I've got all of my music, videos, etc. stored on a RAID that's connected to a single computer at home. However, I still travel and work with a laptop, and I occasionally want to, for example, put some music on the laptop to listen to at work. In order to currently do that, I have to have the full version of iTunes installed, I have to connect to the RAID over the network, and I have to copy songs from the RAID to my iTunes library on my laptop, duplicating the file; for songs that I purchased from iTunes, I have to authorize my laptop.
What I want is for my laptop to be treated just like the AppleTV over my wireless network: I want my laptop to show up as a device that I can manually manage content on and to which I can synchronize content. I don't need to be able to access the iTunes Music Store on my laptop as I purchase all of my content on my main machine at home.
What I guess I am looking for is iTunes "lite" -- simple software with a smaller footprint on my machine that allows me to treat my laptop as an iPod through my main machine at home. I want the iTunes lite to allow me to play DRM content and I guess it would be ok if it still took one of my DRM licenses. There is no need for my laptop to be able to stream content like my AppleTV; I just want to be able to move some content to my laptop and update it from time to time.
Maybe there's already something like this, but if there is, I haven't seen it. Some of you might say that there is something like this and it's called a Video iPod, but if that's your response, then you either are missing the point of this post or I am not explaining it effectively.
Thoughts?
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, here's something to chew on: iTunes obviously has the ability to recognize and synchronize content over wifi as evidence by the AppleTV functionality . . . and doesn't the iPhone have wifi?
8 comments:
I convert my Itunes purchases to MP3 and use Media Monkey as my primary music manager. It gives me a lot more flexibility that Itunes. The only time I ever open Itunes is to buy something from store.
Chris,
I've got one pretty big problem with MediaMonkey: it's Windows only. Other than that, it looks like a pretty robust application, especially the paid version.
I'm looking for something a little different than just a music manager; I want something that allows iTunes to simply see my laptop as a music device and interact with it like an iPod, but over my network like the AppleTV. My guess would be that the feature set could be dramatically reduced to simple player controls and that the hard drive space and RAM footprints of the program could easily be halved.
Out of curiosity: how do you convert all of your purchased iTunes Music Store tracks? Do you actually burn them to CD and rip them or do you use a virtual CD drive and rip them from that (or do you do something even easier that I don't know about)?
Ross
you can convert in iTunes to .mp3 all you have to do is under prefernces-> advanced->Importing->import Using->MP3 encoder
Then right click the song you want and left click Convert Selection to MP3
note this is all on a PC
you can also have itunes running on your network as shared. and tap into it like that. or just get orb and stream it over the net to your laptop.
www.orb.com
i use it for streaming stuff to my wii when i feel like laying on my couch after a few hours of wii golf bowling or what ever.
you can also use it on your phone.
Ross,
I am 100% with you, I travel alot & would love to be able to just open itunes on my desktop & drag & drop into a playlist that gets sync'd to my laptop. Up till now I have been copying the whole library across, but I don't have enough space on the laptop anymore & the time that it would take is ridiculous.
I have recently bought myself an iphone & I sync that to my laptop (for applications, e-mail, calendar etc) & am now looking at copying certain folders / songs to my laptop. PAINFUL.
I have asked this question on iLounge & will let you know the response.
So iLounge didn't reply to my e-mail, but I have been trying out a program called tuneranger. This works in the way in which I wanted, I simply create a playlist in itunes & it will copy accross tracks which you have in this playlist to laptop. It also includes any information about the track that you have changed - genre, most played etc. It is currently doing everything that I needed itunes to do for me.
Unfortunately it is on a free trial at the moment - so depending on how well it works will dictate whether I buy it.. will let you know.
http://bhtproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=1
here is itunes 'lite', the standard version but without bloatware and services u dont need. so it will take up a bit less memory i guess.
its called "Floola" look it up @ floola.com
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