Streaming vs. playing off a network drive... what's the difference?

[67stang]

Can someone explain what the difference is between "Streaming" and simply using a network (wifi) connection to play an MP3 on your PPC off a shared drive (i.e. desktop PC.) ?

With the latter I get so much buffering throughout the song, that it is useless...cant enjoy the song as it plays, stops and buffers, plays every seven seconds!

If streaming somehow alleviates that, I need to know how to do it!

[67stang]

geez, this must be a stumper :roll:

[67stang]

Streaming = ?


Anyone?

[ux4484]

stang,

I really think you havn't got a response because this question has been asked and answered so many times of late.

Go to the search (below right of PPCT logo) and select "search" when you get the search window put in "streaming" or "streaming audio" in the main search field. You'll find almost all of the first four results will pretty much respond to your question.

Streaming is playing something via another source than your device....on your device. And though it works, it's much more reasonable to just copy the file from the source to your device (and then play it) than to kill your battery and your devices' performance streaming it.
I do something else, I use PIE to open a page on my computer that has my .mp3 list and play it on the computer which is hooked into my stereo, which is connected all through the house (and outside). Wifi remote control (just got this working) :D.

[Janak Parekh]

Can someone explain what the difference is between "Streaming" and simply using a network (wifi) connection to play an MP3 on your PPC off a shared drive (i.e. desktop PC.) ?
Streaming involves special server software that can automatically tailor to your bandwidth. Such server software is not cheap and are generally tailored for large websites.

Regarding playing MP3's from your PC, there are third-party players that I believe are better about this, but I don't use them. Perhaps others can make suggestions.

--janak

[67stang]

Thanks, that's better ;)

ux4484,
I like your idea...but that kind of defeats the whole purpose of wireless... i mean, you had to hard wire speakers throughout your house. I actually wish I would have had that option, along with ethernet wiring, done when i bought my new house last year. oh well

I'd simply like to connect my pda to my stereo downstairs, and use my PPC & wifi connection to browse and play the mp3 library on my computer upstairs. Copying the files onto the PPC is pointless, since a) i cant fit the whole library of mp3's b)duplicate effort/redundant c)it'd be more efficienct at that point to burn mp3's to a CD and play downstairs!

[ux4484]

there are at least 3 speaker mfg's that have reasonably priced wireless/amplified speakers availble which let you have your stereo whereever without running the wires. (I had run my wires about 5 years ago).

BTW, my wifi setup does not control my Stereo directly, only the mp3 "jukebox" on the PC in the basement.

Another option is to get a whole house remote (UHF) and a multi-DVD player that has mp3 compatibility and burn some CD's (10hrs mp3 each). you'll get the same functionality without killing your PDA's batteries.
If you have a DVD burner, you could have 60+ hours on one disk.

[smashcasi]

Personally I use a setup similar to ux4484's, but there are any number of solutions that accomplish what you're trying to do (play music on your computer through your stereo). It can be as simple as a cable or wireless transmitter, or as fancy as a piece of hardware like Turtle Beach's AudioTron (http://www.turtlebeach.com/site/products/audiotron/producthome.asp).

Of course we all like free, and you might just be in luck. You can stream via Windows Media Encoder (http://www.davespda.com/features/encoder.htm), or you could set up a Shoutcast (http://www.shoutcast.com/) server on your desktop and receive the audio on your Pocket PC using GSPlayer (http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/urltrurl?lp=ja_en&url=http%3A%2F%2Fhp.vector.co.jp%2Fauthors%2FVA032810%2Fgsp.htm) (translated link, original is here (http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA032810/gsp.htm)). Both of these options are designed to handle the issues of transmitting live media over a network, so you may have better luck.

[Pony99CA]

Can someone explain what the difference is between "Streaming" and simply using a network (wifi) connection to play an MP3 on your PPC off a shared drive (i.e. desktop PC.) ?

As nobody else really tried to answer both parts, I'll try. (Doing a search for "streaming audio" found threads that either didn't define the term or had subjects that weren't about streaming audio so I didn't check in them).

Streaming audio involves special player software which requests small chunks of data from a special server (as Janak noted). This allows you to play audio (more or less) smoothly without having to download the entire file. It smoothes things out by buffering some of the file (downloading the start) so that any delays in getting more of the file will be compensated for. This is similar to how anti-skip CD players work, I think.

Playing audio directly off the network will run into problems if the player doesn't read the entire file into memory (which would be equivalent to copying or downloading the file to your computer). When the player goes to read the next piece of the audio file, the hard disk on the remote computer will have to find that portion of the file, and that will cause the playing to break up.

On your own computer, this delay won't be as bad, because there's likely to be less disk activity (the disk heads are probably still near the file you're playing). On a remote computer, when you combine the network delay requesting the data, the chance the disk heads of the remote computer may be reading something else and the network delay sending the music back, you get skips.

Did that help?

Steve

[phanprod]

Pony99CA is definately pointing you in the right direction.... streaming the file tells the player to buffer a certain percentage of the file before playing it. Streaming is accomplished by utilizing certain meta files on the server end which set the player up by telling it the size and bandwidth of the incoming file. This (theoretically) allows the player to adjust the amount of buffering needed to play without interruption.

Theoretically, you should be able to play a wav file over your network without streaming. I know that I can even play videos, personally. But there are several factors that could be hindering you... the speed of the host computer... if it needs a drive defrag... if there's any other programs accessing your network and hogging up bandwidth... any other programs running in the pda's memory could slow down network performance... the network configuration itself could be wasting bandwidth....... things like that.

~Steve