How To Keep Your iTunes Library When It Won’t Fit on Your Hard Drive

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By Adrian Covert

From http://lifehacker.com/

Ultraportable notebooks are finally fast enough that we can use them as our main machines. But damn, the SSDs they pack are small—how are you supposed to fit your entire music library on one of these? You're not.

Get that music off your hard drive, bawse. First off, you can get a lot of mileage out of streaming music services; there's no need to tote all 25 Air Supply albums around with you. But for the rest of your musical needs—those Phish bootlegs and Marky Mark freestyle sessions—consider getting your songs a second home.

First Things First: Get the Music off Your Old Computer

Say you just picked up one of those shiny new MacBook Airs that everyone loves—instead of just migrating everything over from your old machine, be selective. Before you do anything with your new computer, though, you need to get your iTunes music library off your old computer. Luckily, doing that is very simple. And these instructions work for Mac or PC.

 

Tell iTunes Where You Want to Dump Your Music

1) Make sure your old computer is running the latest version of iTunes. There shouldn't be an issue with loading a library from an older version of iTunes to a newer one, but do it just to be safe.
2) You'll want to create a new location for your default iTunes Music folder on whichever external drive you plan to use. To do this, go to the menu bar and click iTunes > Preferences....
3) From there, you want to click the Advanced tab. The first item in the list will be the iTunes Media Folder location.
4) Click the button to the right that says Change, and either select a folder in your external harddrive that you'll want to use, or create a new folder. Once you've selected a folder, click OK to exit the preferences menu.

 

Then Dump Your Music

1) Once you've selected a new location for your music files, return to your music library.
2) From there, go back up to the menubar and click File > Library > Organize Library.
3) Check the box that says Consolidate Library and hit OK.
This will begin the process of copying all your music files into one folder (the one you previously designated) on your external hard drive. Depending on how many songs you have, this could take a while.

Copy Your iTunes Database to an External Drive

You've spent years rating songs and building playlists—don't give them up! To make sure those musical memories aren't lost, you're gonna want to copy over your iTunes library database from your old computer to your external harddrive.
1) Go into your Music folder (where the iTunes folder is stored by default), or wherever you've decided store your iTunes library files.
2) There should be a folder simply named iTunes. If there are any music files in the folder (which would be found in iTunes > iTunes Media > Music), delete those files, but nothing else.
3) Then, drag/copy that folder to your external HDD in its entirety. Now you're ready to move to the new computer.

Now, What Are You going to Do With All That Music?

Now you know how to offload your entire iTunes Library to an external drive, but should it be a NAS or a standard drive? Or should you upload to a cloud storage locker? There are pros and cons to each, depending on how you live your life.

 

Option 1: Keep Your Music on a Standard External Drive

If you're in lurve with iTunes, have a lot of Apple-DRM'd content, actively manage an army of iOS devices, or just spend a lot of time listening to music on your computer, importing your old iTunes database onto your new computer and pulling your library from an external drive is a great bet. It'll look like it's all right there on your machine, just like the old days. That said, you have to plug into said hard drive to get at your stuff.
But if you're the kind of cat who plugs into a USB hub or a notebook doc when you're at home anyway, this solution is perfect. Especially if you want the ability to sync your iOS device without formatting it again, and be able to access all your old ratings, playlists and playcounts. Here's how to do it:
1) If you've already installed iTunes, make sure it isn't running.
2) Locate the Music folder on your new computer. If you've already installed iTunes, there should be a folder named iTunes there. Delete it.
3) In a new window, locate the folder named iTunes you copied to your external HDD.
4) Copy that iTunes folder into your computer's Music folder.
5) Now it's time to open iTunes. Hold down the option key while launching iTunes.
6) iTunes will ask whether you want to create a library or choose a library. Select Choose library, then navigate to your Music folder, then your iTunes folder on your computer and double click iTunes Library.itl.
7) If everything went according to plan, your music library should have made smoothly made the transition to a new computer and external harddrive.
But let's say there's music you know you'll want to listen to when you're not connected to your drive—your work or studying playlist, for example. You can actually set up a separate, smaller library, and it won't get mixed up with your main megalibrary, either. It's a little advanced, but you can handle it:
1) Hold down option when opening iTunes.
2) When asked if you want to Create a Library or Choose a Library, select Create Library.
3) Name the library whatever you want, but something logical like "Music on Laptop" probably makes sense.
4) Drag any music files you want from your external harddrive into the Music folder of your computer.
5) Once they've been copied over, drag those files into the iTunes app, where they will appear.
6) Now you have a separate library of music stored locally. To switch back to the library with the songs stored on your external drive, quit iTunes, relaunch iTunes (while holding down the option key), elect to choose which library you want to open, and find the iTunes library in your Music folder you initially copied over to your laptop.

Option 2: Stream it From a NAS Drive

The second thing you can do is to keep all your music on a NAS drive, which means you can access files over your local network without having to directly connect your computer to the drive.

This is great if you have a lot of DLNA streaming devices like a Sonos system or Boxee Box. And once you've offloaded your music from your old computer (follow the same steps as above, just select the network-attached drive instead of a USB-linked one), all you have to do is tell the device where to look on the drive.
As far as working with iTunes, a NAS drive isn't perfect for managing and syncing files to devices (it's sloooow), but once you've imported your tracks into the library, it streams pretty well, depending on the speed of your network. You can also get a NAS that supports the iTunes server feature, where all your music will show up in your local iTunes library as a streaming playlist.

Option 3: Stick it in the Cloud

If priority #1 for you is having your music accessible ANYWHERE you go, there's always the cloud. There are currently only two services that are worth looking into: Google Music and Amazon Cloud Drive.
Neither is perfect, but they both more or less do what they say they'll do, which is make your music available to you anywhere you go. You can stream in a browser or an Android device, and if you want it locally, you can pull files from the cloud. Each service uploads in its own way, but what the two have in common is a particular disdain for your musical metadata. Playcounts and ratings go out the window of the magical airship that ferries your music to the firmament.

Also, if you suffer from data caps or sucky bandwidth, the cloud will likely rain on your parade. Furthermore, if you have a massive music library, storing large chunks of music in the cloud can get costly. Amazon offers up 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500 gigabyte chunks of storage at a cost that breaks down to a dollar per gig per year (ie, 50GB=$50/year). Google Music is still in beta and working out its pricing.

So now you can rest easier knowing you have three solid housing options for your music library now that's it has moved out of your laptop. Which one you pick ultimately comes down to your listening habits, but one thing is clear: a big laptop hard drive is no longer a must.

Is this the end of in-car CD players? Ford scraps 'old' technology for digital entertainment

By Inderdeep Bains
From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Scrabbling around the car for a new CD to listen to on the road could soon be a thing of the past.

Ford hopes to usher in a digital age for in-car entertainment by binning CD players in its new models.

The company plans to help drivers to access their libraries of digital music via the internet.

Old school: Ford hopes to usher in a digital age for in-car entertainment by binning CD players in its new models

It has become the first mainstream manufacturer to scrap the in-car CD multichanger.
The car maker’s latest Focus model will instead include a USB socket allowing digital music players to be plugged in.

 

The new cars will have the Sync ‘infotainment hub’ that lets drivers access their music library through the internet by plugging in a device called a dongle, which enables Wi-Fi.
This would facilitate using devices such as iPods, iPhones and other digital music players.


The in-car computer ‘hub’ can then access digital libraries stored on the internet, be it through Spotifiy or Apple’s iCloud. 

Ford expects two million Focus cars in Europe to have its Sync system by 2015 

Sheryl Connelly, Global Trends and Futuring manager at Ford, said the move was necessary if the company wanted to keep up with the needs of its customers.

'In-car entertainment technology is moving digital more rapidly than almost any other element of the vehicle experience,' she said. 


'The in-car CD player - much like pay telephones - is destined to fade away in the face of exciting new technology.'

Ford said sales of in-car CD players were declining rapidly, in line with falling sales of the discs. 


In 2010, sales of physical music albums fell 12.4 per cent, while those of digital versions rose by 30.6 per cent in the UK.

Ford expects two million cars in Europe to have its Sync system by 2015.

The most downloaded song recorded in the 20th century turns 30 - Journey's "Don't Stop Believin"

By Jim Axelrod

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Journey on CBS' "Sunday Morning," July 24, 2011. (CBS)

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Thirty years after releasing their hit song, "Don't Stop Believin'" to the world, the rock band Journey is still believing in the uplifting power of what it says - and that includes band's newest member. Sunday Morning's Jim Axelrod presents A Summer Song:

It's been on Journey's set list every night for three decades running.

"Do you guys ever do a show without 'Don't Stop Believin'?" asks Jim Axelrod. 

"We haven't," laughs Journey's Jonathan Cain. "Not since it's been written, no."

"You'd have a revolt from the audience, wouldn't you?" asks Axelrod.

"Yeah, I think they would be throwing stuff at us," says Neal Schon, the band's guitarist.

It may have started as solely Journey's song - but it belongs to all of us now. The most covered, karaoked, and parodied song in modern music history.

From baseball to Broadway, Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" has become a national anthem of sorts - and with digital sales at almost four and a half million, it is officially the most downloaded song ever recorded in the 20th century.

"You know, we did something right in the studio," says Cain. "We did something right when we wrote the song. You know, we hit a chord."

It began as the brainchild of keyboard player Jonathan Cain, who had been laboring in obscurity in 1980 with a band called the Babys, when he got the chance to join Journey. It was a dream shot nobody could have predicted. Well, almost nobody.


"I was starving before I hit Journey," Cain remembers. "Very, very rough times...I didn't know where the next pay check was gonna come. I sold stereos. I quit the business. I was so lost, you know? And I was borrowing money from my father, who wouldn't let me come back to Chicago. He said, 'You stay there. Something good is gonna happen. Don't stop believing.' And he would always say that to me. 'Don't stop believing, Jon.'"

Armed with his father's advice and the seeds of a song, Cain sat down with guitarist Neal Schon and then-lead-singer Steve Perry. Within an afternoon, Cain's catchy chorus was transformed into a rock'n'roll classic.

"When you came in with the chorus--that's all you had, right?" asks Axelrod.
"Yeah," says Cain. "We worked backwards. So the way we put it together was...you do the rolling piano thing you do."

"And I picked up the bass, and I [start singing]," continues Schon. "And with the little breakdown guitar-- it's not a guitar solo but a train."

"I heard his guitar, and I said 'that sounds like a train to me,'" Cain laughs. "And I go 'don't you love that song, Midnight train to Georgia?' And Steve goes, 'yeah.' I go, 'it's the midnight train going anywhere.'"

While it barely broke the billboard top ten in 1981 as a single, "Don't Stop Believin'" anchored Journey's monster album "Escape" - which went straight to No. 1 that year. Still, when the band broke up six years later, it looked like "DSB" would slide off into the realm of rock'n'roll nostalgia, rarely to be heard from again.

Until 1998, when a string quartet provided the soundtrack for Adam Sandler being left at the altar in "The Wedding Singer," dusting off the song for the first time in more than a decade. While seven other movies and more than a dozen television shows would borrow it, including the cliffhanging series finale of the Sopranos, no one sent the song into the stratosphere quite like the harmonic and hormonal misfits of "Glee."

Adam Anders is Glee's executive music producer, who says the show's creators originally wanted Coldplay's "Viva la Vida" to be the pilot episode's killer closer, but were denied permission to use it. The rest, Anders says, is Gleek history.

"Why would Journey take such a chance on something that nobody had any idea if it would succeed?" asks Axelrod.

"Maybe it was the premise," says Anders. "You know, the underdog... But obviously something struck a chord with them, and they let us have the song. And I'm so glad they did because I don't think any other song could have done for Glee was 'Don't Stop Believin' did."

That boulevard is a two-way street. After Glee's premiere, Journey saw an 87 percent spike in sales. And the Glee cast version of "Don't Stop" has sold over one million downloads - making it their best-selling song.

But perhaps no one can relate more than the man who's singing it for Journey now. Just four years ago, Arnel Pineda was a singer in a smoky room - fronting a Filipino cover band - when Neal Schon, searching for a replacement for the retired lead singer Steve Perry, found Arnel on YouTube.

"I heard his voice and I went, whoa. I go, 'who is that?'" remembers Schon. "And I was just completely taken back by his voice. I just went, this guy's incredible. We gotta find him."

But what the band didn't know was that Arnel was singing to survive. His mother died when he was just 13, after a long illness that left the family bankrupt. He ended up homeless, sleeping in a park in Manila, collecting scrap metal to scrape up enough money to eat.

"I'm not sure I know a life story to whom this concept applies any more than yours," says Axelrod.
"Even before I discovered 'Don't Stop Believin', it has been my motto, you know, to never stop believing in myself," Pineda says, choking back tears. "The life that I've gone through. You know, all those hardships-- that I-- you see, I never-- I never stopped believing that someday there is something magical that will happen in my life."

"Never in my, like, entire life here on earth, that I would ever, ever stumble upon this kind of magic," Pineda continues. "Playing to all of these people around the world... What a ride. You know?"

Arnel's 2008 Journey debut album, Revelation, went platinum and spawned a successful world tour - including a triumphant homecoming concert in Manila for 30,000 of Arnel's countrymen.

The most meaningful part of the trip took place away from the roar of the crowd - when Arnel took his band mates back to the park he'd once called home. The visit was captured for a soon-to-be released documentary called "Every Man's Journey."

"That must have been a moment of great cohesion for this new incarnation of Journey," says Axelrod.
"Absolutely," says Cain. "He's made our camp a better camp. You know? His spirituality. His faith. His belief. You know, it's strong."

And it was the start of Journey's next chapter. Their new album, Eclipse, features a song called "City of Hope," inspired by the work Arnel is doing as the head of his own foundation, providing underprivileged Filipino children education and healthcare.

"I just want to give back," Pineda says. "So every time I'm free, I get to reach out and look out for these kids and help for them anyway I can. And I think this will be my advocacy. You know, to put them back to school."

"Advocacy and legacy," Axelrod suggests.

"Hopefully yes," says Pineda.

But Journey's lasting legacy is without a doubt that one signature song - which, whether they like it or not, they'll be playing tonight. And tomorrow night. And the night after that.

For more info:

• everymansjourney.com

Dell Sets Stage to Take On Apple's iCloud

By Mark Hachman
From http://www.pcmag.com/

With a new release of its Stage software, Dell has quietly created a cloud-based service offering that could offer consumers a compelling reason to keep investing in Dell devices.

The new release, which began shipping last week, allows users who snap a picture with a Dell Streak or other Dell mobile device to automatically upload it to a pool of free, shared cloud storage. The new software also allows devices to remotely control and play back shared audio and video, plus other services.

For consumers, Dell's Stage release is probably more important than the new "More You" ads that began playing this week. One of the results that emerged as Dell began the market research behind the "More You" campaign is that customers, unsurprisingly, have begun to use PCs and mobile devices to store their digital memories.

"We asked them, what is so important about that computer... and whether [the respondent] was Chinese, Japanese, or Indian, ultimately it was because 'my life is on that thing,'" said Paul-Henri Ferrand, the chief marketing officer of Dell's global consumer business and SMB, and also president of Dell's Asia-Pacific/Japan business.

Stage is an attempt to take that digital content and allow users to control and manage it effortlessly, said Tim Peters, a vice president responsible for platform strategy within Dell. Within the PC, it cuts across Dell's XPS, Inspiron, and Alienware brands, and can be controlled from Dell's mobile devices. "It's a critical part of the Dell experience," Peters said.

What's new: remote cloud storage, photo uploads, and more

The Stage software, which Dell began shipping last year, appears as a set of square tiles on a user's PC, with various categories like "Books," "Photos," and "Apps". The new release makes each tile 3D, versus the two-dimensional images that appeared in the older version of Stage.

Any time a user snaps a digital photo with a Stage-enabled device, the new Stage software automatically uploads it to a free 2-Gbyte pool of storage. (Any content can be stored there, according to a Dell spokesman, including movies, pictures, and music.) Users can purchase additional capacity, including 5 Gbytes for $19.99/year, 25 Gbytes for $49.99/yr, and 100 Gbytes for $149.99/yr.

Automatic photo uploads is a feature reserved for just a few services at this point, among them Google's Google's latest Google+. Storing music in the cloud has also been the domain of other services, most notably Apple's iCloud.

Audio and video can be remotely controlled via Stage devices, Dell executives said. Dell has also added support for podcasts; an integrated Noisey application, which showcases music from all over the world; and an enhanced Napster home page.

Dell began life as a hyper-efficient box builder, known for its "just in time" strategy of managing inventory efficiently than anything else. If buyers wanted the latest Intel microprocessor, they bought it from Dell. Years later, however, leadership in the PC space has evolved into a competition whose products are differentiated using design, services, and price as metrics. Ferrand described his business as a "brand war," where Dell is aspiring to become something like an Audi of the PC world, where the quality of its fit and finish is complemented by a faith in its superior engineering.

"With Stage, we're building to the experiences of people, rather than building to specs," Ferrand said.

For more from Mark, follow him on Twitter @MarkHachman.

Spotify Coming to the US, Get Invited

Ernesto
from http://torrentfreak.com/

Today the music streaming application Spotify announced that it will be available to U.S. users soon.

When Spotify launched their first beta in the fall of 2008, we branded it “an alternative to music piracy.”

Having the option to stream millions of tracks supported by an occasional ad, or free of ads for a small monthly fee, Spotify appeared to be serious competitor to music piracy.

In the two years that followed Spotify rapidly won the hearts and minds of many music fans, but the more than 10 million users come from a few European countries only.

This is about to change according to Spotify.

If you’re from the U.S. and interested in giving Spotify a try, get in line now.

Spotify Coming to the US

Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared

By: Jason Fitzpatrick & Kevin Purdy —
From: http://lifehacker.com/

Want all your downloads, streaming video, and other techie media stuff on your TV? Wondering which media center works best for you? Here's a look at the biggies in chart and Venn diagram form, followed by some lengthy breakdowns of each.

New to the idea of TV-connected computers? Head down below the charts for some explainers and deeper comparisons of each system. If you're already familiar with the HTPC scene, we'll give you the good stuff first.

We focused on three widely available, and generally popular, media centers for our comparison and review. We're certainly aware there are many alternatives out there, as free software or stand-alone hardware boxes, but these are the three of the most popular media centers, they receive ongoing development, and they can easily be installed on a wide number of TV-connected computers.

The graphical explanations

Here's how we see the three major media centers, in chart list and Venn diagram forms. Note: The chart is based on out-of-the-box features that don't require the user to install any plug-ins.

What's a media center, exactly?

What does a media center do? It varies, but it generally takes all the stuff you'd normally enjoy on a computer or portable device—MP3s, video files, Netflix, Hulu, digital photos, and web/social apps—and plays it on a television, through your speakers, and back onto your wireless network, if you'd like. Media centers can be run off of pretty much any capable computer, but are generally intended for small and specialized computers, called Home Theater PCs, or HTPCs. HTPCs have the video and audio ports necessary to hook up to a modern high-definition television, and generally have enough processing power and memory to handle the heavy burden of converting, playing, and sometimes recording high-resolution files. If you've got a home network set up with shared files and network-attached storage (NAS), media centers can generally pull their content off other systems and devices, as well as receive files for storage and download them directly off the net.

Put simply, a media center allows you to sit on a couch and do the most fun things you'd do on a computer with a remote. You can fire up a movie from Netflix's streaming service or from a file you've already downloaded, catch the show you missed last night on Hulu, put on background music while you're doing something else, share your Flickr or Picasa photos with visiting relatives—whatever you'd like, really.
Not every media center can do everything, however, and some are much better at certain entertainment jobs than others. The editors at Lifehacker conferred on what each box does best, tried to pin down what each system can and can't do, and put it together in ways that we hope can help you decide.

Windows Media Center, XBMC, and Boxee

Here's a more in-depth look at the media centers—installing and setting them up, and their pros and cons.
Windows Media Center is "free" with Home Premium or Ultimate copies of Windows Vista, all versions of Windows 7 except Starter or Home Basic, and available as a stand-alone, XP-based operating system dubbed "Media Center Edition." XBMC is a free and open-source media center software that was born as a game-changing XBOX modification, but now runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and XBOX systems, as well as booting and running off a USB stick. Boxee is based on the same core internal code as XBMC, but focuses on bringing web content—video sites, blog streams, and social apps—into your living room, while XBMC remains oriented toward a download-and-play setup.
Plex, a popular and very eye-pleasing media center for Mac OS X, is certainly a contender in this category. For all intents and purposes, though, it's a variant of XBMC. Most anything we write or display in this post about XBMC applies to Plex, too, except for matters of looks and interface.
Those would be our definitions in the Lifehacker Dictionary, anyways. Let's get a bit more encyclopedic on the strengths and weaknesses of each system:

Windows Media Center

 
Installation and Setup: Fairly easy. It comes pre-loaded in the higher-end editions of Windows Vista and 7, and assuming your computer or HTPC has the right outputs and plugs, Windows can fairly easily adjust its display to your television. If you're running other Windows systems on your wireless network, you won't have to do much configuration to start "sharing" files back and forth from the TV-connected system to your other platforms. If you're running Mac or Linux computers, you'll have a good deal more work to do. If your media computer came with a TV tuner card already installed, Windows will recognize it and work with it to record TV shows.

Here's how Adam turned a Windows PC into a Media Center powerhouse, with a good detail on the installation and setup process.
Strengths

• Nice and easy DVR: And you don't have to pay a monthly fee.
• Calm, easy interface: Divided into obvious sections and fairly intuitive directional layouts.
• Large range of compatible remotes: Look online or in an electronics store for a "Windows Media Center remote," and you'll find something with lots of buttons that instantly hooks up to your Media Center, usually through a USB-connected receiver.
• Generally easy networking: Across Windows systems, that is, and if you're down with the shared folders setup.

Weaknesses

• File handling: Generally, Media Center can handle the same files that Windows Media Player can handle, and, with the right codec installations, that can be quite extensive. But out of the box, don't expect support for the diverse range of video and audio you'll find around the web.
• Windows-only: But you knew that.
• Complex remotes: Media Center works with a lot of remotes, but they often look like parodies of button-stuffed clickers. If a simple, Apple-like navigator exists for Media Center, do tell us in the comments.
• Locked-down DVR files: Work-arounds and decoders exist, of course, but if you want to play your recorded TV shows on anything other than your personal set of authorized Windows machines, Zunes, and XBOX devices, good luck.

Note: Windows Media Center doesn't support Hulu by default, but with the right plug-in it can do the trick.

XBMC

 
Installation and Setup: It depends, of course, on the platform and hardware you're installing on. Getting it running and connected on a modern Windows or Mac system is fairly painless, at least from a software standpoint. Running it as a "live" system from a USB stick isn't too hard, either, and you can install it from there onto an HTPC hard drive. Plugging it into a Madriva Linux box and hooking it up to your very specialized 1080p plasma setup with optical audio out will likely require hair plugs and years of therapy.
Read up on Adam's guide to building a silent, standalone XBMC media center on the cheap for a look at the live-USB-to-installation path on a $200 HTPC system.
Strengths

• Open source, open nature: Need XBMC to do something it doesn't do already? Chances are, there's a clever hacker working on it. XBMC doesn't have the same kind of "platform" that its offspring Boxee does, but coders can get into it and make it better, and make it do more.
• Meta-data and file recognition: From personal trials and commenter anecdotes, XBMC is really good at knowing when you've put new files somewhere in your system, figuring out what types of files they are (movie, TV, music, or picture), and reaching out to the internet to pull down relevant pictures, data, reviews, and even trailer links for the videos and music you plug into it.
• Light and agile: Relatively speaking, XBMC may have some really nice graphics and menus, but because it comes from a project to put a full media center on a game system, XBMC is focused on playing back media files as smoothly as possible.
• Slick, customizable looks: Even putting Plex aside, XBMC wins, hands-down, for looking like you're living in the future when displayed on a really big, nice TV. Don't like the way it looks by default? Put a new skin on it, and it's a whole different beast.
• Format support: Personally, I've never found a file on the web, or converted from a friend's computer, that XBMC couldn't play, unless something was wrong with it.

Weaknesses:

• Lack of Netflix, Hulu: There have been work-arounds, hacks, and other tweaks to make XBMC work with the two big names in streaming video. If you were depending on either one, though, XBMC would not be a safe bet.
• Over-stuffed, sometimes complicated menus: XBMC's menus and layout are the geekiest around—how you react to that depends on your temperament. You can do all kinds of things from any screen in XBMC, and its interface often has a smile-inducing futuristic feel to it. But for someone new to media centers and looking to just sit down and play something, it can be quite imposing.

Boxee

 
Installation and Setup: On Windows and Mac systems, the latest Boxee beta is relatively simple to install, as it uses the built-in video and audio systems to push out content. On Linux, it's a good deal more complex, but, then again, what on Linux isn't? Apple TVs require a bit of hacking. In general, Boxee is compatible with the same kind of hardware as XBMC—OpenGL or DirectX-compatible video cards are highly recommended.
Here's how Kevin set up a cheap but powerful Boxee media center using a brawny $350 HTPC and free copies of Linux and Boxee.
Strengths

• Built-in Hulu and Netflix: Boxee and Hulu have had their differences, but they seem to have reached a draw in the stand-off—most Hulu shows and movies work, most of the time. Netflix works fine on Windows and Mac, assuming you don't mind installing Microsoft's Silverlight system.
• Growing directory of web content apps: Love FailBlog? Dig Vimeo's really hi-res stuff? Fan of TwiT's videocasts? Watch them all from Boxee's app, and grab more in the app "store," which has a very healthy selection of customized streaming content.
• Play anything (technically): Boxee uses a reworked Firefox browser to view Hulu, but it's available for nearly any kind of web video page you find on the web. The Boxee Browser is a kind of last resort for any web content that doesn't have its own app.

Weaknesses

• Love-it-or-leave-it interface: Even with its content-forward redesign, many media center aficionados have said they can't get used to Boxee's hidden left-hand sidebars and forward/back functionality. Some just don't like the default looks. It's not a make-or-break issue, considering it's basically the same core tools as XBMC, but if you're going to spend serious time with a media center, you want to like how it looks.
• Local file handling: Boxee doesn't seem as smart about recognizing and updating local file stores. In the words of one Lifehacker editor, "Local files are almost an afterthought." That's to be expected, somewhat, on a system that's so web-facing and stream-savvy, but Boxee could do a lot more to make downloaded music, movies, and pictures easier to gather, organize, and access.

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We know—we absolutely know—that we may have missed a feature, put in "No" where "Yes" should have been, or otherwise missed a detail or two in our breakdown of these media centers. We tried our best to research and check them, but if you see something wrong, or missing, in our explanations or charts, by all means: tell us, politely, in the comments, and we'll update this post, and the charts to match the reality. Feel free to also tell us which system has worked best for you, and why, in the comments.

Five Best Personal Media Streaming Tools

From: http://lifehacker.com/

Streaming video or music from services like YouTube or Pandora is great for sampling a wide variety of stuff, but sometimes all you want is media from your own collection? Here's a look at five great solutions for streaming your personal media.
Photo by Sean Rogers.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal media streaming tool, and now we're back to highlight the top five contenders. The focus this week is on personal; all these tools are designed to stream from your personal collection of media to elsewhere on your home network, over the internet, or both.

Subsonic (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Subsonic is best know for rock-solid music streaming over the internet to web browsers and other supported devices, but unbeknownst to many, it can also stream any video format that supports HTTP streaming, such as AAC. Subsonic supports plugins for transcoding tasks which makes it easy to adapt to new formats. Although many people use it for local streaming around their home network, you can access Subsonic remotely using the web-based interface or grab one of the Subsonic apps for Android and iOS devices. Subsonic is free, but in order to use it in conjunction with any of the mobile apps beyond the 30 day trial, you'll need to "donate" to the Subsonic project to get a license key; donations start at around $15 USD.

Air Video (Windows/Mac/iOS, $2.99)

Air Video is a dead-simple streaming solution for iOS devices. Rather than go through the hassle of re-encoding all your media for playback on your iOS device, Air Video transcodes it on the fly to turn your iPhone or iPad into a mobile media center. You install the server software on your Mac or PC, install the $2.99 application your iOS device, and enjoy easy file browsing and streaming media. If you want to try it out before dropping the $3, take it for a test drive with the free demo, which limits you to streaming the first 3-5 media files in each folder.

Audiogalaxy (Windows/Mac/Android/iOS, Free)

Unlike some of the other entries in this week's Hive Five that do double duty, streaming audio and video, Audiogalaxy remains completely focused on streaming music. You sign up for a free account at Audiogalaxy, install the server software on your Windows or Mac Machine, and get instant and organized music streaming to a remote web browser or your mobile device. Audiogalaxy includes drag and drop playlist creation, easy music search, and meta-data repair to help you clean up your sloppy music collection. As an especially nice perk, both the Android and iOS streaming apps are free.

Orb Live (Windows/Mac/Android/iOS, $9.99)

Orb Live is a hybrid solution for streaming to mobile devices. You install the Orb Live server software on your Windows or Mac computer, then you install the Orb Live streaming app on your Android or iOS device. All media accessible to your computer is then accessible to your mobile device: photos, music, movies—even live television if your computer has a tuner card. The server software is a free download and the mobile app for both Android and iOS is $9.99. Orb provides a demo version if you'd like to try it out before buying (Android/iOS), but the demo just picks three random media samples from your server to show off the technology, so it really is only good for testing purposes.

PS3 Media Server (Windows/Linux, Free)

PS3 Media Server was built to do exactly what it sounds like: transcode and stream media from your computer to a PS3 hooked up to your TV. Although that sounds fairly limited in scope, a lot of people like it for two principal reasons: It transcodes and streams video to the PS3 extremely well, but more importantly, the project very recently has branched out to other devices. People who have struggled with finding a good streaming solution for their PS3 units rave about how it's the best thing out there. Although the originally intended for just the PS3, as of earlier this year the PS3 Media Server beta releases have included support for other devices such as network-connected televisions.

In Japan, Walkman Outruns iPod

By Kenneth Maxwell

From: http://blogs.wsj.com/

Nobutoshi Kihara might be forgiven for getting a little kick out research firm BCN Inc.’s latest monthly survey on sales of portable audio players in Japan (in Japanese).

AFP/Getty Images

Taking a bite out of Apple: Sony’s “Walkman S-series” on display in March.

Back in 1978, the now-retired Sony Corp. engineer who came up with the original cassette Walkman as a device to allow then Sony co-chairman Akio Morita to listen to opera during lengthy flights back and forth across the Pacific. More than 30 years on, sales of the MP3-playing version of the Walkman topped Apple Inc.’s ubiquitous iPod here in August for the first time since BCN began compiling the survey in November 2001. The Walkman had a 47.8% market share, the iPod 44%, BCN reckons.

The Walkman boost comes just after Sony unveiled a new digital music service that will allow consumers to stream millions of songs over the Internet to their devices. The survey results may bring a brief sense of respite to Sony. The company’s loss of dominance in portable music players — the very category they created — is often cited as a sign of the company’s decline in delivering must-have products for the digital age.

But before Sony fans get too excited at the prospect of iPod users deserting Apple in favor of the Walkman, there’s some devil in the detail of the BCN survey. The firm says that many iPod users have been buying iPhones instead, listening to their tunes that way. Also, some have been delaying iPod purchases pending the release of new models.

Sure enough, Apple guru Steve Jobs Wednesday launched a revamp of the company’s lineup of iPods — incorporating many of the features that have made the iPhone a roaring success, including cameras, high-quality displays and the ability to video chat on some models.

But while it seems likely that the sleek Apple machine will reclaim top spot in BCN’s rankings pretty soon, there’s a burning question for JRT’s hipster readers: which has fonder memories for you, your first Walkman, or your first iPod?

Check The Quality Of Pirate Media With The All New VCDQ

Written by enigmax
From: http://torrentfreak.com/

There are many thousands of videos on the Internet and while it’s possible to just go blindly to any one of dozens of torrent sites and search for movies or TV shows, there is no guarantee that the quality will be good. For the last decade that information has been available from VCDQuality.com and shortly the site will be relaunching with a new owner, a full makeover and fresh support for BitTorrent users.

Most readers will be familiar with The Scene, the ‘place’ where most pirate movies, music, TV shows, software and games first hit cyberspace. Although members of this intensively private community would prefer to maintain their privacy, it is from their servers that media leaks out to the wider Internet community. According to the MPAA, The Scene sits at the top of the “Piracy Pyramid”.

Although The Scene has its own unique set of quality-control standards, this doesn’t necessarily mean that their output is always of a high quality. Although the most serious offenders will be ‘nuked’ (Scene talk for “something is wrong, don’t bother with this release”) in the case of movies, for example, Scene rules allow CAM releases which may be virtually unwatchable.

Furthermore, a release receiving a ‘nuke’ doesn’t necessarily mean that its unwatchable, it might just mean that it has breached any one of The Scene’s often bewildering and sometimes downright archaic in-house rules.

Of course, none of this would matter to ‘outsiders’ if Scene releases stayed locked away as intended for the use of the few, but they don’t. So wouldn’t it be great if there was a central source, a database of releases where the average Internet user could go for information on what’s hot and what’s not in the world of piracy?

Some might be surprised to learn that VCDQuality.com has been providing such a service for almost a decade. Founded in 2001, VCDQ quickly became the best place for the average non-Scener to find out quickly if a new movie had hit the Internet yet and in what quality. If it had, it would appear pretty quickly at the top of the list on the main page.

Along with the name of the release, the format of the source is indicated – DVDRIP, CAM, DVD Screener, R5 (Region 5) for example. This information is supported by links to screenshots of the release in question, its NFO (a small descriptive text file distributed by the Scene group responsible), the name of the release group and a link to the movie on IMDb.

Perhaps the most useful link moves off to the comment section. Here those that have actually downloaded and watched a particular release discuss what they have seen, specifically whether the video and sound of the release are up to scratch and worth the effort of finding and downloading.

Unfortunately, due to the site’s policy of shunning most advertising, it has lacked investment in recent times. A hard drive disaster last year caused quite a lot of pain and 8 weeks ago their server died altogether. It was time for a new beginning.

With the assistance of a new owner, behind the scenes the site has been receiving its first proper update in a decade. If all is going to plan, as you read this article or in the coming hours the new VCDQ will be launching with a fresh new look and a host of new features.

Along with a rock-solid server and hosting, the site will be expanding its databases. While traditionally VCDQ has reported only on Scene releases, with the rise of BitTorrent release groups, P2P releases will be reported on too

“We’ve decided to add P2P sources due to the rise of Torrent sites in recent years,” Admin Neversoft told TorrentFreak. “While the scene still produces more releases and better quality we cannot ignore the fact that your average Torrent user doesn’t care about group affiliations or rules, they just want the best quality available.”

Scene purists (and there are a lot of those reading and resident at VCDQ) will be pleased to learn that P2P releases can be filtered out from the site, but the rise of P2P and BitTorrent in particular as a force to be reckoned with can’t be denied.

“By ignoring P2P we would be ignoring a large percentage of what people are downloading out there,” Neversoft explains. “This was a difficult decision for us, we’ve always shunned the P2P scene and to a certain extent derided it but as they say… ‘If you can’t beat em, join ‘em’ and we think we can provide the same excellent service for P2P releases as well. Having said that, it will be select releases – we’re not about to become a dumping ground for every reencode out there.”

In addition the site will add movie/TV HD formats, PC, Xbox360 and Wii sections and will improve its databases with information from multiple sources. Importantly, the site will update quicker to provide news on the latest releases, faster.

That news will be delivered in a number of ways. From the nicely presented release pages, fully customizable RSS feeds, Twitter updates, improved forum and staff blogs, the new VCDQ already looks very promising indeed. Neversoft told TorrentFreak that there’s even more to come.

“In time we’ll be improving the rating/review system as well and we’re still tweaking and will be for some time but we’re going live because the site already seriously out-performs the old VCDQ so it seems silly to just keep tweaking in beta when we already have something better’ that we can deploy now,” he explains.

Moving forward, Neversoft hopes that VCDQuality can become the iMDB of the warez scene while also providing useful services to BitTorrent and Usenet sites. While user comments on torrent sites are useful for determining if a torrent is ‘fake’ or not, often the quality of the release is a neglected topic of conversation, a gap that Neversoft feels VCDQ can fill.

“What’s the point of Torrent and NZB sites having the odd comment on releases on their site when they can link to a whole smorgasbord of comments, reviews and screenshots free of charge?”

Continuing on the P2P/BitTorrent theme, VCDQ will also allow users to submit P2P release information. So, if anyone believes the site has missed an important P2P release, all they have to do is collate the NFO along with samples if they have them and submit them to the moderation team for consideration.

All in all, this is a very welcome update to a much-valued resource. Furthermore, unlike other sources that have tried to replicate the VCDQuality experience but with tacked on download links, VCDQ remains entirely legal and as such can look forward to a stable and promising future.

The new site (blue theme, as opposed to the old red) should be available within a couple of hours at the usual URL.

Hulu pushes forward with $9.95 subscription service

From:  http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/

Hulu, the popular online site for watching television shows, plans to begin testing a subscription service as soon as May 24, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
Under the proposal, Hulu would continue to provide for free the five most recent episodes of shows like Fox's "Glee," "ABC's "Lost" or NBC's "Saturday Night Live." But viewers who want to see additional episodes would pay $9.95 a month to access a more comprehensive selection, called Hulu Plus, these people said.
Hulu, which ranks second only to Google's YouTube in terms of monthly video streams in the U.S., said it turned an operating profit in its two most recent quarters. The 2-year-old service, which is owned by media giants News Corp., NBC Universal and the Walt Disney Co., generated more than $100 million in revenue from advertising.
Still, that doesn't come close to matching the revenue that these companies are accustomed to raking in from their more established businesses. That's why Hulu is under pressure from its owners to collect a subscription fee to both bolster revenue and train viewers to pay for online access to professionally produced content.
Television executives don't want to suffer the same fate as music industry or newspapers, which saw users flock to free access to songs, stories and classified ads online -- and revenues plummet.
In the past, Hulu primarily offered shows that were broadcast over the air for free. But now, as the major networks are trying to extract payments from cable operators and television station groups, they can no longer justify offering the same shows online for free. Shows on Hulu also carry commercials, however there are fewer spots there than on regular television. Ultimately, Hulu is expected to adopt the same commercial loads as network television. 
Hulu did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

--Dawn C. Chmielewski and Meg James
The Hulu video player displays a scene from "Arrested Development." Credit: Twentieth Century Fox and Imagine Entertainment.

TiVo Premiere: One set-top box to rule them all

With its new TiVo Premiere DVR, TiVo asks the rhetorical question: Would you like to replace your HD cable box/DVR, broadband Web box (a la Roku) and stereo-connected music player with a single box that lists content search results regardless of their location — broadcast, broadband, video-on-demand — all at one time?

Obviously the answer is yes, but there's a catch.

First, the TiVo Premiere, unveiled last night, is the Handy Housewife Helper of set-top boxes. There are two versions, the Premiere with a 320GB hard drive (45 hours of HD recording, $300) and the Premiere XL with 1TB (150 hours of HD recording, $500), each running TiVo's new widescreen interface and each offering an Ethernet internet connection to bring in Web content including Netflix and Amazon Video On Demand. When you search for shows, the results include content aggregated from all sources. In other words, if you search for, say Up!, it'll find and list where it is on broadcast channels, video-on-demand, Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, etc.

Premiere has a CableCard slot so you can replace your cable box (assuming you don't have to debase yourself too much to get your cable company to give you one), and TiVo will be offering a wireless 802.11N Wi-Fi adapter for $90 in June since you likely lack an Ethernet jack in your living room. Later this year, you'll be able to buy a remote with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard for faster typing.

TiVo improved on the company's legendary interface and artificial intelligence or whatever prestidigitation they use to help you find stuff you'd like even if you didn't know you liked it and didn't ask TiVo to find it for you. Premiere's interface is now completely widescreen, which means more info on a single screen and less drilling down for more detail. And having a terabyte of DVR space alleviates a lot of DVR guilt (having to decide what old unwatched shows to erase to make room for new shows you won't watch).

The caveat is cost. TiVo's monthly service fee (at least $13, depending on the plan you pick) is probably around the same as a cable company's box lease and DVR service fees. But you have to buy TiVo's box, and TiVo is unlikely to come to your house and swap it out on a whim.

One other minor caveat: Premiere uses HDMI 1.3, which means it likely won't play back upcoming 3D broadcasts in full HD. And too bad they didn't build in a Blu-ray player so I can get rid of another box.
If you decide TiVo's telepathic software, enhanced interface and Mr. Creosote recording capacity is well worth the price, you can order Premiere from TiVo's Web site as of this morning for delivery sometime in April.

Via TiVo

By Stewart Wolpin

20 Free Ways to Manage Video, Music, and Photos

From: http://www.pcworld.com/

Downloads and services like Grooveshark, Jinni, and Phoenix help you make the most of your digital entertainment.

Adam Pash and Rick Broida, PCWorld

Find Great Video

These eight no-cost utilities and services can help you find, organize, and wrangle your media files--or enjoy some great video online.

Boxee Beta: This open-source app offers an attractive and powerful way to play back desktop and Web-based media seamlessly on your HDTV.

Classic Cinema Online: Want to enjoy a classic movie but don't want to rent it? This Website aggregates hundreds of freely available classic films, organized by genre, so you'll never be bored again.

Clicker: This Website is like TV Guide for the Web, aggregating video from the far reaches of the Internet to provide you with a central source to search for your favorite TV shows.

DoubleTwist: If you're using a non-Apple cell phone or MP3 player, this download is a great iTunes alternative. Among other features, it has the uncanny ability to automatically make any video on your computer work with your mobile device, no matter what format the unit requires.

Hulu Desktop: The video streaming site Hulu brought mainstream video to the online masses. Download this remote-friendly desktop app to free Hulu video from your browser. With its help, you can sit back a bit from the PC and still enjoy your favorite movies and TV.

Jinni: This beta video-recommendation service breaks down movies, TV shows, and online shorts, and lets you select videos to watch by their component parts, such as mood or plot. If you're a Netflix subscriber and the movie is in Netflix's catalog, you can add it to your rental queue with one click--or, if it's available for instant viewing, you can watch it right then.

Libox: Is your desktop filled with media you'd like to share with relatives and friends? Sending large video files over the Internet takes time. Instead, sign up for this desktop app to create a private network for sharing videos and other media easily.

ShowMeWhatsWrong: Are you the go-to tech person for your family and friends? The next time you need to help someone remotely, point the recipient to this Web service, which makes it dead simple for tech neophytes to record and share quick screencasts to demonstrate their PC problems.

Uncommon Audio Helpers

If your audio collection is out of control, let our seven music-oriented freebies help you find, edit, and manage your tunes.

Next time you get an earworm from the background music in a YouTube video or some other file and you can't identify it, head over to beta service AudioTag and let it identify the song for you.

Tune out the world at Buddha Machine Wall, a stripped-down Website whose custom ambient noise will help keep you focused.

When you need to turn to the Web for music, look to Grooveshark. This service can play almost any song you request, and it sports a beautiful interface for searching for music and building playlists.

You say that you've been ripping, burning, and sharing music for years? Chances are, the audio files on your hard drive are a metadata disaster. Quickly clean things up with Mp3Tag, a universal tag editor that supports virtually every audio file type you're likely to own.

If you need to do a little light audio editing and you don't want to download and install a full-fledged desktop app, sign up for Aviary's Myna, an impressive Web service that lets you handle advanced audio editing from the comfort of your Web browser.

Are you listening to music on your tinny, underpowered laptop speakers, while your PC's fancy speakers sit unused? Download Speakershare to share the better equipment with other PCs on your home network, whether you're sitting in front of those speakers or not.

If you aren't satisfied with streaming whatever music happens to be available online, dip into your own collection with TunesBag. A free account lets you upload 1GB of music from your hard drive to the Web so that you can access your favorite songs from any browser.

Shutterbug Assistance, at Your Service

Whether you're an amateur photographer or an avid photo uploader, the five tools we've collected can help you get the best from your images.

Easy Poster Printer is a desktop app that lets you adjust any high-resolution digital photograph and print it as a poster (which, at its largest, can be 21 by 21 yards). You print your poster in sections and then simply assemble the final product.

Photographers call the day's first and last hour of sunlight the golden hour in honor of the great light available during those time periods. Plug your location into the Google Maps mashup The Golden Hour Calculator to determine the exact times when it arrives.

Photoshop may be the king of photo editing tools, but it's also expensive and too powerful for most users. The desktop app Paint.Net is a lightweight, powerful, and easy-to-use alternative that can handle almost any editing task.

Digital photos can reach many megabytes in size, so uploading images without resizing them can be slow. Download Shrink Pic, a simple but ingenious utility that automatically resizes images when you upload them to the Web.

Want to quickly punch up a couple of photos before you share them on Facebook or Flickr? Sign up with Aviary's Phoenix image editor, an impressive tool that looks and feels like a desktop image editing application but lives exclusively on the Web.

About the authors: Adam Pash is the editor of Lifehacker. Rick Broida writes PCWorld's Hassle-Free PC blog.

How To: Stream Your Music Library to Any Computer

by Norman Chan
from: http://www.maximumpc.com/

Sometimes you just want to browse and listen to your album collection at the office without having to load it all into a portable music player. Pandora and Last.fm are great web services that can help you discover new music, but they won’t let you specify your own music playlist. Streaming music from within a home network is easy with iTunes and Windows Media Player; what’s trickier is getting access to your 100GB music library while away from home. We’ll teach you how to turn your library into an Internet radio station with Apache server software and a little-known program called netjukebox. You’ll be able to browse your collection via a gallery of album cover art, stream custom playlists, and even download entire albums as zip files.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL WALKTHROUGH: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_to_stream_your_music_library_any_computer?page=0%2C0

Tunatic is a free music identify service..think SHAZAM for Win/Mac

Love that song but don't know what it is?
Tunatic can tag it for you!

Ever thought ‘what is this song?’ Let Tunatic hear it and you will get the artist's name and the song's title within seconds. Tunatic is the very first song search engine based on sound for your computer. All you need is a microphone and Internet access.

	Download Tunatic v1.0.1b for Mac OS X v10.2 or better
	Download Tunatic v1.0.1b for Windows 2000/XP

1 - let Tunatic hear the music. All you need is a microphone and Internet access.	2 - Tunatic identifies the song. Follow the white arrow to get links for the song.

How does this work? When you click Tunatic's ‘search’ button, Tunatic transmits the song's features to the Tunatic server. The server searches its database and returns the matching song. More Q&A

Hands-On With the Boxee Set-Top Box and Remote

• By Brian X. Chen
• From: http://www.wired.com
  
  

LAS VEGAS — A host of video services on the web enable you to watch your favorite TV programs and movies anytime you wish, and Boxee is an open platform striving to weave them all into one neat interface. To get the Boxee experience onto a TV, D-Link has launched a set-top box dedicated to the open video platform, along with a special remote.

The Boxee box is pretty simple. Video outputs through an HDMI connector. For audio, you can plug in through an optical digital audio-out jack or regular composite audio. An SD card slot and two USB ports allow you to expand storage. For internet connectivity, the box supports 802.11n Wi-Fi and ethernet.
Boxee was previously a piece of open source software that you’d download to view media on your computer. Most users would download Boxee onto their notebook, which they’d then hook up to a TV. The box eliminates that need, and it’s also compatible with a new remote that just launched at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The remote sports a full QWERTY keyboard for typing in search queries. On the back of it there are three buttons for hitting Enter, accessing the main Boxee menu and playing or pausing video.

We’ve been fans of Boxee for some time: The menu is beautiful and intuitive, and it’s really zippy with loading multimedia files with thumbnails. The remote does indeed make the experience more enjoyable. It’s sturdy, smooth and comfortable, and the keys feel high quality.


Boxee’s primary purpose was to streamline video entertainment, but since it’s an open platform, it can do a lot more. There’s a Boxee app store for downloading third-party apps provided by developers. The main menu has buttons to access music and photos, too. Think of the Boxee as a restriction-free Apple TV.
The Boxee box and remote are shipping the second quarter of 2010. Pricing has not been announced, but Boxee estimates $200.
For a detailed look at the Boxee platform, see Epicenter’s coverage of the Boxee box launch.
Product page [Boxee]

Read More http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/hands-on-with-the-boxee-set-top-box/#ixzz0cKJAWQ2j