New Post: A Media Center in Your Pocket

Drive your TV with a Librem 5.

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Hi David you mention at 0:14 up to one TB. Or did I misheard it? I thought the spec were 2 TB.

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The remote being used at ~00:10 looks a lot like what I am using for my media center PC.

Nice video!

Edit: @maximilian Good luck finding a 2TB MicroSD card. Amazon and Newegg both don’t even list them.

Query: will it be possible to control an external hard disk (directly) via the usb-c port?

I’d assume if the voltage output is enough…

That would really add to the GPCiyP/MCiyP idea. Can’t do that with my current phone.

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What is that?

Another matter is whether the L5 can play music (and other media) from a wifi network drive. Preferably easily.

Only a few apps on my windows phone can do so. On my windows tablet I can only acces my NAS via the (good old) Mediaplayer. On my ubuntu laptop I tried all sorts of things before finally giving up on the whole idea of streaming music from the network.

Hope the L5 makes things like streaming a doddle.

general purpose computer in your pocket / media centre in your pocket
(sorry, forgot one P in GPCiyP)

too long to type out every time…

On android I can open media files via SFTP witgin Ghost Commander file manager. I think the file is completely copied over the network onto the local F’s before it starts playing. This is especially bad on large files like videos.

VLC has networking capabilities like SFTP, too. If I open those files with VLC directly they start playing immediately. So VLC probably streams the files without coping them onto the local FS.

So VLC might be a good choice for the L5, too.

Assuming that you are only talking about locally within your LAN, it shouldn’t be that difficult. I’m using Ubuntu on a laptop/desktop as client, for example, and music all on a file server running Ubuntu and served out via all of: Samba, NFS, HTTP, DLNA and DAV. All of those options work.

With the TV as client, DLNA works. I think Samba would work too if I let it but I don’t care to do so as the TV is a black box. (My TV does list all of the Samba shares on the LAN.)

On the spiPhone things are trickier. Most of those options don’t even exist out-of-the-box. About the only one that is available is HTTP (via Safari or Firefox) and that doesn’t really work.

(My diagnosis is that the problem is something to do with byte-ranges i.e. client doesn’t want to buffer the whole file, just as @prolog specifies, but something goes wrong with that, so the first buffer’s worth of sound plays and then it malfunctions. I think it used to work and then Apple broke it.)

Bottom line: Not everything will work initially but at least with Linux you have a chance at making it work!

To be honest, with a 512 GB µSD card in my L5, I’m just going to sync the music from the server to the card in the phone and then the phone won’t be dependent on accessing music via the network anyway - but I’m happy to help you where I can if you want to pursue that when we both have our phones.

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MPD? Icecast? Maybe even ampache.org/

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Sure, I know. I remember getting it to work sometimes. But it was erratic at best. And it certainly wasn’t as easy as installing an app and having it look for the drive I plugged in to de modem - Linada on my Windows phone manages to do so, for instance, or the mediaplayer on my tablet.
In my experience it never was easy on Ubuntu. But I have to admit, it has been a few years since I gave up on the Ubuntu laptop, zo things might have progressed somewhat. I am really hoping things will be easier on the L5.

About the video: That’s actually a really good idea. Whenever you’re settling down for the night, just hook the phone up to the bedroom screen and wind down slaughtering people in video games. :robot: :gun::alien: And then fire up a music or audiobook or netcast player. :speak_no_evil: :open_book:

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Don’t get me wrong, I am looking forward to the full blown Linux, command line and all, experience on the L5. But it would be nice if some things, like media streaming, are hassle free.

Yeah, read the reviews. At that price, I am calling SCAM.

That’s not the point. The point is that such microSD cards are probably being developed and very soon will be available.

Happy that I am proven wrong here :). Last I looked, these were not listed on either site.

I’m sure they will be available. However at the current time, they aren’t (or are not until someone links to a legitimate supplier - e.g. go to sandisk.com and the largest they list is 1 TB and if they aint making it then Amazon can’t be selling it, except as a scam) and hence Purism can’t test it and hence “support” is at best an informed guess.

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