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A self made C4 media player


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Hi again guys. Been "away" for a while ....thinking. :cool:

As some of you may know I'm entirely mac based.

My question is: do we really need a mac based media player ?(like an AppleTV, or the new macmini with HDMI)...when we can now stream straight to our receivers, or TV's right off our mac's.

For goodness sake...We all have Control4! The most versatile and bang 4 buck A/V control platform...right? So lets' use it! :lol:

Why not just set up Control4 to do all the "media playing" co-ordination stuff...and forget about media players altogether?

I've found an excellent UPnP streamer for mac released by Elgato called eyeconnect.

Turns the mac into a simple but effective DNLA media server. And being released by Elgato, means it is very mac friendly and has the ability to stream eyetv.

It will easily stream itunes tracks to my Integra 50.1 receiver

And it should stream the iphoto, and itunes movie and TV folders to the new Samsung IPTV's (google confirmed..but not tested)

So why not just set up a "media player" in Composer...and send the appropriate IR commands..might not look as pretty as an AppleTV or XBMC...but should be very failsafe..

Any ideas on setting up the Composer Software side of things to make this work would be greatly appreciated :)

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I put a similar post up a couple of weeks ago, but got no reply. I guess streaming direct to tv without a media device in between is in it's infancy, and as yet may be a little clunky. Be interesting to see if anyone can manage to do a good job of this, especially if you could get any file format working (would probably require transcoding on the fly though)

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I put a similar post up a couple of weeks ago, but got no reply. I guess streaming direct to tv without a media device in between is in it's infancy, and as yet may be a little clunky. Be interesting to see if anyone can manage to do a good job of this, especially if you could get any file format working (would probably require transcoding on the fly though)

Sorry I missed that. I agree you're onto something here. Whether it is from Win7 or OSX...doesn't really matter. But there is something big about this. So I've copied your original comments into this thread, to try and get the ball rolling on this one:

Original quote from Codex: "Been reading up on dlna televisions, and it seems with a bit of work they could be used with windows 7 "play to" functionality to play back just about any sort of media. This would remove the need for a media player sat between pc and tv. The only issue seems to be that you have to control playback from the pc itself (at least for recoreded tv). Does anyone have experience of how this could be run from control4, as it could be an amazing solution to whole house media distribution.

Not having used one of these tvs I'm not sure what the interface and user experience is, but it does look like an interesting proposition."

I think eyeconnect on mac allows you to select eyetv recordings FROM the TV menu...but I'm not 100% sure..will check this out

As far as the new Samsung TV's go, I believe the inbuilt media player capabilites aren't to bad. Sure would make life simple. I wouldn't be expecting 2 way drivers..there are 1350 different makes/models of TV's !! now with DNLA according to www.dlna.org Simple one way IR is fine. Just a matter of getting a Composer layout happening..movies/TV/music/photo's/"others" (youtube etc) in the right places on navigator..and the right IR commands been sent...

:):) Come on C4 brains. Help Codex and me out here....This is going to be huge....comments please ;)

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Don't the new samsung tvs have ip control? Would make control easier, and may even be possible for 2 way. Don't think samsung are publishing any sort of api though.

I don't know. It's a bit of a worrying trend though. Sure in the long run 2 way drivers are cool. But the trouble is getting then written! If all the TV manufacturers switch away from simple IR, there is nothing to fall back to. No way for you, or a dealer to just "learn" the codes and get it all happening. Quickly.

Look how long it is taking for drivers to come out for media Players like the Dune, Niveus, Popcorn etc. months and months. Now if we add all the new IPTV's manufacturers, we are in big trouble here.. We'll be all dead and gone before 2way IP drivers are released for those!

Look at the effort Alan Chow made with XBMC...how long he took to do it. To get it right. And that was open source!

What hope have we got if the likes of Samsung start controlling all their new Internet TV's with IP or even wifi control?

You've got LG, Phillips, NEC, Sharp, Sony....I mean the list of makes is a mile long...all doing their own thing. If all the manufacturers are moving away from simple control, then Control4 has a big problem! Actually, not just C4..the whole HA industry....

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Thanks Cody. Do you have any idea of the control approach to the new Internet TV's. I'm in the market to upgrade my main TV to 1080p. Even if one of these media players is used...I'm still going to need basic control of the new IPTV's. I'd really appreciate your insight on how C4 is going to handle the control of these...

In meantime I'm off down to a big TV dealer to pick some brains on just what is going on re "control". I know they have the new Samsungs. Prob LG and others also....I'll report back...

Ok I'm back....phew. Both the new LG and Samsung Internet enabled plasma's (anyway) have IR control. I don't think either have serial. Both (I think) have wifi USB options

So IR is OK :D So have any dealers out their had problems with C4 IR control of either the Samsung PSC7000 series, or the LGPK750 series

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