"Home" mp3 player/media centre

[laffinet]

Here's the situation: I'm currently using a rockboxed, 120GB upgraded Archose Jukebox Recorder as my main music source at home, hooked up to my stereo.
For various reasons (space, user friendliness, reliability) I'm looking for an alternative solution but I'm having difficulty finding something suitable.

Ideally I'm looking for some kind of unit that allows me to feed music to my stereo with a user friendly interface.

Now of course I could use a PC with some media centre software (like Mythbuntu) and hook it up to my TV for use as a display. But that seems to be bit of an overkill, I don't want to have to fire up a PC everytime I'm listening to music and I don't want to have an energy hungry PC running all the time.

So a stand alone solution would be nice.

So would be a remote.

Any ideas, recommendations ? Thanks.

[laffinet]

Bump

[andrewabc]

No, idea.
I would think that using a computer with monitor to be your multimedia player would work best. You can get remotes for computers (I seen an ATI one work good).
With the computer hooked up to stereo and also TV (for video), you can play your music/videos with remote.

What I saw and used at a friends place was ATI Remote Wonder (http://ati.amd.com/products/remotewonder/index.html)
It was hooked up to main desktop computer which was hooked up to TV. Could listen to music and watch tv shows/movies all through the computer.

[laffinet]

Yeah, I was thinking about just doing that and using Mythbuntu or XBMC or GeeXboX.
I'm just worried about power consumption when running the computer 24/7 (don't want to have to boot and shut down everytime I start/stop listening to music).
Also, I'm wondering if it would be possible to perform basic functions (like start/stop/pause music) with just the remote withou switching the screen on ?

[andrewabc]

Yeah, I was thinking about just doing that and using Mythbuntu or XBMC or GeeXboX.
I'm just worried about power consumption when running the computer 24/7 (don't want to have to boot and shut down everytime I start/stop listening to music).
Also, I'm wondering if it would be possible to perform basic functions (like start/stop/pause music) with just the remote withou switching the screen on ?

I'm pretty sure if your music program is open the remote would work regardless of whether the monitor is on or not (remote sensor goes into usb connector device). You may need the monitor shut off instead of sleep/hibernate or else when you press the remote button it keep bring monitor out of sleep mode (same as when keyboard is pressed, or mouse moved).

You could set up program on your computer to shut it off at a certain time of day (say bedtime). Then all you would have to do is turn it on in the morning. Is it possible for software to turn on a computer at certain times?

EDIT:
forgot to mention that I only saw the remote working in winxp. I have no idea what software to use in linux. But a quick look shows mythbuntu working with it. Also I think the remote was remote wonder II

[laffinet]

Thanks for your replies.

I'm actually warming to the idea of building a HTPC and running Mythbuntu or something similar on it.

Currently reading up on HTPCs. Jeez, fair bit to read and learn. Might have to open a separate thread at some stage to get some recommendations on hardware.