...Subsonic. Is. Awesome.
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Okay, a little more detail here - WSE2012's built-in media server is okay, but it's reliant on Silverlight, which crashes regularly on my machines. And it doesn't support playlists (at least, not easily) - really? A modern media server/player that doesn't support playlists?!? Really? So, as an experiment, I downloaded and installed Plex Media Server, and installed corresponding media center on one of my client machines. It got the majority of votes (by a lot) in a recent LifeHacker poll about the best home media server software, so I thought I'd try it. The interface is slick, it really is, especially with regard to how they handle video content. But, even on my home network, I got lots of stuttering while watching a movie through Plex - so much so, that I had to switch to playing the movie locally - it was that bad. And guess what? They also have little-to-no support for playlists...now I'm seriously starting to get annoyed. Listening to the music that I want, in the order that I want it, should be easy, not hard! It shouldn't be tied to its organization in the file system, but rather how I choose to organize it. How hard can this be?!?
So, I then installed Subsonic. And I fell in love. Playlist support? Check. Movie streaming? Check (with the upgrade to premium). Simple and flexible interface? Check. It saves your current queue when you log out (so that it's still there when you log back in), and gives multi-user support, with a section in the interface devoted to showing which users are playing what music. Wow!
Subsonic doesn't have DNLA support, as far as I can see, but with a web interface as robust as it is, it almost doesn't need DNLA support...
I'm a real fan...and it's only been a couple of days...
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