Notices

I've just started using Oboe on the 770 for the first time.

For those that don't know, Oboe is a service just launched by MP3Tunes. It can be found at http://www.mp3tunes.com/ . It's a giant online music store where you can upload your own tracks then access them again through a browser interface. My dream is for my highly connected 770 to be a media player without the need for internal storage.

So far I've just registered a free account to allow me to test, and just sideloaded a sample track. I used my laptop to perform all this. Then I swapped to my 770...

The first thing I noticed was that the browser AJAX interface was a little sluggish. It also took up a lot of memory, so much so that I had to close other windows (I'm running the latest official OS release from Nokia.com). I hope this doesn't get worse with more tracks... although I would've thought it's more to do with the use of AJAX and the polling etc.

When I access the site with my laptop I can play tracks in the web browser. I couldn't do that with the 770. It uses a dropdown against "playable items" (albums, tracks etc) where you hover over and then click "play [item]". I *could* get the dropdown, but pressing on "play" had no effect. Possibly a browser problem, maybe a pen interaction problem... I don't know.

The alternative is that you can also pick anything to download a playlist for. Thankfully, this integrated into the 770 audio player well. It started buffering and within a few seconds I was listening to my music. On our company LAN (standard 802.11g) the quality was excellent.

All in all, a promising start and something I will be keeping an eye on. The major downside at the moment is the sluggish interface.

Dan,

Have you looked at Slimserver? I love using Slimserver with my 700. I'm able to stream my whole 60+GB MP3 collection to my 700 with complete control. No uploading. You can browse by genre, artist, album, album art, and you can create playlists on the fly.

I set up a DDNS address for my home PC so that no matter where I am (or how many times Verizon changes my IP) I can get to my collection via the same URL. One of the Slimserver users has created a nice skin for the 770.

The interface is peppy even though it doesn't use AJAX.

I forgot the best part... it's all FREE.

I was going to say the same thing, why use Oboe when you can use slimserver for free. From your experience I might say that slimserver works even better.

Yeah, I know all about the Squeezebox devices and the SlimServer. Exactly what you have described has crossed my mind as a solution too, before, and for other applications too (email etc). My concerns from a media standpoint have always been:

*Guaranteed upstream bandwidth from my home... here in the UK SDSL is not widespread. I've not actually tried this though...
*Guaranteed availability of my home network connection

I'm still considering the squeezebox as a home solution but can't see it working when I roam, for the above reasons...

Plus, of course, I have to build my own always on box, with low power usage, probably separate storage if I'm going to do it properly...

(I've planned to do the above anyway for a HTPC setup but... YAGNI?)

I limited my upstream bandwidth usage (while speeding up browsing on the 770) by using Slimserver's playback rate limiting feature to down-sample MP3s on the fly. Using this feature, you can set the playback quality at 64 instead of 128 or 196.

No matter which route you choose, having your own music stream to the 770 is pretty cool. Now if I could just get a longer lasting battery for my 770.

Hi Slimserver,

sounds good...
Is it possible to forward in a song?
I like to hear audiobooks and it is quite frustrating, if the 770 lost the connection. Because then the song/chapter begins from the start
best regards
rachid

Yes it is... it's free so give it a try! I think there might be some issues with different encodings though...

Just an update on this...I have a paid account and it seems that when I hit "play music" in the 2006 beta it opens the audio player and plays the music. I am willing to bet that this has something to do with mp3tunes and not something in the 770 but its still great!

Use the mobile interface.