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rbro

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 20, 2003
59
0
I have a home theater set up in my living room with a nice Denon HT 5.1 receiver. ABout 150 feet away in my home office, I have an iMac. How can I set things up to play MP3's from iTunes on my iMac over my HT system? Either wired or wirelessly. Keep in mind there are walls and doors in the way etc. Thanks in advance.
 
rbro said:
I have a home theater set up in my living room with a nice Denon HT 5.1 receiver. ABout 150 feet away in my home office, I have an iMac. How can I set things up to play MP3's from iTunes on my iMac over my HT system? Either wired or wirelessly. Keep in mind there are walls and doors in the way etc. Thanks in advance.

I have three solutions, and you will probably find them all wanting...
1) A FM transmitter-very cheap-basically broadcasts to an open channel/freq. on FM receiver...not the best sound quality...not crap either...but you have a nice receiver...you might not want to settle
2) something like this:
http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_overview.html
It is pricy, however, but elegant...to go the extra mile with wireless you could also get this:
http://www.linksys.com/products/product.asp?prid=432 which is another $80. Excellent audio in this route, personally love this solution...
3)You could also get a wireless receiver such as this:
http://broadband.motorola.com/consumers/products/simplefi/ but it is the most expensive option at $350
Hope this helps, sorry I could not be more creative...Good Luck
 
rdowns said:
Am I missing something or did the specs say Windows support only? How f***ing stupid is Motorola?
I did not catch that, as I did not read up on it fully...I do know that it only supports MP3 file and not WMA files, so it seems even stranger that it does not support mac...bloody motorola...as I said I like the second option anyway...
 
I've looked at all the slim MP3-like options, and I still think that getting an iPod is your best choice. Just put a dock on the top of the receiver, line out to RCA inputs to the receiver, and there you go. Its similar in price to a slim mp3 solution, and you get the functionality of having a portable ipod.



(oh and i just noticed something totally irrelevant, the word "Wozniak" comes up as spelled wrong in apple spell check, while many other words associated with Apple are said to be spelled correctly. Such as "Performa")
 
has anyone tried hooking an iTrip up to something other than an iPod? I wonder how well this will work? It just plugs into the headphone jack doesn't it? It seems like it should work with anything with a 1/8" stereo jack?
 
phrac said:
has anyone tried hooking an iTrip up to something other than an iPod? I wonder how well this will work? It just plugs into the headphone jack doesn't it? It seems like it should work with anything with a 1/8" stereo jack?

I don't know about the new iTrip, but the one for the 1G iPods needed power from the iPod. If you notice there is a ring round the headphone jack, and that is the power supply.

It shouldn't work with anything else.

I assume the new ones get their power from that little hole to the left of the headphone jack.
 
What I did at my house was build a small Win2k box based on a VIA EPIA mainboard. It runs iTunes for windows and plays the music on my iMac via sharing over WiFi. The VIA board is cool because it has svideo and RDIF (5.1 coaxial) out on the board. The whole unit is the size of an external hard drive. I use a wireless presentation mouse to select the tunelist or songs on the TV screen.

It cost me a little over $200 to make.
 
beerguy said:
What I did at my house was build a small Win2k box based on a VIA EPIA mainboard. It runs iTunes for windows and plays the music on my iMac via sharing over WiFi. The VIA board is cool because it has svideo and RDIF (5.1 coaxial) out on the board. The whole unit is the size of an external hard drive. I use a wireless presentation mouse to select the tunelist or songs on the TV screen.

It cost me a little over $200 to make.

With something like that, you'd imagine that some company would make a product with the same sort of functionality that plays back protected AAC files. Apple needs to let hardware developers in on this, because there are lots of people who I'm sure would want this, unless Apple is working on their own media center thing...
 
How about a Tivo with Home Media Option? Can't say I have tried it, but they say they support Macs.

Pros: its Tivo + music/photos.
Cons: price $150 for box not including subscription fee or LAN adapter.
 
I built a home theater pc that is the width of stereo components (17") (Antec Overture media case) that runs myHTPC and iTunes. Total cost was around $450 for the whole thing, but well worth it, especially for playing arcade games, snes games, movies, tv shows, and other copyright infringed downloads.
 
G4scott said:
With something like that, you'd imagine that some company would make a product with the same sort of functionality that plays back protected AAC files. Apple needs to let hardware developers in on this, because there are lots of people who I'm sure would want this, unless Apple is working on their own media center thing...

This plays back protected AAC files because it's running iTunes.

yes - it's running windows but it's not like I'm trying to do anything else with it.

:)
 
i second the (admittedly pricey) solution of getting an iPod. Originally i had intended to run component audio into my receiver to play iTunes on my surround (in the other room), but meantime I got an iPod, and i ran that into my receiver. It does exactly what i need in this case, which was a bonus-- i hadn't considered this when i bought it. And iPods are so ****ing great, you'll be glad to have one in no time ;)

paul
 
I know I brought this up before but Elgato's EyeHome is $250 and it allows you to display/play your libraries from iPhoto, iMovie and iTunes on your TV, all with a remote control. It just connects to the shared directories on your iMac through an Airport (or Ethernet) connection. It's like a Win XP Media Center PC that works. I plan on getting one when I move in a few months. I just think that this thing looks really cool, and from the screen shots, I think my mother might even be able to figure it out. :eek:
 
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