great for visual media such as photos and videos, I don't think they do as well for music. For the last year, I have been using Sonos. The "killer app" that Sonos supplies is the handheld controller. As my wife and I sat at the dining room table, then moved to the couch, I didn't have to turn on the TV to select the music.( I know that you are on a quest to fetch album art, but let's face it, who wants to stare at an album cover for the legnth of an entire song?).

Why is the handheld controller critical? I typically don't listen through an entire album and instead let the music and mood flow. So while I may be listening to one tune, I can cue up another without distracting everyone in the room by running over to the CD rack or scrolling through a massive list on a TV screen.

The second critical element is Sonos' ability to integrate media that I "own" through CD rips and MP3 downloads with online streaming services such a Rhapsody. My on the fly playlist last night included Love Tractor, The Connells, Swimming Pool Qs, Magnetic Fields, Cat Power and Beirut-- half were from "owned" content and half were from Rhapsody. They flowed seamlessly and the sonic difference between Rhapsody and a .wav file was not that great.

Final point,the handheld controller begs to be passed around the room, so that during a party you can really develop a collaborative playlist.

I have enjoyed your site for many months. My wife and I will be in san Francissco in April and I would love to hook up with a Photowalk. Is there a weekly group?

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:53:00 +0000

Thomas, nice to see you finally upgraded that old Media Center! It’s great to hear that a new computer with Vista is handling your large libraries well.

By: DWAnderson

DWAnderson — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:30:00 +0000

I’ll be interested to hear how you make out using Extenders with a large music library. I too have a Media Center PC (which I keep in a basement server room) that I use with foru Xbox 360 extenders. My initial experience was the same as yours, but I ran into problems when new music (in my case podcasts which download regularly) was added to watched folders. Because each extender is a different user on the media center PC they each have their own libraries which need to be updated. I found that this seldom happened in a timely fashion and there was no way to force a manual update. MS has indicated they are aware of the issue. On the plus side, the TV experience with dual Cablecard tuners is beyond compare.

By: Thomas Hawk

Thomas Hawk — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:56:00 +0000

Ben, the DirecTV tuner sounds interesting but actually I'm thinking of moving in another direction and dumping DirecTV entirely.

I'll be posting on this shortly when I actually dump them.

The main reason for dumping DirecTV is that I'm tired of paying them $85 a month.

I think that the majority of people out there are watching Network Prime Time TV. With my HomeRun dual HDTV tuner I can pull all of this programming off of the air for *free*. The cost of the tuner is less than 3 months of DirecTV and it works very well.

Now when I supplement this free content with stuff that I can get from Netflix (i.e. all of the great premium TV that I watch like Weeds and Big Love and Dexter and the what not) I pretty much have more than enough content to consume.

In addition to my free network OTA HDTV and my Netflix, there is also plenty of other content available for purchase online through Media Center.

While it's true that Netflix and Microsoft don't have *everything* and while I'm not necessarily *suggesting* to anyone that Bittorrent is an alternative to fill in the gaps that you might want to watch, a 3 disc Netflix plan for $17.99 a month sure does seem to make a lot more sense to me than continuing to support DirecTV's outrageous $85 a month charge when 95% of the programming that they are giving me I could care less about. I won't miss the Soap Opera Network or VH1 or the Sci Fi Channel when there is so much other great content that I already have access to.

By: The Roth Family

The Roth Family — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 09:16:00 +0000

I’m quite pleased to see that you have Yes’s 90125 in your media library. As if I didn’t hold you in high enough esteem already.

By: Ben

Ben — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 07:07:00 +0000

Sounds like a good setup, but don’t forget the DirecTV tuner for media center is expected this year.

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/01/08/directvs-pc-tuner-is-real/