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Extra Vegetables

read99

By read99
in Third Party Software

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read99 Apprentice

read99

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I am looking for feedback on experience with Extra Vegetables controlling either itunes or an Apple TV. Please let me know how well it works. What do you like most? What are your concerns?

We are an Apple house with all of our media in itunes.

Thanks in advance for your feedback and help

Jim

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nikon Apprentice

nikon

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I love the Extravegetables drivers. The AppleTV driver works great. You sync your iTunes library to the device and your playlists and music will be avalable on all the Control4 interfaces. I have installed it dozens of times and all my clients love it.

G.

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bhadams Apprentice

bhadams

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I've not really looked at this. When playing music through your Apple TV using the ExtraVegetables driver, when selecting music through the navigator on the television, does the source switch over to the Apple TV when you begin the playback? I'm not getting the process.

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read99 Apprentice

read99

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I love the Extravegetables drivers. The AppleTV driver works great. You sync your iTunes library to the device and your playlists and music will be avalable on all the Control4 interfaces. I have installed it dozens of times and all my clients love it.

G.

Thanks for the info. Have you used Extra Vegetables to control an Apple TV or iTunes directly? Any pros or cons to one or the other?

Any suggestions to using successfuly?

thanks

Jim

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nikon Apprentice

nikon

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I've not really looked at this. When playing music through your Apple TV using the ExtraVegetables driver, when selecting music through the navigator on the television, does the source switch over to the Apple TV when you begin the playback? I'm not getting the process.

It will switch to whatever input the AppleTV is connected to. If you are running a multi-room system (Control4 amp) it will just start playing in the room where you selected the music and the GUI will stay onscreen. It really depends on your setup.

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nikon Apprentice

nikon

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I love the Extravegetables drivers. The AppleTV driver works great. You sync your iTunes library to the device and your playlists and music will be avalable on all the Control4 interfaces. I have installed it dozens of times and all my clients love it.

G.

Thanks for the info. Have you used Extra Vegetables to control an Apple TV or iTunes directly? Any pros or cons to one or the other?

Any suggestions to using successfuly?

thanks

Jim

Yes I have I have it at my home. The way it works is that you sync your iTunes library to the AppleTV and then using the Extravegetables driver Control4 will display your music pretty much like a docked iPod on the user interfaces. The driver also functions as the AppleTV remote control to navigate movies, music, podcast, internet radio, photo viewing etc.

What do you mean by control iTunes directly? The driver cannot control iTunes on your computer.

As for using it sucessfully it really depends on how you intend on using it. Is it a source for you multi-room audio system or is it dedicated to a theatre system/ AV receiver?

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cyblog Newbie

cyblog

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What do you mean by control iTunes directly? The driver cannot control iTunes on your computer.

Yes it can. The EV itunes driver can also connect directly to iTunes on a PC or Mac for larger music collections, however you would have to run an audio cable from your PC/MAC to your amp input.

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nikon Apprentice

nikon

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What do you mean by control iTunes directly? The driver cannot control iTunes on your computer.

Yes it can. The EV itunes driver can also connect directly to iTunes on a PC or Mac for larger music collections, however you would have to run an audio cable from your PC/MAC to your amp input.

I did contact EV and it is the AppleTV driver that Controls iTunes so cyblog is indeed correct.

Generally, for large libraries I share the iTunes folder off a computer or NAS drive and then use a Sonos ZP 90 the EV Sonos driver. In my opinion this is better as it keeps the computer usable on an everyday basis. With a NAS drive a computer doesn't even have to be on which saves energy. This is also a scalable solution as a normal PC can only play a single song at a time. With multiple Sonos units you can play different audio in different zones whether it be from itunes, radio stations around the world, or online music such as Napster/Pandora/iheartradio etc. This will give the user a much wider variety of music to choose from.

The only advantage I see here in using iTunes over an AppleTV is that storage on a computer is almost unlimited, but the computer will have to be dedicated for audio purposes otherwise you will hear click sounds, error beeps etc, which occur during normal computer usage. This could get annoying while listening to music. Without the AppleTV you won't have any of the video features which has made it such a popular item in many of my installs.

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mfromsoaks Newbie

mfromsoaks

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My dealer enquired about this. EV have not yet tested the new apple TV unit as they haven't got their hands on one yet, but they will be testing it as soon as it is released. The apple web site states that the new apple tv will be shipping in 2 to 4 weeks in the UK (where EV is based)

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olekz Apprentice

olekz

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I am using the aTV EV module with mixed results.... When its working it's great, I like the aTV interface and also like having the control via the TV and the 250 remotes BUT it keeps dropping its IP address. When EV drops the static IP I lose control the and module needs to reinstalled. EV and my installer are looking into the problem (via the EV log file), hopefully a solution will be released.

FYI, when it drops off I end up controlling aTV via the Apple Remote application on my iPhone/iPad or the EV Sonos controller on my C4 system.

EV... PLEASE work out this problem!:o

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wappinghigh Grand Master

wappinghigh

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OK. I think there lies our problem. As far as I am aware, things were real reliable before the 2.0 upgrade. Since then various EV control has gone haywire (certainly of my Sonos and apparently the Sonos/appleTV/iTunes control is all pretty similar)

The EV guy occasionally visits this forum. It sure would be good if he hopped on and told us what's goin' on :)

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ExtraVeg Apprentice

ExtraVeg

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Hi guys

All the drivers work with 2.0 just fine. Both the Sonos and ATV drivers were updated in order to make them compatible with 2.0 - your dealer should have upgraded the drivers at the same time as the rest of the system. There are reports of a number of driverworks drivers being corrupted during the C4 upgrade to 2.x. If this happens simply remove the driver from the project and add it in again.

The IP address within the driver cannot get lost - unless for some reason C4 is not persisting it. It should remain in the driver through reboots and upgrades. If it doesn't then this does suggest something got corrupted during your upgrade.

Have your dealer come talk to us at Cedia this week in Atlanta if they have any more questions.

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wappinghigh Grand Master

wappinghigh

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Also just to add that the C4 on screen Navigator is generally slower with 2.0. That's C4 code that's changed not ours!

Is this the explanation for the considerable slow down of music menu scroll and search with the Sonos /ATV driver? See http://www.c4forums.com/viewtopic.php?id=5802

Actually navigator for me is still pretty quick. I haven't noticed a change here. But the upgrade has really affected your driver I'm sorry to say. Even on a HC1000. I mean my EV Sonos driver is now just about unuseable scrolling the library- a significant 'downgrade' in performance since the 'upgrade'. Can this be fixed? I sure hope so....

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  • 3 weeks later...
nikon Apprentice

nikon

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EV,

What's the status on an update to AppleTV module? The current version will me recognize the new AppleTV (Black Box) version.

Control of the new AppleTV is limited to the OSD and an IR bug as the AppleTV's remote control application now uses encryption when communicating. As a result it is not possible for EV to make a driver at this time.

http://www.extravegetables.com/documents/Control4andAppleTVVersion2.pdf

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  • 4 weeks later...
AK1 Proficient

AK1

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Scenario question for Extra Vegetables iTunes driver:

iTunes running on a dedicated iMac with library stored on NAS. How many simultaneous users can this setup support?

For example:

Fred streaming iTunes music to Master bedroom

Jane streaming iTunes movie to Living TV

...

Regards...

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nikon Apprentice

nikon

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Scenario question for Extra Vegetables iTunes driver:

iTunes running on a dedicated iMac with library stored on NAS. How many simultaneous users can this setup support?

For example:

Fred streaming iTunes music to Master bedroom

Jane streaming iTunes movie to Living TV

...

Regards...

1 from the audio out on the iMac using EV.

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