I've been thinking recently about how my ideal media setup would work. This post describes that, and I'd very much appreciate hearing everyone else's comments on what you think of the setup, to what extent it can be achieved using existing software, and how best to proceed to add whatever pieces are missing from existing software.

My starting point is the Media Server / Media Streamer approach. It makes a lot of sense to me to have a central media repository on one computer, and to stream from that to playback devices, including the 770, elsewhere.

The key thing missing from this, however, is support for caching media on the playback device so that it can be viewed when offline. This can of course be managed and implemented separately, but I think it would be very nice to integrate it with the Server/Streamer approach. To give a more precise idea of what I have in mind ...

- In Media Streamer, it should be possible to select an item, or a directory, and then choose a "Make Available Offline" action from a menu.

- Media Streamer would maintain the list of offline items, so that the info is not lost when the app is closed and restarted.

- Another menu action "Update Offline Cache" would then do something like:

- send a message to the Media Server telling it the set of offline items, which the Media Server should process by preparing a shadow directory tree of items copied (or linked) from the main repository, then respond "offline tree ready"

- use rsync to update the offline tree on the 770 from that on the Media Server.

- When an offline tree is present on the playback device, Media Streamer should offer to play items from this tree as well as from any servers that it finds.

In addition to this offline feature, my requirements are that I'd like the overall setup to cover video and images as well as audio, for the audio support to include Ogg as well as MP3, and that I'd like all of the components to be free software.

Based on the free software point, I've been looking so far at Media Streamer and GMediaServer. I've had success with MP3s, but none so far with images, ogg or video. I think this is all as expected, except for images, which I believe are supposed to be supported now by Media Streamer. But in any case, I assume all these are just a "simple matter of code" and will be worked out soon enough.

What about the offline cache idea though? Do you agree that this is a good way to go? If so, do you happen to know whether Media Streamer and GMediaServer would be receptive to patches to implement this approach?

All comments gratefully received!

- Neil