1 (edited by jasdempsey 2008-04-23 10:30:42)

Topic: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Hi everyone,

In another thread not specifically about this topic, Duane Chumbian said "I'd *love* to support iTunes sharing - unfortunately Apple has locked that system down, so it simply can't be done."  I've read similar in several other messages on the forums as well.

We all know that Apple can be a big pain in the ass to deal with sometimes, but I'm not sure that this is completely accurate.

I have a Roku Soundbridge Alarm Clock and it can be an iTunes client.  Of course it can't play .m4p DRM protected songs from the iTunes music store (that *is* locked down), but it can play .mp3 and .m4a songs in the Library.   99% of my library isn't .m4p songs, and I suspect that is true of most iTunes users.  If Roxio can do it, shouldn't Chumby be able to do it?

My TiVo can also play songs in my iTunes Library direct from the Mac, though they cheat a little bit and require you to run some extra client software on the Mac to stream the songs to the tivo.  Chumby could do something similar if they had to.

So I ask, what exactly is "locked down"?  Is it the .m4p protected songs that you are talking about?  Because I suspect that most users would be happy just being able to play the non-DRM songs intheir iTunes Library.

Thanks,

--Jim--

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Well, anything can read the iTunes XML file and access the appropriate MP3s. There are loads of different client pieces that do this, SlimServer being one. WiiTransfer being another. ShoutCast, I think. And there are loads more.

Certainly the Chumby folks could write such a server piece themselves. Whether they want or have the resources to is another question.

The Roku Soundbridge, on the other hand, looks like it functions like a true iTunes client. I'm guessing they paid a licensing fee to do so. What that cost them and what conditions may have come with it is anybodies guess.

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

The short answer why is DAAP Authentication, which is a proprietary protocol.  It would need to be licensed, which means a fee.  Roku paid the fee, or rather, you do when you buy a Soundbridge.

wayn3w

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Apparently when Apple updated the DAAP protocol with the new hash for iTunes 7, they didn't tell Roku even though they were licensed.  It took a few weeks to get them updated.  As far as I know, Apple has not licensed this protocol to any other third party, and it hasn't been successfully reverse-engineered.

5 (edited by jasdempsey 2008-04-23 11:30:49)

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Interesting.  Thanks for cluing me in, Tommy, wayn3w and Duane.

I confirmed (through web searching) that Roku did apparently license the DAAP protocol.  I also read (though it wasn't 100% clear) that Apple no longer licenses DAAP.  If that is true, it would be much harder, if not legally impossible for Chumby to play iTunes shared music.

This, in particular is interesting: http://nanocr.eu/2007/02/07/daap-licensing/

Of course they could still do it using the tivo method, with a client on the iTunes machine.

Thanks,

--Jim--

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

jasdempsey wrote:

Of course they could still do it using the tivo method, with a client on the iTunes machine.

If you want to go that way, Chumby already supports streams output by lots of clients that do it that way. Read up on NiceCast, SqueezeCenter etc

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Problem is you cant control Squeeze directly from the chumby all that well... Same DRM/Restriction problem.. The Chumby is not treated as a full Squeezebox client and has DRM restrictions placed on it as well (many squeezebox plug-ins just will not work) .. Heh id love to see an Airtunesesque solution... Dummy audio driver for windows that pipes *ALL* audio to a chumby over TCP/IP... mebby bypass Kmixer and some of the system audio... I presume it would be possible to do something similar for the mac..

8 (edited by Cecilia 2008-04-24 07:06:57)

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

jasdempsey wrote:

Interesting.  Thanks for cluing me in, Tommy, wayn3w and Duane.

I confirmed (through web searching) that Roku did apparently license the DAAP protocol.  I also read (though it wasn't 100% clear) that Apple no longer licenses DAAP.  If that is true, it would be much harder, if not legally impossible for Chumby to play iTunes shared music.

This, in particular is interesting: http://nanocr.eu/2007/02/07/daap-licensing/

Of course they could still do it using the tivo method, with a client on the iTunes machine.

Thanks,

--Jim--

I followed some links from your link above and came across this: http://www.snorp.net/log/daap-sharp/
"daap-sharp is a library for consuming and publishing DAAP (Digital Audio Access Protocol) music shares. This is the protocol Apple iTunes uses for music sharing. It relies on the excellent Avahi for mDNS functionality, and can optionally use mDNSResponder for cross-platform operation."

There was also this one: http://www.snorp.net/log/tangerine/
"angerine is an application that allows you to publish music over the local network, using DAAP. It runs on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. There are several clients that you can then use to connect to it, such as Apple’s iTunes, Banshee, and Rhythmbox."

I'm still learning all of this stuff, but it sure looks interesting, no?

Vice President of Duane's Chumby Buddies Inc, Pro-Clock faction                       Clocks are life; we all expire sometime.
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2565

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

There are plenty of DAAP clients and servers around.  However, there are no non-Apple clients that work with iTunes 7 shares, which is what people seem to want.

If people find it acceptable to install and run *another* DAAP server on their computers, then I suppose we'd consider adding some level of client support.

We have talked about this quite extensively at Chumby - to date, we've felt it would be too confusing to claim support for DAAP while being unable to support the single most popular DAAP-based application, iTunes.

Both of the programs you listed are written in C#, which means we'd have to first support Mono, which is too big to fit in our device.  Fortunately, there are several other lighter weight programs out there.

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

If I were skilled in Java and Flash, I'd whip up a small Java app that consumed the iTunes XML and fed out songs based on commands sent from a Flash client.

But I'm not, so I won't.

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Sorry, Duane, I'm a newbie here.  I didn't mean to confuse the issue.  I'm still reading and reading and reading some more to try to figure out what all the parts are and how they fit together.  Obviously, I have a steep learning curve.

Personally, I don't like iTunes and don't have it installed at all.  I have my music on a UPnP NAS, I organize with MediaMonkey, and use that to play them from my laptop or XBMC.  Maybe that's not advanced enough for some people, but iTunes just kinda creeps me out.

As a total unrelated aside, I was just thinking that XBMC does cdg/karaoke really poorly, so I usually end up reverting to the laptop, but it would be really cool if cdg (Karaoke lyrics) could be displayed on Chumby.

Vice President of Duane's Chumby Buddies Inc, Pro-Clock faction                       Clocks are life; we all expire sometime.
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2565

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

I'm very curious -- could it be that there is an evolutionary change in the Chumby -- that as an alarm clock it mostly needs the needs of the user base, and now the music playing capabilities are being explored and enhanced?  Recent forum aricles seem to indicate this.

As an alarm, it was pretty music self-sufficient -- as long as ssomething was at least URL addressable and reliable, you can set up any number of alarms and do a number of functions.  With the Chumby as a music client, we're now dependent on having a companion server.

I'll ask a different question and hope that it helps us.  What streaming media server works very well with the Chumby?  It seems lots of ones covered in the forum has issues.
* itunes -- proprietary
* SlimServer -- difficult to write a navigation system because of its architectural design. A resource hog, too, in my opinion.
* ShoutCast -- tricky to set up.

What about others?  Icecast?  gnump3d?

wayn3w

Re: But why can't Chumby be an iTunes client?

Hi Wayne, I agree with your summary.  I think in my case my favorite radio station broadcasts in windows media, which as we all know is not available with Chumby.  So I started looking into client stuff so that maybe a client could pick up my station and then Chumby would play with the client, if that makes sense.  Someone mentioned doing that with Slimserver/SqueezeServer or whatever it's currently called, which is on my NAS but (probably due to my newbie-ness) I can't seem to get that going properly.

But yeah, the idea of playing my music collection from my NAS is really cool too.

Vice President of Duane's Chumby Buddies Inc, Pro-Clock faction                       Clocks are life; we all expire sometime.
http://forum.chumby.com/viewtopic.php?id=2565