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General => Idea Exchange Lounge => : toddquinn September 01, 2011, 07:24:04 PM

: New Sorting/Search categories for DNLA Music
: toddquinn September 01, 2011, 07:24:04 PM

I have a large audio library with artists and albums in the thousands. The only options in the DNLA music interface is to search through all of the artists or all of the albums to find what I'm looking for. That can take a lot of scrolling to find even the correct part of the alphabet. I would like to see some additional "categories" added to the DNLA music menus. This idea is taken directly from a very nice Windows-based DNLA server, "Asset" by Illustrate software (web site). The nice feature of this server are the additonal "search" optons added to the DNLA music menu. Under each of the main categories (Artist, Album, Title, etc) the first entry is "[A-Z]" followed by all on the exptected individual category entries. Selecting "[A-Z]" brings up a sub-menu with each letter of the alphabet. Selecting any letter shows all items starting with that letter in the parent category. For instance, Selecting "[A-Z]" under the "Artists" category, then "B..." shows all artists that start with "B". This allows rapid searches through very large catelogs.

 

Additional, one an item is chosen through this method, the results have additional quick-search features. Back to the artist example. in today's Buffalo DNLA Music interface, if I select an artist, I see a list of all songs from that artist across all albums. There is no way to select a particular album from that artist that I want to listen to. The "Asset" DNLA server adds additonal sorting categories under the main categories - much like a cross-reference system. For instance, selecting an artist from the "[A-Z]" search under artists will show a search entry of "[albums]" followed by all of the individual tracks for the artists across all albums. Selecting the "[albums]" entry will show all albums for the artists and allow you to either play the album (in track order, not alphabetical) from there or select the album a see the individual tracks for that album.

 

Sample Menu Structure

              ...
              Z...
                      <Z artist 1>
                      <Z artist 2>
                      ...
      <artist 1>
      <artist 2>
      ...
      <last artist>