I've got a single (vista ultimate) pc in my living room.
Both promixis Netremote and Girder are running on it.
A TV is connected via HDMI as primary monitor (1920x1080) and a touch screen is connected via VGA as a secondary monitor (1280x800).
(touch screen is described here : http://www.domoticaforum.eu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1588)
(amplifier is described here : http://www.domoticaforum.eu/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1090)
For music, I use J River Media Center (JRMC) (http://www.jrmediacenter.com/ )
with promixis NetRemote as user interface (on PDA or PC) :
I didn't want a solution like microsoft media center where I basically control my music (>20.000 songs) via a remote control on the TV.
But, when I start to play some music (via the touch screen user interface) , some useful information will automatically appear on the tv :
Above is a customized JRMC 'track info' template. (controlled by girder).
The template is basically a web page, so can have any desired layout..
A JRMC-supplied active-x control is embedded in the page, to show the spectrum analyzer (or any available visualization effect) & current track time
In this case a javascript slideshow of artist pictures (from girder) are displayed on the left, and also the lyrics, biography and album review are displayed in a scrollable list box on the right..
(downloading of lyrics, biography , album review and artist images from the internet, is automated via girder...)
Normally, I control everything via Netremote and the touch screen, not the TV.
But, if above template is visible then if I move the (logitech air) mouse to the top of the TV screen then the standard JRMC control buttons will appear briefly, which is quite convenient.....
When the music is no longer playing, then JRMC is automatically minimized again..
The system can also be controlled by speech recognition :
A USB desktop microphone is plugged into the USB hub inside the touch screen.
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/webca ... 1&cl=US,EN
This way, I don't have to run 10m audio cable from a normal microphone to the microphone socket of the pc.
This works quite well...
The way speech recognition is set up is as follows :
NetRemote waits for a distinctive trigger word. ('netremote')
Then, the amplifier is muted and it will execute whatever commands it hears after that (play/stop/pause/next/previous/mute/music/tv etc.)
then the amplifier is unmuted again...
so: I walk into the living room and just say : 'NetRemote' 'tv'
Then, the amplifier, tv and UPC digital tv set-top-box are powered on and the correct amplifier input and tv aspect ratio is chosen.
(note that I stopped using text-to-speech to repeat the text that was just recognized, as it would recognize that [8D] .
So I just 'beep' instead and display the recognized word on the screen.)
I need audio feedback, even when the amplifier is powered off or switched to the tv input.
I got these USB connected speakers, which act as a second sound card and are just hidden behind my audio equipment :
http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/speak ... 9&cl=us,en
I only play some .wav files on them (after speech is recognized and when new email arrived) and also the text-to-speech output goes to these speakers...
The VGA power to the touch screen is automatically turned off when I leave the living room, causing the touch screen to go into power saving mode.
(I don't want to use a screensaver : If I'm in the living room, the touch screen must stay on)
(Also TV & amplifier are powered off if I leave the room)
The living room pc is automatically powered off when I go to bed or leave the house. I don't use 'sleep' mode, so it takes a few minutes to (automatically) boot up in the morning, while I make coffee [;)]...
Marcel