One of my home computers exports lot of music over Samba (everything as one share). In next room I have HiFi system where I like to play some of them. So I decided that N810 (or even 770) should be enough for it.
Default Media Player
Simple application with support for simple media library (internal flash, memory cards and Internet links). Playing from my Samba collection is possible but require adding files (no way to add folders) so playing more then one album can be real PITA as file requester always starts in “Documents” folder instead of last selected one.
Canola2
Nice looking application with support for simple media library (one folder in internal flash, memory cards and Internet links). No Samba support at all.
UKMP
No idea does it supports Samba or not — after installation is just told “no albums found, bye”. I wonder how people are supposed to use it… Maybe it require “faking” some albums before first start… I have to admit that I have no idea — UKMP homepage contains release notes not documentation rather.
Also it’s post installation script do very nasty things:
rm /media/mmc1/covers/songlist.txt
rm /media/mmc2/covers/songlist.txt
rm /media/mmc1/covers/*.avi.jpg
cp /usr/bin/MediaCenter.py /usr/bin/MediaCenter
cp /usr/bin/uktube.py /usr/bin/uktube
cp /usr/bin/ukmp.py /usr/bin/ukmp
rm /usr/bin/MediaCenter.pyc
chmod a+x /usr/bin/MediaCenter
chmod a+x /usr/bin/uktube
chmod a+x /usr/bin/ukmp
rm /media/mmc1/covers/songlist.txt
rm /media/mmc2/covers/songlist.txt
rm /media/mmc1/covers/*.avi.jpg
For me this is good example of “I do not have idea how to build package” and “I do not care about users data”.
Kagu
Simple(?) interface, no possibility to tell where to check for media files…
MPD based streaming
Other solution is streaming from Samba machine (with “mpd” for example) and then playing stream with even default media player. But then I would have to use two programs just to be able to play songs (one to control “mpd” and second for playing stream). I did not tested this way (yet).
Local mounting music collection
I can probably install smbfs and smbmount packages (or rather build and install) and then play from “local filesystem”.
Other way is use of FUSE to mount Samba shares but (as usual) fuse packages are not available for Maemo.
And what will happen when shares will be not available? None of those players will know that it was remote folder and will probably poll() it for updates…
Summary
Nice device but still no media player which will be able to play my media directly.
Arghhhh…