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Good morning Guys,
Still no Beoport around, it happens more difficult than I thought to get the one I saw.
Anyway, I’m still playing with LinkPlayer, since there is not much you can do with BM-link alone and because BM-link needs an Audiomaster which make it (nowadays) not very useful outside an extended Masterlink network.
First: registration.
Linkplayer 1 was a paid product that needed a registration through the eSellerate (won’t comment on the meaning of this in French…) process. Today eSellerate servers are down or not working and you can not register the app anymore. LP1 still launch and work but I read that after an hour it stops working. I didn’t go that far so I can’t tell.
At a certain point, LP1 became free, you just needed to ask for a free license activation.
So I think sharing it would not be piracy. In any cas you can’t because the registration process is down and it rely on an unique installation ID linked with the machine you install it on. In a nutshell, as far as I know, LP1 can not be used anymore.LP2 was launched as a Beta and never make it to release. It works and the registration part is greyed out. You’ll find plenty on intel on BW2 in which this extensive feedback thread.
Let’s play now:
LP2 is an old software and lots of things have moved on aesthetically since then. It is also an amazing piece of software and I suppose PhilLondon (thank you Phil, if you’re around…) had more to work on than concentrate on graphics.
Anyway, I pimped it up to my tastes:Program icon:
N.RADIO graphic:
A.AUX graphic:
CD graphic:
I may need to adjust some designs, but it looks better.
Usage:
LP2 is remote controlled with the Apple remote. There is no control on volume (it always stays at 00, but I can hear music through the Mac speaker. The sound is not chopped anymore. I hope than with a Beoport connected, I will gain volume control and volume display.I have set up 4 sources:
CD (as shown above): it works and load album and track names. Problem is that I dont know how to eject the CD after playing it. Even if I go on the computer desktop to eject it manually computer refuses because it is “used by Linkplayer”. Not a big deal.A.AUX (as shown above): from the sound input of the Mac mini. I believe you can set it up to any sound input card handled by the system, like maybe USB RIAA preamp.
N.RADIO (as shown above): it relies on a playlist in iTunes. Unless I didnt’ did it well, it can be a little confusing because if you have other playlist based on music files (like Christmas songs, cocktail time music, etc…) they are considered as radios. I’ve also to entries that are IP adresses I can’t get rid of, are not on iTunes and are silent.
Biggest problem with radios is that sometimes (I haven’t be able to make it consistent), channels dont stop when your going from one to the other, they just stack up on each other creating a slowly increasing mix of echoes and you have to quit and relaunch to stop this.N.MUSIC (as shown above): It reads your iTune library. When you launch LP2 it launch iTunes and scan the library.
Then if you hit play, it starts to play the first album of your playlist but I can’t really tell based on what: artist name, album name, song name.
Data is correctly displayed in a very well chosen font (actually well ahead of B&O itself since it his very close to the Gotham font the brand use now).You can choose red/blue/yellow/green mode which allows you to respectively browse Genres/Playlists/Albums/Artists. With the Apple remote it’s a sequence of key, hopefully direct access from the beo4.
In the preference you affect the virtual sources to the real things that are connected to your system.
You can also choose “menu” like in for the PC entry at the bottom of the window.
That will open a window to choose other options:These options will the appear to control iTunes directly from LP2.
I think playing through LP or remote controlling iTunes is related with DRM but I can’t say.Web allows to browse the web, but the computer being old and safari as well, you’re not gonna go very far! (That iTunes icon need to be pimped too.)
Bottom line for today:
This is quite fun to play with this but I don’t know if it is really useful. It is unusable without screen and even as a standalone system like I planned to use it (Mac mini+Beoport+BL3500), that would mean powering a little of stuff to do what a bluetooth speaker and a phone do, or for Masterlink users, a single wireless receiver on AUX.IN.Anyway, I will still looking for a tiny, 7″ or 10″ screen for the Mac mini.
Not sure it will happen something new until I get a Beoport.
Hope this useless yougtimer review will be useful for someone and again, thank you Phil wherever you are!
