vhousad
join:2007-02-04
Herndon, VA | Media Manager Playlist Maintenance
Managing music playlists via the media manager is clunky to say the least. Any suggestions as to how to leverage/convert existing iTunes playlists or maintain via another utility?
Thanks! |
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blue_trooper
join:2007-04-17
Exton, PA
| I'm going to bump this up to see if anybody has found a solution.
I found that the playlists are contained in an XML file in the MediaManager folder on the PC. The format doesn't look confusing but I know nothing about writing scripts to create XML. I would think that somebody who knew even a little bit about this stuff could create a script to copy the info from an iTunes XML library file to create a Playlist in the Media Manager XML for every album in the library. |
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JPL
Premium
join:2007-04-04
West Chester, PA
 ·Verizon FIOS
| reply to vhousad
I'm not familiar with iTunes, but why do you see it as clunky? Here's what I do to add playlists:
- Scan the music into MediaManager:
File->Launch Scan Wizard
I found that I only need to do this to scan in new music. Once scanned, my CDs stay in the scanned list.
- Once there, go down to the scanned music area, find the collection you want added as a playlist. Right click on it and select Make Into Playlist.
Is it just managing your music that's painful? |
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blue_trooper
join:2007-04-17
Exton, PA
1 edit | My music is managed just fine in iTunes. But... I've got almost 1,100 albums in my iTunes library at the moment. If I right click each one and set it up as a playlist the default in MediaManager names the playlist by the title of the album. The idea of finding what I want to listen to by scrolling through 1,000 albums by title is not appealing. The thought of typing the artist name in front of every album title when creating each playlist is also not very appealing.
The PC application is obviously able to read the id3 tags and sort, why can't this library function be replicated by the cable box?
The lack of searching or the ability to queue up multiple playlists on the DVR doesn't help.
I was hoping for something with the flexibility of my Roku Soundbridge (which is hooked up to a music-only system)that could also show photos and did not require another piece of hardware.
Maybe I was expecting too much? |
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OneEyedWonde
join:2007-02-16
Westfield, NJ
| I am not a fan of the media manager either. I don't like how the max files per playlist is 999 songs, where I have over 3200 songs on my computer. Along those lines, I don't like how you just can't play random songs, or a shuffle type feature, through media manager of every song.
I'm having my Home Media DVR swapped out on Thursday, and I'm having 3 DVR's installed instead. While with DirecTV, we had 2 DTivo's on 1 DTV DVR. We just couldn't get used to only recording on one TV at a time and ran into ALOT of conflicts. So I'll end up paying a little more per month, but it will eliminate alot of headaches.
And to replace the home media option, I'm thinking of investing in Apple's new AppleTV. I like the fact that you can pretty much have iPod functions on your TV using your whole library, and you can access movies and other videos. |
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blue_trooper
join:2007-04-17
Exton, PA
| I was looking at the Apple TV but unless I'm missing something its harddrive isn't big enough for me. I thought at first it would operate off my music and photo collections on my server but apparently it synchs everything to its 40GB disk. Right now I've got over 60GB of music and almost 8GB of photos. |
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OneEyedWonde
join:2007-02-16
Westfield, NJ | I think, but don't quote me, you can use it either as a hard drive, or you can stream music wirelessly. I think the hard drive is to save movies and photos to make them play more efficiently, but again, I'm not 100% sure. Something to check out. |
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blue_trooper
join:2007-04-17
Exton, PA | You are correct sir. Or at least according to Wikipedia which, not surprisingly, had more info than Apple's web-site.
$299/$7 = breakeven in 43 months  |
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almahix
Allegro ma non troppo
join:1999-10-18
Camarillo, CA
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to vhousad
I dumped the home media about 1 week after I had Fios installed. The auto-generated playlists were all in alphabetical order by track title, and some recordings are meant to be heard in track number order, such as opera and other classical works. It would have been nice if it recognized m3u playlists, but that is too much to ask I guess.
In addition, all of the recordings I have on the DVR are high def, and the inability to view them from other (std def) TVs made the home media option a waste of money, and heaven help me, Verizon is already getting enough from me!! |
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OneEyedWonde
join:2007-02-16
Westfield, NJ
| said by almahix  :In addition, all of the recordings I have on the DVR are high def, and the inability to view them from other (std def) TVs made the home media option a waste of money That was another big problem I had with the home media DVR. It really limited what we could record/watch. Having gone from 3 DVR's with a total of 6 tuners, to one with 2, and the HD limitation, not really a good fit for us. |
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JPL
Premium
join:2007-04-04
West Chester, PA
·Verizon FIOS
| reply to vhousad
I don't think the DVR was really ever meant to be a hard-core music system. It allows sharing of pictures and music - but I don't think it was ever designed to be a high-volume type of player. It does pretty much what I expected it would do - I only loaded a couple CD's worth of music into it, and then could do some rotations - deactivate some from showing up on the tv and activate others. I do agree that I would like to see more flexibility with ordering the albums, but overall, it does what I expect it to do. I neve expected a full up music system. |
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