Squeezecenter - Worth an upgrade?

[fattybacon]

I'm usually an impulsive sort who will install the latest alpha/nightly of almost any software without blinking, but because my SB3 is actually something real (it lives in the kitchen) I've been wary of going to SC7.

Can anyone give me any just reasons for trying out SC7? It's the sort of question I'm sure that's come up loads of times, so it's probably sticky-worth.

Does AlienBBC work better with it? I have never been able to get that to work (plays a stream nicely on my Ubuntu box where SS6 lives, and on SB3 I can browse all the channels and content but cannot play anything - I get the can't find stream error)

[amcluesent]

>Can anyone give me any just reasons for trying out SC7<

GUI is greatly improved. FW40 upgrade to the TP on the trunk build.

AlienBBC works (on Windows Vista host) about the same in my experience.

[smc2911]

Definitely worth it if you use lastfm.

[smc2911]

...or would like Pandora/Rhapsody/Slacker integrated into the main server rather than having to switch to SqueezeNetwork.

[bpa]

AlienBBC 1.6 has got a bit out of date with BBC website and so some menu stopped working. There are patches in the forum but if you haven't applied them it could explain your problem.

If RealAudio streams do not play at all then you have an MPlayer installation problem - this will need to be sorted for SC7. There are plenty of Ubuntu AlienBBC users so there should be help available.

AlienBBC 2.0beta for SC7 is being kept up to date with BC web.

[fattybacon]

...or would like Pandora/Rhapsody/Slacker integrated into the main server rather than having to switch to SqueezeNetwork.

SqueezeNetwork has been an unknown country for me. When I got my SB3 I excitedly created an account registering my unique player code with the website... and then... and then... I couldn't see what it was supposed to do.

A month later my Pandora registration expired without ever being used.

So... SN... is it only for paid content streaming?

[fattybacon]

If RealAudio streams do not play at all then you have an MPlayer installation problem - this will need to be sorted for SC7.

No, mplayer works fine on the Ubuntu with the BBC stream supplied on the command line.

AlienBBC 2.0beta for SC7 is being kept up to date with BC web.

Ah hah! That's just the ticket. Thanks very much.

[aubuti]

So... SN... is it only for paid content streaming?

It's for both paid and free services. Some like it because they can stream internet radio, Live Music Archive, Pandora, etc. without having their computer on.

[sgmlaw]

I tried SC7 on a build dated a couple of weeks ago. I completely uninstalled 6.5 first, just to be safe.

The install went fine. I had to rebuild the playlists, though. And then it took forever to load larger menus on any client, and longer still to begin streaming anything to a softsqueeze client. Syncs were a mess on more than a couple clients. And this was on a 3.5 ghz Socket 939 platform running almost as a dedicated SS server on gigabit wired.

Went back to 6.5 and everything was well again, as in lightning fast and perfect syncs.

Unless you spend a lot of time on the web interface, it might be better to wait. At least that was my experience, as I don't have hours and hours to fiddle with betas anymore.

[SuperQ]

Yup, 7.0 is great. I have been using it for a few months now on my Ubuntu server (using debian.slimdevices.com apt repo). Now that they've moved 7.0 to the "testing" branch of the repo, I highly suggest you give it a try.

Yes, AlienBBC works great with 7.0.

I also started using Pandora since they made it work with SqueezeCenter.