I really like my MythTV system, but using it to play MP3s is quite a mess. Turn on the TV, find the remote, navigate through the MP3 collection one letter at a time and then add the songs… I realized I really needed a simpler way to control the audio player…

After some searching, I discovered Music Player Daemon. The server end (the daemon) only handles the library and the actual playing of files, the cool part is that there are quite a few clients for it. A WinAmp-like Windows frontend, a command line (console) based clients, graphical clients for Linux and (what I finally settled for) a web interface written in PHP.

Since there’s always a computer on somewhere in my apartment (actually, it’s more like 3 or 4) it only takes a few seconds to browse to the album I want to hear and queue it. The only manual action required is to turn on the amplifier, so my next step is logical: find a way for the MPD server to turn on the amp.

Perhaps through an IR blaster, or through the Sony S-link interface.

On a side note: I’ve used a number of different solutions for streaming MP3s from my collection at home to work and other places…