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  #1  
Old 2005-05-14, 09:36 PM
azcoyote azcoyote is offline
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Thumbs up Roku Photobridge now supports SHN and FLAC

Finally, the day has come where I no longer have to burn my SHN and FLAC concert recordings to audio discs or convert to MP3 in order to play them through my home stereo system! I can play my SHN/FLAC's directly thanks to my Roku Photobridge digital media player! For those who haven't heard of the Roku Photobridge, it's a digital media device which allows you to view your digital photos and MPEG-2 video (including ripped DVD VOB's) through your tv set in resolutions up to 1080i (for those with HDTV sets), and plays back digital music files through your stereo. At $299, the Photobridge is a cheaper alternative to building a home theater PC. And much quieter as it doesn't have a fan. Photobridge has slots for CompactFlash, SD/MMC and Memory Stick cards. And it'll access digital photos, video and audio files directly from your PC hard drives via network shares if you have a home network. It has a built-in wired Ethernet port and a USB port for wireless 802.11b adapters. It'll also work with a 802.11g bridge connected to it's Ethernet port. The Photobridge runs on Linux and is completely hacker-friendly, allowing 3rd party developers to write apps for it.

I keep all my digital media files (JPEG's, MP3's, ripped DVD VOB's, SHN, FLAC, etc) stored on a network-attached 250GB USB 2.0 drive using a Linksys NSLU2 adapter. My Photobridge is able to access all the files on this networked drive, so I don't have to keep my PC running constantly.

Out of the box, the Photobridge music player app supports MP3 and WAV audio. The MP3 support was a major reason I bought the Photobridge over a year ago. It allowed me to go completely digital with my music collection. I ripped all my audio cd's to high-quality VBR MP3's and now play all my music through the Photobridge. CD's are in storage. However, up until now the Photobridge didn't support other audio formats, especially lossless formats like SHN and FLAC. The newest beta of the Photobridge system firmware now supports audio codec plugins. And they've added built-in support for unprotected Apple AAC files. A 3rd party developer has already written codec plugins for FLAC and SHN. I upgraded to the latest system firmware today and installed the FLAC and SHN codecs. They work great!! Right now I'm listening to the 5/12 U2 Chicago show I just downloaded today in SHN format through my home stereo using the Photobridge. No glitches in the playback so far. And it's nearly gapless playback, too. Just a very short and barely noticeable gap.

If you'd like to read more about the Photobridge, the link to the website is
http://www.rokulabs.com/products/pho...e/PBModels.php

I'd also recommend reading the message forum there,
http://www.rokulabs.com/forums/ The Third-Party Applications board is where you'll find the SHN/FLAC plugins and other cool apps that have been written for it.

Last edited by azcoyote; 2005-05-14 at 09:48 PM.
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Old 2005-05-15, 05:47 PM
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Re: Roku Photobridge now supports SHN and FLAC

WOW! That is amazing.
I'm in need of New Everything.
Sounds fabulous!

Cheers
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  #3  
Old 2005-05-16, 05:33 PM
ssamadhi97's Avatar
ssamadhi97 ssamadhi97 is offline
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Re: Roku Photobridge now supports SHN and FLAC

Quote:
Originally Posted by azcoyote
And it's nearly gapless playback, too. Just a very short and barely noticeable gap.
Oh geez, just when I started to be interested in it.. :[
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  #4  
Old 2005-05-16, 06:05 PM
azcoyote azcoyote is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Re: Roku Photobridge now supports SHN and FLAC

The gap is barely noticeable. A few milliseconds at the most. Nothing like the gaps you hear when listening to music on an iPod for instance. Roku's developers do plan on tweaking the gap further so that the transitions are completely seamless. The new firmware is still in beta, so there's still time for them to fix it before the official release this summer.
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