Jukebox projects - Anyone?
Whether it's for the gameroom... the living room... or the "man cave"... you've probably wanted a juke. I know it's been a wish for me for a long time.
But those full-size jukes can get a bit overwhelming trying to carry them around... especially if you have to go up or down stairs with them. And the price? Wow. And then there are the parts and service. Nice for collectors... but...
In the last few weeks, I've been comparing a number of mp3 jukebox programs for the PC. I've finally settled in on one, and I'm completely enjoying it.
One of my wishes was to interface it with a touchscreen. And that narrowed down the choices pretty fast. I didn't want a mouse-point and click player... been there, have those. I wanted something that had screen buttons big enough to use a touchscreen interface. And something powerful enough to be customized to my liking (skinning as well as button options).
I tried the PC Jukebox, RockBox, and VMJ (Virtual Music Jukebox). VMJ was winning the competition, until the bugs started to surface. What a pain it is to re-structure hundreds of files and their tags when it burped. Known bugs simply weren't being addressed.
Then I found NordBeat Jukebox, and downloaded the demo here.
It would have been a breeze to setup and configure, had I not been "programmed" by the other software to have a tight "structure" in my music files. This program didn't really care... just point it to where you ripped your files, and let it add songs to it's own database. Yup... database. Reports! Scripts!! Tweakable!!! Once I realized that, it has been a joy.
Built-in ripper, Bar mode, Kiosk mode, Admin mode... and (very cool) remote administration via a web browser.
The default skin is cool... but checking the fourms there, I found a skin that looks and acts great on my new HARDWARE toy... a 19" Planar touchscreen LCD.
It's a Wurlitzer look... RockAha instead of RockOla.
(see attached pics)
Even though the author (and helpers) are primarily German speaking (author is in Switzerland), there has been no problem communicating with them.
Now it's just a question of if I want to leave this on my main PC, or build a custom box for it.
If you've got your own juke for the gameroom or whatever... let us know what you're using. I know some of the guys that are into Mame mentioned it once or twice. Anyone else?
Here's the pics of the skin I'm currently using with NBJ. (Looks MUCH better at the proper resolution).
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