Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Internet to TV

This is the age of parallel processing.

Multiple firefox profile running simultaneously (--no-remote / MOZ_NO_REMOTE=1).
Multiple tabs opened in yakuake.
Multiple CPUs (one for dealing with flash/firefox, other for life).
Now added, multiple sound outputs from computer.

I have one pair of speakers which I use in the dining area. Helps me get past barely edibles.

My work area has now moved close to the TV. This TV has HDMI (and is DLNA-compatible), so it made perfect sense to me when the geeky fairy whispered something about using the TV speakers for listening to Magic 106.7FM, Jango and Youtubish songs off of my not-so-great-sounding laptop. minidlna doesn't quite stream non-file contents, so I was left with pleading ALSA to let specially chosen audio to be routed for TV@dBera via HDMI.

$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 3: INTEL HDMI [INTEL HDMI]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
$ cat > ~/.asoundrc.tv
pcm.!default {
    type plug
    slave {
        pcm {
            type hw
            card 0
            device 3
        }
    }
}
$ ALSA_CONFIG_PATH=~/.asoundrc.tv firefox -P music -no-remote

Hitting the right button on the TV remote sets its Energy Saving to Picture Off. Voila! I just got myself an awesome pair of speakers.

Edit: If you get no sound, make sure the IEC958 interface is unmuted (you can check/set/unset using alsamixer). IEC958 is the interface for digital output for a lot of soundcards.