I finally got my home digital music solution implemented. You’ll need:
- one 20inch Apple iMac
- iTunes
- FrontRow
- Logitech Harmony 880 Remote Control
- A sound system with a receiver that supports digital music input (e.g. an Onkyo TX-SR674 7.1 Channel Up-Converting A/V Receiver
Three key things make this work:
- the iMac screen is big enough to be used across the room when running FrontRow
- you can have FrontRow stream music to an airport express, just start iTunes first and point it to use the remote speaker at your airport express location
- the Harmony remote knows about the Apple remote IR signals
This is what you need to do:
- Rip all music to apple lossless encoding for high quality sound
- program a “digital music” activity on the Logitech Harmony remote to control both the iMac and also the receiver (more later)
- connect the airport express (I am running it wirelessly) to the receiver using digital output
- start iTunes first, and point the speaker to the airport express remote speaker
- Now you can use the harmony remote to control the FrontRow software from a distance, and control the sound volume on the receiver at the same time
Programming the Harmony Remote
The Logitech software knows about the iMac remote. You need to create a “digital music” activity and select the receiver for controlling the volume, and select “multimedia PC (iMac)” as the source of music.
I change the button assignments so that the “cursor pad” on the remote matches the apple remote. I remap the following buttons:
- “up/down” buttons (not up/down arrow) to “imac:volume up” and “imac:volume down”
- “left/right” to “imac:rewind” and “imac:fast-forward”
- “ok” to “imac:play”
