N810 as front end to media center?
 

I've been using my N810 as an alarm clock, and occasionally a bluetooth keyboard and mouse. I've been thinking about setting up a media center pc for my house, to play music, and videos, but not for regular computer use. I was thinking the N810 would be the perfect size to be a remote.
I'm picturing a basic interface, with buttons for video, and music. Possibly a media browser to find specific media. The option to switch over to something like bluemaemo for when you need to administer to the pc.

Any ideas? Any thoughts? Does something already do that? Would it be better to have a new app all together, or to just have a vnc type of thing?

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

Really depends on what you expect your use case to be, and the applications you intend to use on the server.

I used to use the N810 as a VNC remote to a Mythtv box (works great upto 800X480), and also played with the tcp/ip interface. The Mythweb package works well with the N810 standard browser. There is a "mobile" style web interface called mythmagic which should work well with the N810 - I have it installed on my server so I will give it a go..

For a tivo there is a remote called pyTivo, which should work quite happily on the N810 as it uses Python, and no fancy graphics.

Also fairly sure that at one point there was a fairly nice remote to Windows Media center although it is probably depreceated now.

not sure about XMBC. There is a remote for the N900, but dont think it'll work due to the QML version required.

for Music playback, the Squeezeserver and players are nice. Squeezeserver is a free opensource webserver, and the interface has a skin designed for the earlier Maemo tablets.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

I could have sworn i had seen a DLNA client in the manager.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

If you are looking to watch recordings or videos from a MythTV installation, you might want to checkout Mediaserv. It's an on-the-fly transcoder that puts out n810 friendly video.

Mediaserv reads information about the recordings from the MythTV database and can present things to html pages or (my favorite) RSS feeds. I use it with GPodder to download and/or stream recordings from my mythbox to my tablet.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

the N810 will play back audio and video from Upnp servers quite cheerfully using the built in media player. I use Mediatomb on linux as my upnp server.

Canola, Mediabox, and mediastreamer will also play back.

And jwernerny is correct about mediaserv - also works very well for playback from mythtv.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

heh, seems i was thinking about media streamer. While i have no setup for testing it here, it seems capable of controlling other upnp devices remotely.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

heh, just found out about http://www.ps3mediaserver.org/

installed it here (it is java based so it was a case of extract and run on my linux setup), and it worked with Media Streamer instantly. Sadly i have no extra DNLA/UPNP media renderer on hand, so i can't test if the N800 i am using could be used as a remote for that. But i expect as such, because there is a drop down menu above the player controls that i suspect would list any available render devices on the network.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

I use media streamer with tversity on my windows machine. with these I can stream to my dlink dsm-320. Works well for music, but not video as the dsm-320 can not be configured to start without its menu screen and starting a movie from the n810 causes it to play behind the menu.

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

I have a little bit different setup than OP: I would like to use n8x0 as DLNA media renderer. That is, my n800 sits besides audio amplifier and headphone jack is connected to amplifier. I have DLNA media server in local net where the music is stored. I'm currently using MediaBox in n800 as player software, that is one great piece of software.

However, MediaBox is not ideal. I would like to have remote controllable DLNA media renderer capability in n800. Controlled from DLNA control applications running natively in remote devices (for example another n8x0, n900, N9, android devices, PCs). But I haven't found renderer software for n800 that could do it. Currently I use vnc to connect remotely to n800 to control MediaBox, but although it works fine it is kind of slow. Native DLNA control application would fix that.

I have used Zhaan, it can select separately media server and media renderer and control the playback. Unfortunately I can't find any DLNA renderer software for n800 that Zhaan could control.

Does anybody has suggestions of software to use in n800 as media renderer?

Re: N810 as front end to media center?
 

I appreciate all the replies! But I might be misunderstood...

I want to be able to control my media player. Say I have a window box with all my movies, music, etc. I want to be able to browse the content with my n810, hit command to play the media, and have the computer launch program and play media. And than have further options to toggle full screen, pause, skip, etc. Not really stream media through to my n810....buuuttttt....
If I had my N810 mounted in my car, and able to automatically connect to a device (say maybe a phone, ipod, whatever) over bluetooth, locate audio, and have playback options. That would be awesome!