Play MP3s on TiVo

mikerr · 09-08-2007, 03:47 PM

Found this tivoweb module, and made a few minor edits (it didn't work for me initially) and also got the mp3 player to downsample so it now plays without stuttering on my 3 tivos. The poor old 50Mhz processor still struggles, but just about manages.

Installation:

Copy madplay and ps to /var/hack/bin
Copy libm.so to /lib
Copy mp3.itcl to tivoweb modules directory.

Make a directory /var/mp3 and put a few mp3s in there

Restart tivoweb.

You should now have an MP3 menu in tivoweb top menu.

Click play to play selected mp3, stop to stop it etc

[edit] forum doesn't like attachments >100k so full package is here (264k)
[edit] Small update - no longer needs "ls" installed

Raisltin Majere · 09-08-2007, 04:50 PM

Looks cool, I'l try it out. Thank you.

One (possibly quite stupid) question if I may:

If I change the line set mp3dir "/var/mp3" so that it points to my NAS, would it work?

BrianHughes · 09-08-2007, 04:57 PM

Interesting. So, does it play on your pc or through the telly?

mikerr · 09-08-2007, 05:05 PM

BrianHughes: It plays through the TV - the tivo is doing all the work.

Raisltin: If you have your NAS mounted within the tivo filesystem with NFS or Samba, then yes.. but you probably haven't

martink0646 · 09-08-2007, 05:42 PM

Works great. Took a little while to track down Madplay & libm (lots of dead links) but eventually found them & it works well...as long as there is no load on the processor!

Cheers,

Martin

Raisltin Majere · 09-08-2007, 05:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikerr

Raisltin: If you have your NAS mounted within the tivo filesystem with NFS or Samba, then yes.. but you probably haven't

you're absolutely right. Do you know of a link that will explain this to me, please?

mikerr · 09-08-2007, 06:32 PM

It's at the other place: http://www.d***d*******.com/forum/sh...9&postcount=12

[edit] Just done this so thought I'd do a quick quide (see here)

Raisltin Majere · 09-08-2007, 07:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikerr

It's at the other place: http://www.d***d*******.com/forum/sh...9&postcount=12

Thanks!

fearby · 09-09-2007, 11:19 AM

At least not on the version I am running..........

v1.3.1 that is

martink0646 · 09-10-2007, 03:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fearby

At least not on the version I am running..........

v1.3.1 that is

It works fine with TivoWebPlus 2

Martin

randap · 09-10-2007, 01:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fearby

At least not on the version I am running..........

v1.3.1 that is

I'm running v1.3.1 and all that happens on clicking "Play" is that you are taken to the TiVo menu as though you have just pressed the TiVo button on the remote. "Stop" doesn't appear at all......

EDIT: Ahh - fixed it. For some reasons the paths were not working, so I set the paths for "ps" and "madplay" to /var/hack/bin and all's well... Wicked!!

EDIT2: Now I've lost my "bongs" on remote key press, although live TV sound is OK.........

martink0646 · 09-10-2007, 07:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by randap

I'm running v1.3.1 and all that happens on clicking "Play" is that you are taken to the TiVo menu as though you have just pressed the TiVo button on the remote. "Stop" doesn't appear at all......

EDIT: Ahh - fixed it. For some reasons the paths were not working, so I set the paths for "ps" and "madplay" to /var/hack/bin and all's well... Wicked!!

EDIT2: Now I've lost my "bongs" on remote key press, although live TV sound is OK.........

I lost my bongs as well but it just needs a reboot & all is well.

Martin

fearby · 09-11-2007, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by randap

For some reasons the paths were not working, so I set the paths for "ps" and "madplay" to /var/hack/bin and all's well... Wicked!!

Can I ask how to set the paths like you describe?

mikerr · 09-11-2007, 02:22 PM

Just re-download the module in the first post

I've uploaded a newer version which is now hardcoded to /var/hack/bin,
previously it required them to be in your unix path.

I don't think the "bong issue" is curable without a new version of madplay (and I didn't compile that). I have them turned off anyway.

fearby · 09-11-2007, 04:23 PM

It works!

mikerr · 09-12-2007, 08:44 AM

Attached is a standalone version running in the tivo GUI - much more useful than the tivoweb module

Install:

Make sure you have newtext2osd installed in /var/hack/bin

Copy madplay and ps to /var/hack/bin
Copy libm.so to /lib
run ./mp3.tcl

Make a directory /var/mp3 and put a few mp3s in there

Usage:

Press 7 on the remote when in now-playing to bring up the menu
PageUp &
PageDown to scroll the list
Press 1 2 or 3 to play each song
Press 7 to stop playing, or press live-tv

Automatically stops when you enter live-tv or play a recording

It does need the MWSTATE bug fix installed - just run the attached script
(ONLY run that fix on UK Tivo !)

forum doesn't like attachments >100k so full package inc madplay can be downloaded here (264k)

martink0646 · 09-13-2007, 01:23 PM

This is great. I installed it, tested & remarked to my wife "Is there anything TiVo can't do!" to which she rolled her eyes & asked me why I wanted to play MP3's on TiVo when I have a home brew, networked HTPC & a Philips Streamium, both within 2 feet of the Tivo. Cue some backtracking as to my previous justifications on the outlay for those items in the past. It also shot down any chances of my bidding for the 'is it or isn't it' TiVo off ebay earlier.

Martin

ColinYounger · 09-13-2007, 01:40 PM

Isn't it amazing that SWMBO always has that clarity of thought?

martink0646 · 09-14-2007, 01:51 AM

If I'm honest it's why we have a house at all rather than a pile of gadgets in a lock up somewhere.

MIKERR: I have placed 4 mp3's in the directory as suggested & only one shows up on the menu. Is there a reason for this. Possibly file name length or format. Can you have a think about this please?

Thanks again for a great app.

Martin

mikerr · 09-23-2007, 06:31 PM

I've changed the code for reading filenames now, I think it was choking on certian charactrs in filenames - have another go.

Pugwash · 09-24-2007, 02:26 PM

I've got all of my CDs copied onto a 1.5TB NAS, playing through XBMC. I don't think they'd all fit on my TiVo!

mrtickle · 09-26-2007, 01:18 PM

Have you read page one of this thread? They don't need to fit on your TiVo.

mpnash · 10-10-2007, 11:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikerr

Found this tivoweb module, and made a few minor edits (it didn't work for me initially) and also got the mp3 player to downsample so it now plays without stuttering on my 3 tivos. The poor old 50Mhz processor still struggles, but just about manages.

Nice module!

I've had no luck getting rid of the stutter. I saw your --downsample and --no-dither flags for madplay (what is the latter for?). I wonder what else I can try to get rid of stutter...? I've tried to unload the processor as much as poss...

mikerr · 10-11-2007, 04:33 AM

Quote:

-downsample : Reduce the decoded sampling frequency 2:1. This also reduces the computational overhead of the decoder.

The full options are here:
http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man1/madplay.1.php

adding -1 or -m for mono output might help a bit more.

You could also try using setpri

The tivo madplay binary is from version 0.14.1 beta .. which is quite old:
http://olympus.het.brown.edu/cgi-bin...y/changelog.gz
More recent version have more configurable sample rates and resampling which would help too (I don't have a cross compiler setup for tivo though)

mpnash · 10-11-2007, 05:37 AM

Thanks for the link and tips. What exactly do you think I should try for setpri? (eg. I'm unsure of appropriate priority values).

The -1 and -m options turned U2 into chipmunks - quite a laugh!

Some other observations so far...

I tried with and without --downsample option and it made no real difference to the jumpyness. In fact the madplay command line output suggests this (I think), ie.

Code:

[TiVo [p2] /tmp]# madplay --downsample --no-dither U2-BeautifulDay.mp3
<snip>
output: sample frequency 22050 Hz not available; closest 32000 Hz
output: resampling 22050 Hz to 32000 Hz
[TiVo [p2] /tmp]# madplay --no-dither U2-BeautifulDay.mp3
<snip>
output: sample frequency 44100 Hz not available; closest 32000 Hz
output: resampling 44100 Hz to 32000 Hz

...so I'm guessing in both cased there is resampling going on (extra work with linear interpolation perhaps?) to 32000 Hz - or I may be way off base here.

I also tried with and without --no-dither (I've no real idea what this does - even after reading the manpage). Again no difference - still jumpy. And i've tried different tracks/artists.

A shame really, coz the jumpyness limits it's appeal. I'd love to use the series 1 to play my iTunes library - I've mounted it over NFS for use with OHM (although the tests above were done with a local file in case NFS was the issue).

mpnash · 10-11-2007, 07:03 AM

Further to above, I wondered whether reducing the quality of the mp3 encoding would help reduce the jumpyness...? (I don't know what to expect theoretically)

I took the same track and encoded at as 128 kbps (instead of 160 kbps), ie.

Code:

[TiVo [p2] /hack/ohm]# madplay --downsample --no-dither -v U2-BeautifulDay_128.mp3
<snip>
output: using output sample frequency 22050 Hz
output: sample frequency 22050 Hz not available; closest 32000 Hz
output: resampling 22050 Hz to 32000 Hz
 00:00:10 Layer III, 128 kbps, 44100 Hz, joint stereo (MS), no CRC
[TiVo [p2] /hack/ohm]# madplay --downsample --no-dither -v U2-BeautifulDay_160.mp3
<snip>
output: using output sample frequency 22050 Hz
output: sample frequency 22050 Hz not available; closest 32000 Hz
output: resampling 22050 Hz to 32000 Hz
 00:00:10 Layer III, 160 kbps, 44100 Hz, joint stereo (MS), no CRC

Having played these files each several times, I haven't noticed any consistent reduction in jumpyness.

I did a similar thing for output sampling rate (setting it to 32000 Hz before encoding). Again, no marked difference...

Should the quality and/or out rate be expected to help with the jump issue?

cwaring · 10-11-2007, 08:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mikerr

Sorry to go OT, but that's an iteresting screen-shot mike, and one I don't understand at all

Firstly, either the dates are all wrong or you have stuff from January on your Tivo that hasn't been deleted automatically yet!
Secondly, "Click" isn't on at that time!
Finally, is that the episode titles within the "Roswell" and "Star Trek" entries? I assume that's a hack of some sort?

Just curious

TCM2007 · 10-11-2007, 09:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cwaring

Sorry to go OT, but that's an iteresting screen-shot mike, and one I don't understand at all

Firstly, either the dates are all wrong or you have stuff from January on your Tivo that hasn't been deleted automatically yet!
Secondly, "Click" isn't on at that time!
Finally, is that the episode titles within the "Roswell" and "Star Trek" entries? I assume that's a hack of some sort?

Just curious

It's the "Sort Now Playing Alphabetically" hack - there's a thread on it round here somewhere.

cwaring · 10-11-2007, 11:00 AM

You sure? They're already in date order on Tivo, and that doesn't explain either of the other two oddities

mikerr · 10-11-2007, 11:08 AM

Yes, the sort now showing hack works by pre-sorting titles and then setting dates in ascending order.

In the screenshot above, the shows are in alphabetical order (apart from the one still recording)

Have a look:
http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb...d.php?t=367247
..and it also adds episode titles if you choose.