Can anyone recommend some jukebox sw for an old touch screen PC?

Neil · **on:** July 19, 2009, 12:44:11 AM

I want an mp3 player for the living room. The simple solution would be an ipod classic hooked into the amp. That would involve a lump of cash and a tiny screen though.

My rough plan is to reuse existing old tech I have to hand. A Fujitsu LT P-600 tablet running Windows 2000 on a P3 600 with 256MB. I figure this would make a good jukebox as I can fit a decent sized hardrive in it and its got a touch screen. Audio quality is not fantastic but I do have an M-Audio Transit USB audio thingy I can hang off the back to get round that.

So my question is, what jukebox software can you folks recommend that that will run on that low a spec PC that will make use of the touch screen. What I'd like is something akin to what you get in a pub, i.e. full screen and no need to touch a mouse or keyboard. It doesn't need to be able to do format conversions, hook in with portable players or anything fancy.

Roadie · **Reply #1 on:** July 19, 2009, 01:00:22 AM

I remember reading about one a year or so ago when I was looking into something similar. Will try and dig a link up

Medic82 · **Reply #2 on:** July 19, 2009, 01:08:56 AM

Don't know if it helps but I use Media Monkey http://www.mediamonkey.com/

ecfiffer · **Reply #3 on:** July 21, 2009, 10:42:41 PM

what about running linus media center? or linux alone?

Neil · **Reply #4 on:** July 21, 2009, 11:09:28 PM

I lack much knowledge in the linux department and this tablet is a peculiar bit of kit, so I really want to stick with 2000 as I have a clean image preconfigured of that and that's what its got a license for.

I've looked at media monkey and it looks good but its probably overkill and I'm concerned that I may have issues with it due to the machine's low spec. I could be wrong about that though.

The other package that looks promising is this http://www.albumplayer.com/ Commercial but they do have a demo version I can try.

Roadie · **Reply #5 on:** July 22, 2009, 12:40:12 AM

Thats the one I've been looking for!!

Apparently it's pretty good

Whoey · **Reply #6 on:** July 22, 2009, 12:46:20 AM

I'd say mediaportal, but I don't think it supports win2k anymore...

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Neil · **Reply #7 on:** July 22, 2009, 12:50:43 AM

Quote from: Whoey on July 22, 2009, 12:46:20 AM

I'd say mediaportal, but I don't think it supports win2k anymore...

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Appears not to and by the looks of it would flatten my poor old tablet

Roadie · **Reply #8 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:03:17 AM

Winamp with a big buttoned skin on it?

Medic82 · **Reply #9 on:** July 22, 2009, 08:28:43 AM

Quote from: Roadie on July 22, 2009, 01:03:17 AM

Winamp with a big buttoned skin on it?

Winamp is classic. Small and simple.

Whoey · **Reply #10 on:** July 22, 2009, 09:52:34 AM

How about xboxmediacenter?

http://xbmc.org/

I know the windows stuff says XP/Vista... and the hardware requirements might be higher but it should be ok if you're only after mp3 playback.

Besides, those are usually suggestions... World of Warcraft is only supposed to be supported by XP and Vista after the last few patches... and it still runs fine in win2k wine emulation under Ubuntu

you could also try the linux livecd of XBMC... without breaking the existing win2k setup...

Neil · **Reply #11 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:03:55 PM

I know what you're saying but this is a P600 tablet with 256MB (not upgradeable) on board primitive graphics and just to top it off has no way of booting from anything external. You have to prep its hard drive with the OS and then drop in.

Nothing like a challenge is there

I had hoped to have it built by now but thanks to my wife bringing home some nasty trojans the other day I've spent the last 48 hours doing battle

In such situations I'm a great fan of the "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." mentality but as this time there were a couple of oddball machines that I didn't have clean images for its taken a while

I hasten to add that this time I've ensured that she can't autorun any of the data sticks she brings home

Roadie · **Reply #12 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:11:15 PM

Yeah XBMC is not gonna run smoothly on that, I know this as it is not a pretty sight on my tablet and it's quicker than yours!

I think winamp would be your best bet, make the font size big and have the media library, playlist and control windows open. This will allow you to play an album or artist very easily (i'm assuming you are using a stylus?) but also making playlists should be easy, just drag songs from the media library into the playlist and if your stylus is anything like mine you can then right click and remove them from it.

Whoey · **Reply #13 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:25:31 PM

no cdrom or floppy?

Roadie · **Reply #14 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:28:58 PM

Nope, you might be able to get it to boot from usb but it would be usb1.1 so very slow and I doubt it has the capability anyway

Neil · **Reply #15 on:** July 22, 2009, 01:41:15 PM

No CD, no floppy and no ability to boot from USB

It has a stylus but I was hoping for a finger prodding interface. Right clicking on it is a true art form so anything that requires it for the front end is definitely out.

Whoey · **Reply #16 on:** July 22, 2009, 02:12:55 PM

it is a shame that mediaportal specs are too high, I run that on my PVR PC that's connected directly to the TV (only!) and have a usb microsoft mediacenter remote... mediacenter fires up when I boot the machine, and I shut it down with the remote.

Winamp+ addons should do you just fine...

Abstraction · **Reply #17 on:** July 22, 2009, 06:53:00 PM

http://www.mp3toys.net/ isn't designed specifically for touchscreens but it's interface works with them perfectly (big chunky buttons) and runs on almost anything even with a huge library. Otherwise you could look at customising http://www.foobar2000.org/? Its basically an mp3 jukebox you completely set up yourself, so buttons are whatever size you need, you search whichever way you like, only show the info you want in the layout you like. It's extremely powerfuly but can take a while to get set up how you like, the beauty of it is it is always possible to build your perfect mp3 player - given enough patience

I can give you a hand if you need, though it's been a while since i've modified my setup with it.

[edit] This sort of layout for foobar could work well for what you want

http://dawxxx666.deviantart.com/art/fooAvA-1-05-91986779

Neil · **Reply #18 on:** July 24, 2009, 03:26:21 AM

I've used foobar before but not played with it at all. Shows how long I've been out the loop, I didn't even know it could be skinned.

Another couple of questions, anyone know if you can get USB enclosures (pref for 2.5" IDE) that allow the drives to spin down? Also how am I best converting my collection to MP3. Its presently stored in a directory structure \artist\album\tracknumber.flac with a cue sheet in each album directory. None of the tracks are tagged in any way. I really don't fancy doing several thousand tracks manually

Abstraction · **Reply #19 on:** July 26, 2009, 10:08:43 PM

Mmmm..... flaccy goodness, why would you want to convert that down

Are you perchance a member of the flac loving communities waffles or what?

The best software for mass conversion will probably be http://www.dbpoweramp.com/ it should just be a case of telling it where your music is, what you want to do to it and then leaving it running for however long it takes. As for tagging you can use the same program to mass tag based on location. As long as you set it up ok (its fairly straightforward) It will be able to take the artist, track number and album and put it into the id3 tags, then you can run something like media monkey or mp3 toys which will fill in the missing data.

Not sure about the drive bays but i assume something like that will be out there, maybe best asking on hydrogenaudio or somewhere audio/techie like that?

Neil · **Reply #20 on:** July 26, 2009, 10:13:12 PM

The reason I want to convert them is to fit on a smaller hard drive that will be in the "jukebox" I can't really see much point in running a server and streaming. I've no other use for a server so it'd mean running two machines instead of one.

Off to play now. Have already backed up the flacs (twice), just in case

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Can anyone recommend some jukebox sw for an old touch screen PC?

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