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Using PHP/Database for home entertainment system
Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 9:26 pm
by Mobius Man
Is it possible to rig PHP, and say MYSQL, on an entertainment system, and use a database to organzie music and video listings. I think it could work a lot better than folers upon folders. Is something like this even possible.
Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 10:02 pm
by Straterra
Anything is possible.
Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 10:43 pm
by lazy_yogi
Haha .. useful comment.
Exactly what do you want it to do
Just organise a list of where everything is in your computer
Or info on each album and song ?
Or to actually play something ?
Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 2:51 am
by Mobius Man
It would be cool to have it organzie it (be it music or video). Then you would be able to play it (make a link to the file or something).
Posted: Mon Jan 12, 2004 9:35 pm
by Pyrite
Sure.
I saw a link off IMDB the other day to some guy's php/database for his home entertainment computer, so he could browse his dvd collection and play them from the web interface. He was using Linux though.
Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 7:59 am
by dave420
I've done it with windows. I have a firewire disk with a bunch of divxs and vcds on. I downloaded the IMDB database and using AMDBFront converted it to a local MySQL db. I wrote a script that could scan through my library of films and determine (using fuzzy searching) the real, accurate titles (and years) for each film. The script then went through renaming the directories, clearing up poorly-named films, and cleaning house. I made a web interface that included a script to find the covers for the movies from the internet. When it was all done, I could use the wireless mouse/keyboard combo to cue up films. I wrote the code to play AVIs/MPEGs, and mount VCDs as virtual drives and cue them up for playing in my favourite player (zoom player). It supported networked locations of movies, so it can be used over a LAN to stream movies to a whole house. The interface even had reviews, ratings, run-times and certificates.
Check out the IMDB database for download, and AMDBFront. It lets you have the whole IMDB (or as much as u want) on your computer.
I do something similar for my MP3s, but off my iPod. It has a web interface so I can stream it across our home network, or from the office (via a SSH tunnel to my work PC). You can browse the artists/albums/songs, and cue them up. Click "play" and it opens an m3u file in winamp (or whatever plays m3us on the computer), and streams the songs. Using the iTunesDB file on the ipod, the code knows exactly what song is being played. The code can even dump out the entire music collection (or bits thereof) to the hard disk from the ipod, tagged with the information from the itunes database file.
ANYTHING is possible using PHP.

Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 12:44 pm
by PrObLeM
impressive...
Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 4:54 pm
by McGruff
Sounds like there's an interesting php programming article there dave...
Posted: Thu May 13, 2004 5:12 pm
by tim
i definately second thee above.
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 3:51 am
by dave420
article? for which site? I'd love to share some of the experience I've gained from getting PHP to do stuff I'm too lazy to do

Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 3:54 am
by JayBird
An article for here. If its good, we'll sticky it somewhere.
Mark
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 4:25 am
by dave420
but about which part? there's a lot of ground covered, and it's too much for one, surely...
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 4:31 am
by JayBird
We are information junkies, never too much
Split it down into what you think. I for one am interested in everything you said in you main post in this thread.
Mark
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 5:48 am
by dave420
I'll jot down some ideas
thanks for all the encouragement!
Posted: Fri May 14, 2004 5:50 am
by JayBird
When you have something down PM it to me and we'll do something special with it
Mark