Linux server app for stand-alone media players??

[clintonman]

With the help of this board I've been able to create a robust media server complete with web-based TV recording, DVD ripping, etc. I currently have over 100 movies and 5,000 songs on the server. Naturally, the missing link is a route by which I can have this media available in my downstairs living room. Up till now I've just been burning to CD/VCD but media gets expensive and wasteful after a while. So I've been looking at these standalone digital media players designed to hook into a home theater system and serve video and audio files wirelessly from a server. (Examples from SMC and Prismiq... I've also seen similar devices from the big boys like Linksys.)


The problem, of course, is that the server software for these players is only available for Windows. D'oh!! In theory, it's a really simple app - just make a catalogue of all audio/video files in given directories, read metadata, export the list as one big data packet to the player, then serve up files as requested by the client. Yet I don't know if each player has its own custom server software or if there's a standard of some kind. Can anyone help me out? Maybe point me in the direction of an open-source project to drive players like this from Linux, if something like that exists? Or just a software spec from which I can do some poking around of my own?

Thanks a bunch.

[jnihil]

I use a Japanese written app called wizd:

http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-SanJose/3271/

Together with my buffalo link theater standalone dvd/divx player I can stream all the video/audio contents on my gentoo server with over 200GB of xvid movies via fast ethernet cable. I believe IO-Data has a wireless version of the player which also works with wizd.

Wizd is just a simple web server that streams video files and mplayer and vlc will also stream off it. Give it a try. The config file maybe a little difficult to edit (the comments are in Japanese!), but you only need to set the following:

document_root path-to-root-dir-of-videos
server_port 8000 (or whatever)

Then launch wizd and then test it locally by opening http://localhost:8000

You should get a web page with an index to your videos. Then you can try accessing it over the net using mplayer by passing it the URL.

Rgds.

[joey_knisch]

Just found an updated english version.

http://www.geocities.com/flipflop7146/wizd.html