Windows media player for iPad?

RobertP

RobertP

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Yes OK I know it's a daft question but it is more or less what I want to achieve.

I got my wife (read both of us) an ipad for xmas. She had an ipod and of course itunes but only ever used it to get her music on the ipod so no real knowledge of it. I've never used an i anything before so I'm looking for some help as to how to get the result I'm looking for.

With a laptop I can run windows media player and have all the albums stored on a network drive presented to me nicely with album art and sorted by artist/ album name... whatever. Having decided what I want to listen to, I can right click the selection and 'play to' my AV receiver and listen to the music. So the laptop is the controller, the files are on the network and the amp does the playback.

How do I get a nice friendly interface doing the same thing with an iPad as the controller? Does itunes do it? Plan is a NAS unit has the files on it not a PC so no PC need be turned on.

I'm only interested in audio playback not video so network speeds are not an issue.
 
i use itunes home sharing but that requires a machine turned on as well as the idevice. some NAS devices can run as an itunes server, not sure if that can facilitate home sharing though.

alternatively mediaconnect app and a dnla compliant nas.
 
What amplifier is it? is it using DLNA?

I use DLNA and iTunes at home. iTunes for music on a number of airport express and for syncing with my ipod and DLNA for streaming to my Netgear EVA800 and PS3.

I use a piece of software called Twonky Server as my DLNA server. I have set this to monitor my iTunes folder for media in iTunes (mainly my music). I then point it at another folder for photos and another for films.

I can then access the media via DLNA on my PS3, Netgear EVA800 and laptops. I can also access the media via iTunes and use Airplay to my airport express. I use a dell server to do this and other stuff hidden in the bottom of our coat cupboard.

You can use a NAS device to do most of this (DLNA and iTunes server), but the iTunes part goes slightly wrong. It can act as an iTunes server, but it cannot stream music to airport express or other airplay devices and you cannot sync your ipod directly with it. It would appear in iTunes as a network library, but not sure if it would get sync'd to the ipod/ipad.

I've used this for DLNA serving (it uses Twonky), but not checked out the iTunes server. Its for my parents and has 2 3TB drives in a mirrored array.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Asus-NAS-M25-Gigabit-Network-Storage/dp/B004XFYGTO

I love my airport expresses, I have on in the lounge, 1 in the dining room and 1 in the kitchen. They appear as speakers in iTunes and you can select which speakers you want the music to come out of and you can set the volume for each room independently. You use an app on the ipad, iphone or android device to select the music and volume.

http://www.apple.com/uk/airportexpress/
 
The amp is an Onkyo TN-NR609 it can play back from DLNA, internet radio, spotify and all that stuff.

I have an app called Oremote on the ipad which will control the amp and browse DLNA shares and play files - but it is clunky for choosing what to play and shows a folder view not a media view.

It sounds like itunes will only do what I need to other i devices and even then not play that well with a NAS as source.

I've been googling in circles for a couple of days now. Took me this long to post here as I didn't really know what the question was never mind the answer :)
 
Use a desktop as your iTunes/DLNA server and it will work perfectly

a NAS device won't.

Twonky + iTunes works well, but has to run on a computer. Twonky will share out your iTunes content, so you don't have to manage an iTunes library and a Windows Media library, you update iTunes, add podcasts, films etc. and they will all appear in Twonky.

Twonky do android apps (and probably iOS) and I think you can send media to your amp to play from your phone or other dlna devices.
 
I'll give it a go. Will it 'play to' or just play on the ipad?
 
Not got much further. Media connect shows the amp as a device but I couldn't find a way to play to it, just play on the ipad plus it's a folder like view when browsing. it's looking like windows 1 apple 0 at the moment.
 
Another vote for the airport express here.
 
Well i've made some progress but I'm not there yet.

The Media connect app is confusing!

There are tabs along the bottom, one is labelled player, another is labelled controller. The player tab plays to the iPad and nothing else. The controller tab has a browse for renderer and browse for server - and when you browse the server you can play to the renderer.... so it works. You can then go to the player tab and play something else at the same time on the ipad which threw me a bit :)

It is still not as wife friendly as the library in windows media player and 'play to'.

I have resurrected an old NAS unit where the controller went wrong. It works fine with one disk installed but behaves similar to a house brick with two fitted (nothing to do with power). Either sata port is ok just not both together. Anyway I've installed an old version Twonky server trial on the NAS and that is what I'm browsing on the ipad and playing to the amp.

So now I just need to find some app that does the job properly and presents artist/album etc as well as WMP. It would be nice to have easy to add to playlists and playlist saving etc too. I'll keep looking.

Neil - the NAS is quite old and must have a minimal processor in it. Would a current model like a Synology Disk Station DS212J that would be running an up to date server present the media nicer to the clients? Can't help wondering if the poor layout for music selection is down to the server as much as the app.
 
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