Wed, 03 Sep 08 - Listening to iTunes on my Intempo GX-01

I’ve had the Intempo GX-01 for a while but have only just felt the need to play my iTunes library through it. It turns out that I needed something that could share my iTunes library using the UPnP protocol. I tried a few different applications before finally settling on the excellent EyeConnect application. Although it’s commercial software it’s offered with a free 30 day trial, and, it would appear that even after the 30 days the audio sharing functionality remains free forever. Yay. It installs as a preference pane which means you can install it, configure it, set it running and then forget about it: it does what it needs to and gets out of your way. I’ve only really dabbled with it at the moment but I’m certainly impressed with what I’ve seen so far.

The alternatives (in the interest of fairness)

• Nullriver MediaLink – The first application I tried. I was immediately hooked on the simplicity and would have been more than willing to pay for it. Unfortunately, although my radio could see my iTunes library, it refused to play any music: The Intempo responded with “UPnP Internal Error 113”. It took me a while to realise that this software was specifically designed for the PS3 and I can only assume that’s the reason for the error I received.

• Allegro Media Server – This worked fine but it felt a bit kludgy. I’d guess this was because of the elegance of the Nullriver offering though.

• TwonkyMedia Media Server – As with the Allegro offering this worked fine but felt a little kludgy and over-complicated.

• XBMC – I’m afraid I only got as far as downloading, opening the application and immediately closing it. It was immediately clear that this was far too complicated for what I was after.

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