Just a quick build for a client to play nice music

Now that I have minimserver working well and have found sensible playback software, here's a quick note on a basic build for a client to act as a upnp renderer with optional control and chrome installed for netflix access.

• Straight build from memory stick of Ubuntu desktop 14.04
• update from internet off and include 3rd party software on
• add in video card proprietary drivers to taste

Using upplay as a control point and upmpdcli as a renderer, this in turn uses mpd to do the heavy work. Mpd is in standard repositories (even a fairly recent version!) so to get mpd and a few other dependencies....

sudo apt-get install python-qt4 python-pyparsing python-mutagen python-configobj mpd

• and add in the repository for upmpdcli and upplay as described here and install them

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jean-francois-dockes/upnpp1
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install upplay upmpdcli

• edit /etc/upmpdcli.conf to set a suitable name for the renderer - 'specially if you're doing this on more than one machine.

This worked fine on 2 machines, but on the third there was no sound. As other things (like youtube) worked fine, it looks like mpd doesn't necessarily follow the sound settings in Ubuntu's system settings. Quite easy to fix though, I consulted the output from aplay -L. This PC connects to the hifi with an S/PDIF cable...

iec958:CARD=SB,DEV=0
    HDA ATI SB, ALC892 Digital
    IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

so I amended /etc/mpd.conf and told it to use this device like this:

audio_output {
        type            "alsa"
        name            "My ALSA Device"
        device          "iec958"
#       device          "hw:0,0"        # optional
#       mixer_type      "hardware"      # optional
#       mixer_device    "default"       # optional
#       mixer_control   "PCM"           # optional
#       mixer_index     "0"             # optional
}

and all was well. I did try "hw:1,0" first but it didn't seem to like that....

And finally, getting netflix running these days just requires installing Chrome browser (NOT chromium), and those nive people at google have set up a repository, which you set up as described here.

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | sudo apt-key add -

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list' 

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install google-chrome-stable

Now run it up and login....