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Omissions From Our Jukebox

As I said at the outset, the jukebox was designed with our specific requirements in mind. There are many features of other jukeboxes that have been omitted, either because we didn't want them or they were too difficult to implement.

  • Our jukebox doesn't do video, photographs, or Internet radio, as some commercial jukebox hardware does. We don't have any interest in those media.
  • There is no "multi-zone" capability (as such: but see page Update: The Third PC of Our Jukebox), which would allow different music to be selected and played in different rooms. We don't have enough interest in that to make it an idea worth pursuing, though I can't think of any reason why it shouldn't be possible as a natural extension of the existing design. For a two-room system there would need to be a second sound card in the server PC, a second copy of Winamp installed in a different directory, and an extra "Tab" on the remote control to allow the zone to be selected. The selected zone name would be stored in a cookie.
  • There is no volume control on the jukebox remote control. It wouldn't be hard to do (the facilities are there in Winamp and httpQ), but as our amplifiers already have perfectly good remote controls with volume buttons, there doesn't seem a lot of point.
  • There's no "Repeat" facility — it's not something we'd ever use.
  • There's no "Shuffle Play" facility — the "Lucky Dip" tab works better for us.
  • There are none of the "visualisations" that most PC jukeboxes offer.
  • There's no facility for compiling or storing sequences of tracks as "playlists" — it not something we'd have any use for.
  • There are no security or user access features, because the server operates behind an effective firewall.