Commercial installation questions.

[grepico]

OK, giving certain people the benefit of the doubt about my possible lack of effort, I believe I have exhausted every possible resource in trying to figure this out.

To Recap:
What I want to do is be able to sit at one computer or MD and be able to see what is currently playing on other MD's.  I don't think I was clear enough in the original post when I say "see", I mean actually view the media.  I see where I can choose the MD at the bottom of the orbiter screen but it doesn't actually show me the media.  Yes, it tells me via the remote the name of the media that's playing, but I want to actually see the video as if I were looking at the MD in question.

Before anybody calls me "lazy" again, I've searched the Wiki, this Forum, and the internet at large exhaustively with no success.  I've tried every possible setting/configuration on the core and on my PC (acting as a remote orbiter) that seems relevant to what I'm trying to do and I have had no success.

Is what I'm trying to do possible?

[hari]

so after selecting the MD's you have to select a stream from the list, too.
That will then be extended to the additionally selected MD's.

Works perfect.

best regards,
Hari

[Zaerc]

As Hari says, go to the media>floorplan, select the MDs you want it to show on and select the playing media.  See also: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Play_the_same_media_in_multiple_rooms_simultaneously#How_to_use_it

[fibres]

Hi all

I think what grepico is trying to do is to be able to sit on his laptop which is acting as an orbiter and select an md on the system and be able to see the media that is being played on a certain media director from the remote orbiter on the laptop.

If this is correct I am not aware of this being possible.

Regards

[totallymaxed]

Hi all

I think what grepico is trying to do is to be able to sit on his laptop which is acting as an orbiter and select an md on the system and be able to see the media that is being played on a certain media director from the remote orbiter on the laptop.

If this is correct I am not aware of this being possible.

Regards

Hmmm... no it isn't on a Windows orbiter... but if you you use an MD at your desk as Hari & Zaerc have suggested and add that MD to the stream already playing on say MD2 in some other location, using the Media Floorplan, then your MD will receive what MD2 is receiving. Admittedly not as elegant as having a 'multi-screen' view which shows each MD's stream as thumnails... but nevertheless achievable with features already implemented.

All the best

Andrew 

[fibres]

Ah ok I had not thought of that approach.

I assume that means it will play fullscreen on that second MD though?

Regards

[colinjones]

Just to be clear (from some of the posts I read it seems that the wrong impression may have been given...)

The Orbiter (in this case the on screen Orbiter) is a "remote control" functionality, but isn't limited just to controlling the local MD it is running on, it can be used to control other MDs as well... ie tell them to start playing media remotely.

The second part of the question was whether you can then monitor what other MDs are playing. It should be noted here that this is not a function of the Orbiter as it is just a remote control. HOWEVER, as a result of it being a very flexible control system, there IS a function that allows you to instruct the local MD to take a copy of the stream going to a remote MD and start playing it locally, by using the remote control functions of the Orbiter. The end result is much the same, but conceptually you can see this is different. This is why it is understandable that it isn't as "elegant" as it could be, like totallymaxed pointed out, because it isn't really an extra (monitoring) function, it is just using the remote control functionality in a specific way to achieve the result you are looking for. This is also why (fibres) why, yes, it will be "full screen" and in fact identical to if you were sitting in front of the other MD - it isn't additional functionality, it is just 2 Orbiters/MDs playing the same file that just happens to be at a (~)synchronised point in that file.

To do the 9 thumbnails view, suggested, would be a possible extension I guess, but is definitely additional functionality, not simply an exension to the described process in this thread, so not a small mod! Plus given that the MDs are playing from file shares using file sharing protocols (typically) then you would need 9x the network bandwidth to achieve this and that could be a major problem depending on the source material bit rates. Putting intelligence at the source end to send only certain frames/recompress/otherwise reduce the bandwidth needed would be an even bigger undertaking for a single feature and rended the feature incompatible with source devices that couldn't run that "agent" software such as NAS's, etc....

[grepico]

Thank you, that cleared it right up for me.