Experience of Streaming Music HDR- to HD-FOX

[Black Hole]

The last couple of days I've had a play with MP3s, FTPed onto the HDR-FOX and streamed to the HD-FOX.

The first thing I noticed is that, although the WebIF browser list them in the right order (whether alphabetically or by timestamp), their order in the streamed DLNA browser appears completely random (but constant). This means if you just play them they come out in the wrong order (not much good for chapters of a talking book).

The next thing I found was lack of transport control. Whatever I press all that happens is "jump to next track" or "jump to previous track".

The play mode seems to default to "repeat all". Pressing red cycles this through "once", "shuffle", and "repeat track".

All in all rather unsatisfactory, a bit of an afterthought. OK for a bit of background music (much like the photo viewer).

 

[oijonesey]

I did have a play with music a while ago ( Here (Click) . I found that by creating playlists on my laptop and pointing the Hummy at them I could have a wider selection of tracks (i.e. from multiple folders), and I think I could define the playlist to include pictures and videos if I wanted to contruct a show of media without joining them up as a new file although I only read about it and never proved it. Anyway back to music - in terms of being able to pick out tunes on the fly and play them the Hummy is not so great, making playlists in advance at least gives some extra function but TBH not very much.

 

[Black Hole]

I remember your previous form on this, but I don't think it addressed playing locally on the box or streaming from Humax to Humax; none-the-less it is worth including the link for others to follow the trail.

Have you found it possible to create a playlist locally (or import) on the Humax? Doubt it somehow. What stumps me is the random order in which the imported content is indexed in the DLNA database (which is, I presume, the order in which they are presented at the HD-FOX). I have just checked what it looks like locally, and the HDR-FOX lists them in alphabetical order (or timestamp order, I can't tell which).

Playing locally on the HDR-FOX is little better than streamed - no transport control; left/right, REW/FF, and skip all take you to the previous/next file. In one respect it is slightly worse (for me) - the title of the track is taken from the MP3 tags, whereas streamed it is the actual file name (so in my case, where all the chapters have the same title tag, I can't tell which is playing).

I'm not complaining, the kit is meant for video which we all agree it does pretty well. I'm merely reporting what I've found in case anyone wants to know. For audio book type things I have my little MP3 player which not only provides transport control but also remembers where in a track you got to last time (a trick which not all players seem to be able to do).

 

[oijonesey]

Have you found it possible to create a playlist locally (or import) on the Humax? Doubt it somehow.

No you're right - the Hummy doesn't get any better than just picking tracks out of one folder. But once I've made them on the laptop I can put the M3U playlists on the Hummy (and my NAS) and it'll find them and play whatever the list has in it (including across multiple folders). Was that what you meant?

 

[Black Hole]

I presume by that you mean the Humax would not be able to play a playlist that was stored locally, but as it seems the DLNA client can access a playlist remotely, I wonder if there is a way to create a playlist that sits on the HDR-FOX and references tracks on the HDR-FOX that the HD-FOX will interrogate and action? I shall have to try it. The DLNA media references would be a good start.