Setting up a dirt cheap laptop as a media player

[hal55]

The school where I work was upgrading student PCs and selling off the old ones for $40. They are HP 65630bs, a useful little machine with a 160gb hard drive, 2.66 Core 2 processor but only 2 gig of ram. I'll be using it primarily for what I call "low fidelity night" where I play youtube clips and similar. Actually a lot of fun. The machine just needs to output the digital code to my Lite Dac60 via a MF USB to optical converter. I've previously used Foobar in other setups and though it's ok I've never really grown fond of it. Any suggestions for something like Foobar that would be well suited to a budget machine and that, when I tell it I need 16/44 minimum output, will also take over Windows sound settings so I don't have to go over the hurly burly of changing Windows settings as well and back again. Also, which has better 320kb libraries - itunes or Spotify?

Thanks ,

Hal55

[monkfish]

Mediamonkey would be an option, I ran it on an old 486 PC with no probs, both Itunes and Spotify are using lossy files.

[StanleyB]

The HP 65630B can take up to 8Gig of memory. So you can do a lot more than what your initial intentions are.
You can also hunt for a Creative X-Fi Express card with an optical output. I got one spare if you can't track one down locally. It is far more convenient than a USB to optical adapter since you can leave it plugged in when taking the laptop on the road.

I converted on of my VAIO laptops that way. I replaced the hard disk with a 240G SSD drive for the operating system and media programs. I then bought one of those adapters that allows you to swap the internal CD drive for a HD caddy. The caddy has a 1TB hard disk to hold all my music and films. A quick right click on a music file and I can stream it to my HIFI, or a right click on a film and I can stream it to my TV. And all done wireless.

So don't just look at the HP as a simple music player. You can go to town with it as far as using it as a media player is concerned.

[hal55]

They sound pretty serious upgrades Stanley, I'll check them out. An extra terrabyte of storage sounds really good.

Hal55

[hal55]

Haven't had a lot of time to play with this setup but have been pretty happy with what I've head so far. One album I've played from a USB stick straight off uncompressed WAV actually seemed better and more natural than the CD it came from. Odd, I wasn't expecting that. Don't know if it wil hold true for all albums but it was a surprising start. Also not sure if JRiver will be staying as the default player. It sounds fine but there is a degree of crackling thru the speakers, not major but enough to be noticeable and it's not there when I use plain old Windows media Player.
What is being a big pain is trying to play the 720p versions of Youtube songs. My interconnect connection can't quite keep up so it stops and buffers during the song which defeats the whole purpose of listening in the first place. I've tried to check out software that can record Youtube to the HDD but as always there is a stack of contradictory opinion and many of the treads are so old they can hardly be counted as current anyway. I need the 720p versions since I use a projector and everything from 480 down inclusive just looks crappy on screen.
Any suggestions for an easy to use non geeky software utility?

(Also Stan, really see the logic in upgrading the player with a second HDD now, the convenience of everything in one place is really desirable)

Thanks,

Hal55

[steve s]

The school where I work was upgrading student PCs and selling off the old ones for $40. They are HP 65630bs, a useful little machine with a 160gb hard drive, 2.66 Core 2 processor but only 2 gig of ram. I'll be using it primarily for what I call "low fidelity night" where I play youtube clips and similar. Actually a lot of fun. The machine just needs to output the digital code to my Lite Dac60 via a MF USB to optical converter. I've previously used Foobar in other setups and though it's ok I've never really grown fond of it. Any suggestions for something like Foobar that would be well suited to a budget machine and that, when I tell it I need 16/44 minimum output, will also take over Windows sound settings so I don't have to go over the hurly burly of changing Windows settings as well and back again. Also, which has better 320kb libraries - itunes or Spotify?
Hal55

Try MusicBee .... more user and resource friendly than Foobar but still does everything you want in HD sound up to 24 bit, bypassing windows settings. and its free!

Never really got on with jRiver as I wanted a dedicated audio player. Foobar drove me up the wall, think you have to be able to write code to get the best out of it.

Steve