Newbie - but studied

[dalopey]

OK - here goes - my first post - I will try to make it a good one! I signed up yesterday.

I have been reading this forum and studying other possible solutions for my new HTPC for about 2 weeks now. I'm awed, dazed, and confused!!

First of all: HATS OFF TO Ben (and anyone else that's developing this great software)!!!! You are one VERY dedicated and talented individual(s)... And it's for that reason I have been leaning closely to chosing NetRemote as my solution... and the fact that you participate in the forums here regularly... Do you have a life outside all this!!!!?? HAHA It must be tough keeping up! I myself have about 10 hobbies, all of which I am behind in.......... So time is precious to me.

Now - i will try to ask all the questions I can think of... hopefully they can be considered "General" for this thread. Sorry if not.

There are a lot of remote control softwares out there: Pebbles, OmniRemote, Housebot, myHTPC, Bitween... How the heck do I decide??

I built my HTPC. It will play my DVD's (in the DVD ROM drive) MP3's that are on another fileserver, AVI (DIVX/XVID) on some other server, Watch and record TV shows (TIVO like thing - which is actually what got me into the whole HTPC world in the first place!), surf the internet... etc - I would like to tie all these together in a nice "remote" that even my mother could use. BUT WAIT, there's more!!!

I also have a SONY CD jukebox (200 I think?) and Sony Receiver for the surround sound, the cable box (motorola), and the head is a NEC LT260k projector. I would like to control those as well.

I have 5 remotes on my coffee table!
I have wireless RF Gyromouse and keyboard.

The projector has multiple inputs. I can watch TV through the PC, which is only the analog channels. To watch TV through the cable box directly to the projector, I have to:

remote 1 - click the projector input over to the "video 1" input (from RGB1 i.e. VGA)
remote 2 - turn on the cable box
remote 3 - turn on receiver and switch to "TV"
back to remote 2 to switch channels on the cable box.

* OK - SEE?? That's a lot on remote switching!!! Is NetRemote gonna fix that for me (eventually!! - after lot's of tweaking i imagine) ???? I would do sort of the reverse of above to go back to PC.

* I played with myHTPC. Why would I use netremote if I could use myHTPC - or vise versa? Probably a stupid question, but with all the information influx overload, I'm having trouble sorting through all the possibilities. I will sort through it eventually... just would like a little head start!

* Is there a place I can go and just download a bunch of skins/setups/ccf/whatever sort of plug and play stuff i can just play with?? I have seen some of you post your own stuff here, and I have grabbed a few I liked (thanks MOE!) ... but how about a repository of sorts??

* AND i can't decide... PPC or TABLET???? I have endlessly spent hours trying to decide... I can't... I'm pretty indecisive! I suppose I will have to have WiFi (for netremote), and a IR blaster for the components. I like the simpad idea - even seriously thinking about it. I don't really need a new PC (i.e. Tablet) sitting on my coffee table!

* I also have a RF receiver on my HTPC - via ATI Radeon 8500DV (comes standard)... is that useful for anything in my setup (esp since I will probably use netremote) ??

* I saw a thread on Supernudelist - haven't researched that yet, but will. Is this going to be my Sony Changer solution?

these next might be better in another thread...
* ALso - is MediaCenter payware?
* Why can't I just run MC in server mode? Or can I? I have to have the player running now.

ALSO - i would like to give a shoutout to Mastiff (Tor) - NORWEGIANS Rule!!! My mother is Norsk, and I have spent a lot of time in Tronhjem and Oslo. (Obviously mostly in Trondheim!) Jeg prater litt Norsk, men har glemt mesteparten! Det kommer tilbake nor jeg snakker med mor!
Jeg liker vedlig din Kinostua! Ha Det Bra.
Keep up the good work!!!

AND TO EVERYONE: I'm happy to have become a member of such a great and dedicated community. Thank you!

Sorry post was sooooooo long. Back to playing with new .995 Netremote I just DL'ed :?

-dennis

[dalopey]

I have run a few dry runs. I gotta say - WOW... seems very easy to use, and an endless stream of possibilities has slapped me silly!!

I ran through the tutorial (that i finally found again - should be a link to it) and did the notepad experiment.... it didn't work - yet... I will do it again to make sure I did it right. But from that exercise I am able to see how easy this could be... I still prefer to DL already done stuff since I don't have a lot of time.

I answered one of my own questions from above. the myHTPC v/s NetRemote one... NetRemote allows the server/client ability and myHTPC does not. OK - had I actually put a little thought into that I wouldn't have asked a stupid question like that!!!!

However, on the same subject: Why would I integrate myHTPC into netremote... why bother? when it seems like the whole thing can be done with netremote....? Just wondering.

Thanx

[Jlee]

Thanks Dennis from another newbie for asking most of the questions I was going to ask. Our situations are very similar - very little time, indecisive, don't know where to start and have 5 remotes sat on the coffee table.

I've a few questions which I've gone back over and numbered so people can easily respond with answers without having to repeat the question!

[1]Is the answer to the 5 remote problem to change my IrMan to a UIRT? [2]How would that work? [3]Would I send a command from NR to Girder that would somehow trigger Girder into telling my UIRT to send out a signal that mimics one coming from my TV remote?

As Mastiff will probably know, I'm currently using MC on a HTPC and use Girder to control MC, mostly in Theatre View. I do the usual stuff with girder using mjextman commands like play, pause, stop etc as well as some custom stuff such as changing views, hiding the tree in standard view, shuffling the Playing Now list and selecting my favourite playlists.

I also use Girder to do other basic stuff like changing volume, bass and treble with the VolumeOSd plugin.

So that's the backround - now for more questions....

[4]If I buy a PDA and install will I be able to use much of my existing GML and just get NetRemote to trigger the relevant girder events when I hit a button on the NR interface?

[5]Would usage of NR negate the need to use Theatre View (which is still very lacking) in MC? [6]In other words would NR allow me to browse through all my view schemes, smartlists and palylists and play, or enqueue them to the Playing Now list?

[7]With a PDA is it possible (like Pronto) to use hard buttons for stuff like play, next, previous, stop etc or would you always have to use the 'pen' to click the appropriate button on screen.

Thanks in advance to anyone who can save me a lot of time and help me see light at the end of the tunnel.

[Mastiff]

Hey, J! (Did you guys notice the handy, little bit of poetry there?)

I can help you with some of it, at least:

1. Yes, it can be. Only you need an USB-UIRT, the UIRT is yesterday's hardware, just like ISDN (well, it's still today's hardware in my house, but tomorrow it's yesterday's hardware, because tomorrow gSDSL will be today's hardware...but I digress).

2 & 3: You're partly answering your own question here, except for that Girder doesen't have to be involved. There's a thing called IR pass-through where the IR signals sendt by the PPC (in Pronto format) goes to a nifty app called NRIRServer (NetRemote IR Server) and then comes out of the USB-UIRT as finished IR signals. I use that in my house.

4. Yes. That and more. You will also gain hours and hours of fun time polishing your CCF since the PPC gives so much better eyecandy than the Pronto.

5 and 6: NR doesn't give a flying rat's ass (Dilbert expression, I belive) in what mode MC is in. It's communication goes a lot deeper than that.

7: You can assign all the hardbuttons the PDA has. Normally that's a four way D-pad, four application buttons on the front and one to three on the side (normally volume and record buttons, sometimes an extra for instance for a special menu, like the PocketLoox). I usually have up for play, down for stop or pause, left for previous and right for next. Then I use the application buttons to jump between MC screens and stuff like that. Besides I seldom use the pen (or "stylus" as we PDA pro's call it)except for small stuff, like picking tracks from the library. Regular transport buttons and keypad buttons almost always are big enough to use the finger on.

btw these questions really indicates that you haven't read through my website. Bad boy! :wink: You'll find most of this there.

Oh, finally, that light may be an oncoming train... 8)

[Jlee]

btw these questions really indicates that you haven't read through my website. Bad boy!

I did, I really did honest! I just must've missed that bit :(


Regular transport buttons and keypad buttons almost always are big enough to use the finger on.

Do you mean I can get a touch screen PDA? Is that kinda standard or am I talking divorce proceedings when I find out the cost?

Thanks for your help Mastif - sounds really cool.

[Mastiff]

That's Mastiff with double f, thankyouverymuch! :wink: And yes, all PDAs are touchscreen, at least all PPCs. What those dinosaur Palm units are (Palm TonkaToy, Tungsten, or whatever they're called) I have noe idea. But you should be able to get a pretty good one at Dixon (was at their Heathrow shop the weekend before last, and I saw a nice selection there) for maybe around 300 quid. And Dell has some good ones as well. Just make sure you buy one with built in WLAN, those jackets are a real drag. And you're welcome!

[Jlee]

That's Mastiff with double f, thankyouverymuch.

Oops. I know (as you'll see from my earlier post) but my typing is bad at this time of night.

Thanks again. I can't wait to get going with it but it might be a few weeks so I've saved this thread in case I forget your answers.

ta.

[Mastiff]

I know too. Just enjoying the national pasttime of Great Britain: Taking the p... :wink: See you around.

[Aaron]

Ben,
the RemoteServer.dll is not getting installed into my 'C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center' directory when I use the Suite version and install Win32 only. :cry:

can you post the DLL on its own for me? thanks!