remote Jukebox Control?

August 18, 2005 8:36 PM

Looking for a way to control an instance of winamp (or similar media player) running on a PC from an iBook, via existing Wireless network...

so here's the deal: i have a PC laptop (win xp sp2)hooked up to a mixer/speakers, which is where i play most of my music. i'd like to be able to control that laptop, or at least the jukebox program on that laptop, from my iBook (os x 10.4). the computers are wirelessly networked already, i'm just wondering if there's a program that will allow that kind of access. i'd like to be able to cue up tracks, browse files, and use the transport control, at the most basic level. sort of like having a virtual remote control for my PC media player program on my iBook. Any suggestions?

posted by cathodeheart to computers & internet (8 comments total)

should have mentioned, an itunes solution would be great too, as i already have itunes set up on both computers...
posted by cathodeheart at 8:40 PM on August 18, 2005

VNC; allows full control of another computer as long as you have some basic network and login info.
posted by michaelkuznet at 8:44 PM on August 18, 2005

I use MPD on a Linux system, but the wiki says it runs on OS X. It's a fairly simple program, I recommend the command-line client, which you can install on any system with network access to the server, or phpMp2, one of the web clients.

MPD Clients
posted by formless at 8:45 PM on August 18, 2005

i thought about VNC, and figured it might be overkill for what i want to do...but i tried it out, and i had it downlaoded, isntalled, and runnign perfectly on both computers in about 3 minutes. guess that'll do the trick nicely!

MPD looks interesting too, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like it's compatible with windows. shame, as it could've been a great option as well.
posted by cathodeheart at 10:13 PM on August 18, 2005

I find Winamp Web Interface to be quite good - it runs a little webserver in Winamp, which you can access from another computer to control winamp. It lets you manage playlists, browse files, stop/start/pause/skip/adjust volume (pretty much the only thing you can't do is move to a certain point in a song), and keeps a "weblog" of all the songs you've played. And, of course, you can access it from anything.
posted by Jimbob at 10:14 PM on August 18, 2005

http://www.realvnc.com/
posted by Dean Keaton at 11:04 PM on August 18, 2005

wawi is OK, but has a terrible search function. What we use at my work is a COMBO of wawi (so you can use the tray control to pause, skip tracks, control volume) and Halo 8 WWWinamp (based on the original Justin Frankel wwwinamp) for search and queueing functions.

That said, if you're running XP Pro, IMHO there is no reason to use VNC anymore. There is a Remote Desktop Client for Macintosh, and Remote Desktop is a million times faster than VNC because it doesn't send screen grabs, but instead just sends instructions on what to draw on the screen instead.
posted by fishfucker at 10:31 AM on August 19, 2005

cool....VNC was working nicely, but my only (minor) complaint was the lagginess. i'll look into that remtoe desktop client though. thanks folks!
posted by cathodeheart at 11:10 AM on August 19, 2005