annoyingnewbie
2008-11-18, 16:24
I'm going to apologise in advance, because someone must surely have asked about this before; however, if there is a relevant thread or sticky, I can't find it. So here goes:
I love my SB3 and Boom setup, it's ace. But one thing bugs me a little:
Why can't you set Squeezeboxes to fail over automatically from Squeezecenter to Squeezenetwork if they can't find a Squeezecenter instance to connect to?
It seems kinda dopey that they just sit there uselessly telling you that they can't connect, and then you have to go back into the setup menu to switch manually to Squeezenetwork. An automatic failover setting would be pretty handy.
Or, a more ambitious suggestion:
Premiss 1: Both SC and SN enable you to play internet radio, lastfm streams, etc. Looking at it from a purely functional perspective (if not an actual technical perspective), SC and SN's capabilities in this respect are pretty much identical.
Premiss 2: The main functional difference between SC and SN is that SC has an added capability to interact with files held on a local server (plus various plugins, bells, whistles etc). So this is something that SC can do that SN can't.
Premiss 3: Conversely, SN has one ability that SC doesn't - it can run without a local server being switched on. SN can run all the time, as long as you've got a working internet connection and the SN Web servers are online.
Conclusion: So why not just have the Squeezebox hardware connected to SN all the time, providing all the services that SN can provide. Then, whenever a computer running SC is detected, the extra capabilities (play local music files, activate plugins, etc) can be added to the on-screen menu. When that computer is not available, it can just go back to providing SN services again...
Feel free to attack my premisses and/or conclusion.
Benefits:
1. Currently, if you're playing a lastfm / Internet radio stream on SC and you turn your computer off, the stream stops. You then have to manually switch over to SN, navigate through the menus to find the right stream again and play it. With the new system, everything would be done through SN so turning the computer off wouldn't interrupt the stream.
2. It would be simpler from a UI perspective. There would be no need for users to worry about where their music is coming from or what exactly each of their players is connected to. Also there would be no need to have a bunch of settings for each player held in SC and a separate bunch in SN.
Apologies if this is a stupid idea, or if you've already discussed it to death and there's some obvious reason why it can't/shouldn't be done.
I love my SB3 and Boom setup, it's ace. But one thing bugs me a little:
Why can't you set Squeezeboxes to fail over automatically from Squeezecenter to Squeezenetwork if they can't find a Squeezecenter instance to connect to?
It seems kinda dopey that they just sit there uselessly telling you that they can't connect, and then you have to go back into the setup menu to switch manually to Squeezenetwork. An automatic failover setting would be pretty handy.
Or, a more ambitious suggestion:
Premiss 1: Both SC and SN enable you to play internet radio, lastfm streams, etc. Looking at it from a purely functional perspective (if not an actual technical perspective), SC and SN's capabilities in this respect are pretty much identical.
Premiss 2: The main functional difference between SC and SN is that SC has an added capability to interact with files held on a local server (plus various plugins, bells, whistles etc). So this is something that SC can do that SN can't.
Premiss 3: Conversely, SN has one ability that SC doesn't - it can run without a local server being switched on. SN can run all the time, as long as you've got a working internet connection and the SN Web servers are online.
Conclusion: So why not just have the Squeezebox hardware connected to SN all the time, providing all the services that SN can provide. Then, whenever a computer running SC is detected, the extra capabilities (play local music files, activate plugins, etc) can be added to the on-screen menu. When that computer is not available, it can just go back to providing SN services again...
Feel free to attack my premisses and/or conclusion.
Benefits:
1. Currently, if you're playing a lastfm / Internet radio stream on SC and you turn your computer off, the stream stops. You then have to manually switch over to SN, navigate through the menus to find the right stream again and play it. With the new system, everything would be done through SN so turning the computer off wouldn't interrupt the stream.
2. It would be simpler from a UI perspective. There would be no need for users to worry about where their music is coming from or what exactly each of their players is connected to. Also there would be no need to have a bunch of settings for each player held in SC and a separate bunch in SN.
Apologies if this is a stupid idea, or if you've already discussed it to death and there's some obvious reason why it can't/shouldn't be done.