For over 9 months now we use our Apple TV as our music entertainment system in our home. And when I mean “music entertainment system”, I mean just that. We don’t use our Apple TV for anything else, not even video (our much more video-capable Sony PS3 bears that task). We used to use CDs, in a 250 CD-changer device, but the experience was not nearly as good as when dealing with files that have metadata. So we got ourselves an Apple TV. On the other side of the country, a friend of ours uses the open source MPD solution. In this article I’ll try to figure out which one of the two is the best solution for my household’s usage pattern.
Explaining the need
My husband and I tried to find a solution that will work for us for over 6 months. We researched many products, from Boxee running on a PC, to Sonos, to Logitech’s audio line. But none comes close to our needs than Apple TV and MPD. Here are our needs:
1. No streaming. The music must be stored in a living room device, for the best “appliance” experience. If another PC or server had to be ON, at another part of the house, that was less than ideal: we wanted to be able to turn OFF all the devices used easily and fast (and without having to get up of the couch). Just like with an appliance.
2. Visual remote control. We’re lazy in this house. We don’t want to get up, go close to our appliances, just to view a small screen and change to another artist (e.g. with an iPod/Zune-out solution). And we don’t want to turn ON our TV to do that either. So the remote control had to be “visual”, like the iPod Touch’s interface. Change albums/artists and scroll through thousands of songs very quickly, just by sitting on your couch!
After lots of consideration, the Apple TV and the MPD solutions were closer to what we needed. Hence, this article.
Hardware Setup
The Apple TV is simply a headless server, serving music to our Yamaha amplifier and speakers, and is controlled via an iPod Touch. The Apple TV is connected via Ethernet on our main PC, which runs iTunes and syncs the Apple TV occasionally. iPod Touch is remote-controlling the Apple TV via the Apple “Remote” application.
Price: $230 for the Apple TV, plus $200 for the iPod Touch, that comes to about $430.
The MPD server runs on a netbook with 160 GB of hard drive in it. Output is coming from a USB sound card via Line-Out (not headphones-out). Any old PC that is able to run a modern Linux distro can also do the job, as long as your sound card has a proper line-out (e.g. S/PDIF). Any web interface, application, or iPod Touch, or Android phone can remote-control the MPD server.
Price: If you already own an old PC that you can put to good use, and you don’t mind using a PC interface, the price is $0. If you must buy a cheap netbook, plus an iPod Touch, plus an external sound card that features an S/PDIF port, plus possibly an external hard drive, the price can go up to $600.
In terms of price the Apple TV wins if you must have to buy the various parts from scratch, but the MPD solution wins if you already can put old hardware into good use.
Configuration
Installing the Apple TV is fairly simple. You just connect its power, Ethernet or Wi-Fi, audio-out, and a video cable. The Apple TV requires to be connected to a video cable, even if you are only going to use its audio features (otherwise it will fail to start up). Then, you just sync your iTunes library to it. The Apple TV comes with 160 GB of drive, but hacks exist online to upgrade it.
Then, you just control it via the iPod Touch or iPhone, or iPad (“Remote” app in the App Store). The Remote app let’s you do everything you need to do with the music side of the Apple TV, except rating songs, and turning off the device. Since we’re using the Apple TV as a headless server, we found that if we blindly press the “menu” button three times, and then we long press on the “play” button on its original remote control, this will turn it off.
On the MPD side, you need to first find packages of the latest version, which have some important bug fixes (there’s a third party 0.15.9 package on Launchpad for Ubuntu, for example). After installing, you must edit the /etc/mpd.conf file and set up directories, and permissions. Unfortunately, changing the MPD user to “eugenia”, it would result in an error, MPD telling me that my music folders are not directories (which of course they are). The only workaround I found about this error online, was to chmod 755 the whole /home/eugenia/ folder, which is of course a major security hole.
Another problem I got with MPD is that it defaults on ALSA output, and the volume controls on MPD clients don’t work. To add volume control you must write some of these crazy ALSA scripts, which I personally refuse to do on matters of principle. As for switching from ALSA to Pulse Audio, this apparently creates some instability.
On the upside, MPD supports scripting, which can extend its functionality. Apple TV can be rooted, and add some functionality too, e.g. support for OGG etc. Additionally, MPD can stream online radio, but so can the 3.0.1 version of Apple TV.
Experience
If you already own an iPod, then chances are that you need iTunes. Sure, there are Linux plugins for iPods, but none can do all the things that iTunes can. And speaking for myself, I simply can not listen to music without “ratings” and smart playlists. In fact, all our playlists at home are based on “smart” criteria, and absolutely none of them are just collections of similar music, or playlists that we simply created randomly “cause it sounded good together”. MPD does not have this ability. I guess we’re a bit too particular in our home.
On the MPD side, I had to create an SMB share from my Windows machine, and pull inside all that music to the local MPD drive. Unfortunately, while this works great as a first time, I can’t sync any new music I buy from Amazon or iTunes to the netbook/PC running MPD. And having the main PC “ON” at all times just so I use its SMB share as MPD’s music database is out of the question. I need a “clean” solution for my living room, and asking having my main PC in my office “ON” just so I can listen music to my living room, is not acceptable. What’s needed here is the ability for MPD to sync with iTunes remotely, and possibly other popular media players too. Truth is, more and more people are buying music from iTunes or Amazon online, so some sort of syncing is needed (by default, without having to hunt down plugins).
Also, there’s no way to put the PC to sleep when you’re done with MPD, short of getting up from the couch, reach the MPD netbook, and close its lid. Or run VNC on your controlling device, and try to induce sleep to your MPD PC/laptop that way.
In terms of number of clients, MPD has the upper hand, but for the scenario I’m presenting (living room usage), I find that a smartphone, or a tablet is much more desirable to a full PC/laptop usage. The MPD client for Android is not very good, and neither is the iTunes one (Apple TV does not work properly with any of the 2-3 iTunes Remote apps for Android, since they’re all based on the same source code). On the iPad/iPhone/iPod side, both the MPoD client and the Apple Remote apps are well-written.
Conclusion
For the kind of scenario my husband and I are interested in, living room usage that is, the Apple TV does it better for us. Since we have iPods and we’re using Amazon/iTunes to purchase our music, it makes more sense for us. The experience is more solid, coherent, and “appliance-friendly”. Both installation and usage is worry-free.
On the other hand, MPD is a better idea for different scenarios, e.g. on a corporate environment where all employees can listen to the same stream. Or if you never leave your office, so you listen to music exactly at the same time you’re working, so you can use your main PC to control MPD. Or, if you don’t own an iPod or want to use iTunes, in which case having an Apple TV makes little sense.
just wondering why you never mentioned the airport express – it’s about $150 cheaper and you can unplug it and move it to another room with speakers…
True, but you can only stream to an Airport, it cannot store music
.
Because the Airport Express still requires your main PC/Mac with iTunes to be “ON”. The whole point of my article is to not to have to do that!
There are other solutions online too, like Thom was just telling me on IM, with his Boxee/HTPC solution. However, the point is to have a dedicated, headless audio server, that you can control via a smartphone/iPod or at the very least tablet device. The Airport Express doesn’t fit that bill, because it requires your *main* music PC to be ON (which indicates that the main PC is in another room of the house), and the Boxee/HTPC’s *audio* remote control capabilities are limited compared to MPD/AppleTV’s (UI not as good for audio as it is for video).
So none of these solutions fit my “appliance” setup that I’m after on my living room.
Can’t the Apple TV stream to Apple’s own airport express? I thought it could. If it can, you can control that via the remote app’s now playing screen.
If you already have an Apple TV, you don’t need an Airport Express.
I always found the Playstation 3 pretty awful for playing movies. True, it does play 1080p well, but it cannot use files larger than 4GB. PS3Server kind of offers a work around, but it gives very little control over bitrates and temporally freezes movies too often. The fact that it doesn’t do 802.11n doesn’t help…
For this reason I use Apple TV for movies now, I transcode them using Handbrake with the Apple TV preset, or use the iTunes store for renting. It’s really a nice device for listening to music, watching movies, and slideshowing photos.
So this article is to justify your purchase of an Apple TV, or what? I don’t quite get it. Speaking for myself, if I were to use a PC for a music center, MPD is the *last* thing I’d compare to an Apple TV. As for the cost, build or get a Nettop with S/PDIF out and a good hard drive, you can do that for around $350-$400. What’s the $600 rubbish? If you were going to do this, a netbook plus USB sound card plus external hdd is just a stupid, cluttered, and overly expensive way to go about it. Did you go out of your way to find the most ridiculous setup imaginable?
Speaking for myself, I generally like your articles. This one, however, just doesn’t really seem to have much of a point. It feels like an opinion piece where the opinion is already set and the article was just written to justify it. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the vibe I got from this.
First of all, I didn’t buy the Apple TV, it was a gift. So, I don’t have to justify any purchase.
Secondly, you must understand **my usage pattern**. This article is written about my husband’s and mine NEEDS in terms of music listening in our living room. The main ingredient here is:
1. Have a device that doesn’t require our main PC to be ON to listen to music.
2. To have a remote control that is full featured for audio features, and it is “visual” (e.g. like the iPod Touch interface for music, showing album art, scrolling fast among albums/artists etc).
Therefore, the MPD solution ****is**** comparable to the Apple TV. In fact, the MPD solution is one of the FEW solutions that come CLOSE to the Apple TV experience. And that’s why I decided to compare them. Because I have specific criteria on our usage pattern at home, and I had spent months trying to find what’s best for us, after we left behind our 250 CD-Changer ancient experience.
As for the prices you don’t agree with, you generally need $250 for a netbook, $100 for an external drive, $50 for a good external sound card, and $200 for an iPod Touch. That’s the $600. And as I said, I would never, ever, ever, use as a remote control anything other than a smartphone or iPod Touch. Maybe an iPad as the upper threshold of size. That’s why the $200 price of an iPod Touch was needed when I calculated the price of a well configured MPD system to compete with my Apple TV setup.
I have used both solutions, and so has my husband. And we both agree on what’s the most appliance-friendly setup, and which parts we need to make that happen.
Edited 2010-05-13 22:06 UTC
What you’re replying to is the first thing that went through my mind: why a netbook? You have $250+$100+$50 = $400 for the equipment, while a nettop will set you back less (and has all the requirements). If you need a headless solution, why go for something having a screen?
I updated the article explaining these needs, because I think you didn’t quite get where I was coming from.
I just wish Apple would pay more attention to it. Only a 160 gb hdd when the device is designed to purchase and download hd content? It just feels like Apple has basically sidelined it, and that’s unfortunate. There’s a lot of things they could do with it that they just don’t seem interested in.
It wouldn’t work for me, I have a lot of ogg music which even though the Apple TV can be hacked to support, the XiphQT plugin doesn’t communicate track numbers or anything to iTunes so I’d have to go in and renumber *all* of my tracks. Ouch. Besides I hate iTunes, it chokes on my massive library. Even without iTunes though the Apple TV could have a lot of potential, it just doesn’t live up to it at the moment.
A Squeezebox Touch is about $300 total.
I think that would make a lot more sense for most people than a netbook + an iPod touch.
I _think_ it supports external USB drives, but normally it streams.
No, it doesn’t do it for me. I had looked at it at around the time we received our Apple TV, but it was not doing it for our needs. Because its screen is so small, and we need to GET UP of the couch in order to see what album or artist we’re selecting. We need that information in our hands, in our remote control. So the Squeezebox is useless for the kind of experience we needed.
Makes sense. Everybody has different needs. I just didn’t want the Squeezebox to go unmentioned in the debate, since it seems like a natural fit.
Another option is the Squeezebox Duet (which has the screen on the remote), but that doesn’t have USB drive support, I believe, so there is a bit of a gap in their product line.
I don’t have any of these personally, but favor any route that would avoid reliance on iTunes.
Yeah, if Logitech didn’t have that gap, they would be a good alternative.
Same goes for the Sonos system. They have the visual remote control, but they lack internal hard drive support (they still stream from external sources). This was a no-no from my husband, who wanted an integrated appliance experience.
Linux server hosts my music; main PC is set to read and store purchased music on server directly (so no sync); popcorn hour (w/ remote) read music from server.
Ok, my server is always on, but that’s the idea of the server. And it is in another room so no noise issue. I concede however that PopCorn UI is not very flashy, but on the other hand it is the most complete solution (read about any format).
OK, I bite.
My setup:
-Hardware-
Via Micro-ATX board + 1 Ghz C7, 1 GB RAM, 1 TB HDD, connected to TV and Stereo.
-Software-
Linux + Boxee + MPD + Torrent client + JDownloader + Wuala
I use Boxee to play stuff on the TV, MPD for my music, Wuala for backing up the 1 TB in the “cloud” so that my data is off-site in case of fire or meteor strike etc.
The other software is for downloading/serving/bla.
I use remote X11 from my Linux box to do the downloading. I use rsync for syncing.
Oh, and the 1 TB disk is encrypted with DMcrypt. There is probably more, but that is the stuff that is important. It runs 24/7.
Limited solutions/applicances) like a AppleTV wouldn’t work for me, this is Mediacenter, DVCR, Jukebox, NAS/Backup and some other stuff for me. Energy consumption is great compared to PS3 or having 5 different devices running.
AppleTV follows Apple’s standard design philosophy for consumer products; anyone should be able to buy one at the store, unpack it and use it. And it achieves that. It’s really nothing more than a conduit for iTunes sales, and for many people that’s a perfect solution. It’s relatively inexpensive and gives a nice, simple to operate user experience. Personally though I’d never buy one, although if someone gave me one I’d find a way to integrate it into what I use.
I have an (resurrected) Intel iMac running Plex. The iMac itself spends most of it’s life acting as a large digital photo frame just by setting it’s desktop to change every couple minutes, but it’s also running a headless VirtualBox Windows 7 setup with the multiple remote desktop hack installed so my wife and kids can run Windows on the rare occasion they need it, and through filesharing it acts as a “server” for our shared files. Plex and iTunes also load at boot so the music and video libraries are shared by both. The iMac is connected to our LCD TV as a 2nd display and Plex defaults to that, with audio going through the amp like everything else. Plex uses the standard Apple remote and I also have Rowmote on my iPhone ’cause the kids have a nasty habit of “misplacing” remotes. The iMac is also running motion detection software for the built-in iSight and (when activated) can send me email alerts, and I can remotely access the streamed video, as a security mechanism.
There’s also a generic wireless keyboard and mouse so other apps can be run on the iMac’s screen while a movie is playing (this is used on occasion for friends who need internet access for whatever reason) and there’s a Airport Express in our outdoor entertainment area with speakers connected for parties. Running Plex and iTunes means we can have kids watching a movie in the lounge, music playing in the entertainment area, and any combination of those two at any other computer (PC or Mac) in the house via the shared libraries.
So it’s horses for courses. If you want the simple plug ‘n play option AppleTV is good. A setup like mine is middle of the road and takes a little bit of technical expertise, or if you have the time and knowledge you can go for a completely over the top setup like some have.
Indeed. We bought my dad an Apple TV as a birthday gift (I have one at home as well). You plug it, type in the on-screen number in iTunes, and it starts syncing music and movies automatically. It’s the way it should be for 98% of the users out there (that’s why we have resisted the temptation of buying a cheaper Linksys/Sweex/…).
Although I am perfectly able to build my own GNU/Linux based media center, it’s just not worth the effort. It takes hours to set everything up perfectly on limited hardware and with a television as output, and the experience will never be as smooth as an Apple TV with its seamless automatic syncing. Sure, with Linux you can run SNES emulators, run your coffee machine or whatever on your television*, but in practice I’ll only play with such things once.
* A hacked Apple TV can as well
.
… if you’re willing to be a little creative.
I might be talking out of my butt crack here as I never really used MPD for more than 10 minutes and even then it was with the server and the client on the same machine but I would think that it could “sync” data whenever the “server PC” was on if you simply put a rsync one-liner as a scheduled task but using anacron instead of the good old cron on the “server PC”.
Anacron, unlike cron, does not assume that the machine is running continuously. Hence, it can be used on machines that aren’t running 24 hours a day, to control daily, weekly, and monthly jobs that are usually controlled by cron. Also, unlike cron, anacron checks if your tasks were completed as scheduled or not and accepts delays with configurable thresholds. Rsync credentials speaks for itself, I presume.
This would be a workable workaround assuming that one can run anacron plus rsync on the “server PC” – I don’t know about Mac, but I think that it is unlikely on Windows – and that your music collection is not dependent on iTunes in any way – unless it somehow stores your collection in a way that it would still be readable elsewhere (despite owning an iPod Touch, I don’t use iTunes much so I wouldn’t know…) in which case it would still work.
It might not sound as easy to use as the Apple TV thingy but it is something that can be accomplished within a few minutes assuming that your current setup allows such configuration and you’re willing to try… ^_^
That’s a nice solution, but we do use Windows as our main PC, and iTunes for our music library. Also, if anacron can work on a Mac, that kind of Mac user probably uses iTunes anyway. So it’s kind of a limited user base for this kind of syncing.
Yes, I figured that it would be of limited usefulness to many Windows and/or Mac users but I still think that it is doable on the Mac if – and only IF – iTunes does not bork your songs when it does its thing to store them on its internal database or whatever it is that that monstrosity does… Also, many people still rip their existing CD collection and/or “borrow” music from friends or the Internet and might keep these files away from iTunes so that they’re also usable on other multimedia players.
I did not know that there were good MPD remote control applications for the iTouch out there – my iPod is strictly for music and anime playing and in the rare occasion that I install apps, these are mostly from Cydia – so it is good to know. I’ve been thinking about jumping on the HTPC band wagon for a little while now and reading about things like these always help…
I think the task scheduler in Vista+ has similar capabilities, so it isn’t a dead end.
Would be a bit tricky to setup though.
Ive always liked the idea of having my media wherever i am. So for this reason i have a setup of iMac + Apple TV + iPhone.
All my films,TV shows, music, music videos, audiobooks, podcasts are encoded onto the iMac which acts as a media server + workstation.
The apple tv keeps a selected copy of the media local, so i don’t have to have the iMac running. When the iMac is running the Apple TV has complete access to all my media as the media it doesn’t store is streamed.
The media is also synced to my iPhone from the iMac.
I find this setup works really well and without having to play around with settings or anything. I can start watching a film on my apple tv, sync the film and the iPhone will continue from the apple tv. It all just works.
I used to have a Windows MCE, the XP 2005 edition. It worked pretty well and had the extra bonus of being able to record shows etc. However it was buggy and didn’t quite fit the bill. My shows are now recorded via Sky HD+ box so im not too concerned about that.
However i have to agree with the article and some other posts, this apple centric setup suites my needs, it works for me, however i don’t expect to clone this setup and for it to work for everyone.
i have a mpd set up, and recently moved it from a mini-itx to a beagleboard. as it uses about 1watt for the bb, and 2watt for the external disk, there is not much need to turn it off (it has other task like bittorrent too).
i solved the permission issue by mounting the external disk as /data and giving everyone read access to it.
i set pulseaudio to work in system mode, so that it works with no one logged in. volume control then works from the mpd client. i used alsamixer to set all the sliders to 0db, to get best sound and this setting seems to stick.
i also have setup pulseaudio to act as a network sink. so i can stream audio from other computers i want. (a bit tricky. seems that you need to tell the applications to connect to the remote pulseserver with a envvar)
i recommend gmpc on linux desktops, and sonata on n800 type machines. i imagine it would be possible to hook up to LIRC if you wanted. i also recommend ogg files, as they use the least CPU to play.
My use case is similar and I use the ATV for audio throughout the house using Airport Express to relay to other output devices (the upstairs receiver).
I’ve recently started using the iTouch Remote app and quite like it. All in all despite my current concerns about Apple’s business practices I’m likely to buy another AE when it comes time to pipe sound into another room at house. RogueAmoeba software works okay …
*digression*
ATV is disappointing and difficult to improve because it’s still built on 10.4 (Tiger) tools and very few packages still support that. I fussed with an old version of Transmission and transmission clients and had some joy with that and XBMC but couldn’t get it to auto-start or behave generally. I rambled about that somewhere but can’t find my notes now, the wiki article I followed up to a point is http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/wiki/Transmission_on_AppleTV
*/digression*
Besides the fact that I don’t really think 755 on home is that big a deal (you can always put stuff you don’t want other users to see into a 700 folder within your home), I’d think you could have set the directory 750 and put the mpd user in your group.
As for syncing, couldn’t you set up Samba on the music device or use WinSCP (assuming Windows) to copy over SSH? WinSCP includes sync functionality within the tool.
$600 seems a little excessive, An Eee Box 202 from Amazon will cost $223 including delivery [1]. This has SPDIF and 160GB Hard Drive so is an almost exact match for the Apple TV on those specs and is about the same in price. I am sure similar specced machines can be picked up cheaper.
For the headless shutdown on the linux box, why not install a SSH client on your remote device. With public-key authentication and some automation you could create a one tap shutdown procedure. (there is an app on the Android market called Lazy Geek which should be able to do this[2] if you were using a budget android device this would cut the total cost by a fair whack, though I imagine there are similar apps available for most smartphone platforms)
The usability/setup problems you had are perhaps the biggest point against MPD. I don’t know how common your use case is, but maybe there might be a demand for an appliance type linux distro that includes everything you need with sane default configurations that anyone could install
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Processor-Drive-Linux-White/dp/B001HPPA…
[2] http://lazygeek.e-legion.com/en/index.html
It is a little more insane. I use MPD on a server that is on anyways. I stream through icecast2. I have an old, 366Mhz laptop with 128M of RAM set to connect to the network and run oggplay on boot. It runs Debian without X.
I can listen to the same stream in every room on different devices. If I want to use the music streaming on the main sound system, I do need to hit the power button on the laptop, but when I am done, I just turn off the receiver, and since the laptop is on a switched outlet, eventually the battery runs down and it turns off.
For a remote, I use phpMp, a web interface for MPD, and Opera on a Nintendo DS as the controller.