SageTV as a music server - separate audio card, etc

[tmaddison]

So... Have been using STV for almost 10 years now, works great for me as a DVR, I'm sure v7 will only be better, BUT as a true "media center" it's capabilities for handling music have always lacked certain key features that I need. Can anyone tell me if anything has changed in V7 on these things, or if there are plugins out there that might address this?

The objective is simple - have someone in the living room watching TV off Sage while at the same time playing music output through a second audio card on the same server, controlled through a web-based interface. If possible, also be able to stream audio to a remote PC for playback on local PC speakers.

I currently use WinAmp to handle the music on my system just because it allows me to do this - either natively or via plugins for WinAmp. I'd love to ditch the "piece it together" approach and be able to go with one integrated package, though.

To do this, I would need Sage to be able to...

1) Differentiate between which sound card the audio goes to when in TV or Video mode vs. the sound card used for Music output. I.E., when playing video the audio for that goes through the video card's HDMI audio driver, and when playing music the audio goes through the motherboard's onboard analog audio outs.

2) Have a music control interface that could be accessed via a web page - so that if I connect to Sage from (say) the Office PC to play music I don't have to interrupt whoever's watching TV, stop the video playback, change menus, etc. Winamp has a plugin that essentially runs a little web server applet on the media center machine so that I can open a webpage from any other machine and start playing music, all in the background without interrupting video playback.

3) Allow a choice of whether (when using that web interface) the audio is output in what is commonly called "jukebox" mode - which means the audio actually comes out of the Sage server's card - vs. "web" mode - which means the audio is streamed to the PC currently accessing the web interface and outputs from that PC's local speakers.

In theory (and ideally), more than one user should be able to tap into the web interface simultaneously - so if the kids are watching a movie (with the sound coming out the TV's speakers), the wife is on the patio listening to the B-52's (with the sound coming out of the media server's audio card and being sent through the house's distribution system to patio speakers), and I'm in the office listening to Led Zeppelin (with the audio being streamed to my PC and coming out of the local PC speakers) we can all do that at once.

4) Be able to read and deal with all the common playlist formats - both Windows Media playlists as well as more open source formats.

5) Have a built-in podcast client.

6) ... and here's a wishlist thing - interface with Rhapsody or other online streaming services and allow all of the above if the content is streaming from the web.

Yes, I know it's a lot, but all of these (except the web streaming thing) are things I can currently do with Winamp and it's plugins, or I've also used Subsonic for the same things....)

Any hope? Thanks.

[PiX64]

have you looked into the

WedFeed Encoder plugin, or the

Slimplayer plugin....

those should be able to accomplish waht your looking to do.

~Pix64

[GKusnick]

Sage doesn't support the notion of running two separate playback clients through different audio devices on the same PC. You might be able to do something with virtual machines, but really the simplest approach is to use media extenders. So for instance you could use an HD300 extender for video playback and free up the server's primary audio device for music playback. Or for music playback you could use a MediaMVP (analog stereo only) or HDx00 (if you need multichannel digital audio). Or both, and leave the server headless.

There are various web remote plugins that let you control extenders from a laptop or smartphone.

For streaming audio (or video) to a PC client, use SageTV Client or Placeshifter.

[tmaddison]

Thanks Pix64 and Greg. I've plowed through a lot of the material on webfeed and simplayer, they look like very useful tools to handle streaming audio or video from the web through Sage, but they're not quite there yet for what I need.

In particular, I haven't found anything that indicates they can handle output to a different audio card than Sage is set up for, and I'm not sure I see anything indicating there's a web interface.

Yes, I realize I'm asking for something complex, but it's not something I can't do right now using WinAmp or Subsonic, so I know it's possible... Just looking for a way to meld it all into Sage so I don't have to manage more individual bits of software...

Can't imagine the core use I have for this - playing video on a "living room" TV while simultaneously playing audio through some other system (in my case a whole-house distribution system) and being able to control that playback without interrupting the video program is very uncommon.

The ability to send that audio feed as a stream to a local PC would just be "because other software can do it", not necessarily something I'd use a lot. I do that now, to listen to podcasts and such, but not real music usually.

Sure, the media extender option could do it, can't say I'm that familiar with those (never owned one) but my feeling is that each extender would need a display device attached to it in order to control the UI. Can't say I particularly want to go into the stereo closet and turn on a display in order to put on some new music - would prefer to just bring up the menus on my laptop from anywhere in the house and pick a new playlist.

Love the VM idea (my entire server system at work is virtualized, have been playing with that for years) but not really anything to be gained over what I have now, and in theory I'm thinking I'd need separate Sage licenses for each VM. Plus if I ran the "DVR Sage" in a VM I'd be a bit concerned about the process of interfacing the VM with multiple tuner cards. Maybe possible, but I've already had my share of processor speed/ram issues running 3 or 4 tuner cards simultaneously, adding a VM layer doesn't seem like a great way to make that better.

Pie in the sky? Maybe, but - again - I really can't imagine there aren't a bunch of guys out there that might want to allow the family to watch a movie in the living room while they listen to music in the office, and run both off the same media server...

Thanks for spending some brainpower on it!

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by tmaddison

Pie in the sky? Maybe, but - again - I really can't imagine there aren't a bunch of guys out there that might want to allow the family to watch a movie in the living room while they listen to music in the office, and run both off the same media server...

You can run them both off the same server in the sense that all the files live in one place. But using the same PC for two different playback tasks simultaneously is a different story. Lots of us have multi-client setups with independent playback at each client, but we use separate PCs or extenders to do it.

Extenders typically do have a display attached, but it's not a requirement. You could run an extender headless, and use a web remote to control it.

You're correct that the general flavor of what you want to do (video playback in one room, music playback in another) is not at all unusual. But you're overconstraining the problem by trying to do it all with one PC and no extenders. The Sage solution to that scenario is to run separate clients on separate hardware (PC or extender) at each playback location, all connected to the central media server.

[src666]

You would be much better served by either dedicated player devices (HDx00's, Slim, etc.) or a software product that supports multi-zone capabilities (J. River Media Center) for the multi-zone playback.

SageTV isn't a multi-zone system unless you use the extenders. Period. You aren't talking about clever hacks - this is core functionality of the system. Rather than trying to force Sage to do something it can't, either do what it can (with extenders) or find a product that does what you need.

Just FYI, I use J. River Media Center serving 3 output streams along with a Russound CAM6.6X for my multi-zone audio.

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by src666

SageTV isn't a multi-zone system unless you use the extenders. Period.

Or PC clients running Placeshifter or SageTV Client. You do need a client device in each zone, but it doesn't have to be a dedicated extender appliance; it can be a software client running on a PC or Mac.

[src666]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

Or PC clients running Placeshifter or SageTV Client. You do need a client device in each zone, but it doesn't have to be a dedicated extender appliance; it can be a software client running on a PC or Mac.

Yeah, that's correct. But either way it's not what he's looking for.