[P]

I'm considering an LG home cinema system that boasts USB host functionality, including the ability to read MP3s from an MP3-player. I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this sort of thing:

* Does it work at all with the iPod?
* If yes, I assume that it will require me to reformat my (4G) iPod to Windows FAT (ie setup for Windows). Will it still work with the Mac? (iMac G5, Tiger). I seem to remember that it should.
* Will the ID3 tags work?

I realise that it may be hard to state anything general about some of these, but I'm interested in any experience you may have with USB host features on sound systems.

[Dork.]

My guess would be no, although I have never even heard of these systems until today, so take my advice with as much salt as you like.

If it can read MP3's from an MP3 player, it is probably mounting the MP3 player as a hard drive and scanning its contents. IIRC, the iPod deliberately hides and obfuscates the names of the directories where it stores its MP3 files to make it more difficult to extract. At least, it works that way on my 1G iPod. So, in order for this system to work with an iPod, it would have to surf through these hidden directories to find the MP3 files, sort them properly since they're not stored by artist or album but as random individual files scattered across 20 directories, and it won't have any playlist information, since that is kept elsewhere. I haven't kept up with the file structure on the newer iPods, it may be even harder. And, of course, it isn't able to play songs from the iTMS, at least not legally. Assuming it could find the files, however, the ID3 info is kept with the file.

What would probably work, however, is if you took some of your MP3 files and moved them onto the iPod as data. The iPod wouldn't play those files, but your system should see them. In fact, I would ditch the hooking-the-iPod-up idea altogether and see if you can score a cheap USB HD that would work with the system. Just load it up with your music, and let 'er rip!

[icruise]

The iPod really isn't a good choice if this is something that you want to do very often. Dork is right in that the iPod has two completely separate "volumes" -- one is used by the iPod to store music and the other is used for storing data when you access the iPod as a hard disk. If you plug the iPod into a computer or other device, only the "hard drive" part will be accessible unless you use some sort of special software to access the music part. So you would have to put the music files on that section, which means that you wouldn't be able to actually play them on the iPod -- kind of defeats the purpose, in my opinion.

There are plenty of MP3 players that just use a "files and folders" approach to music management and that would probably work with your system.

[P]

I thought that the music was simply in a hidden directory on the main drive of the iPod. Never fiddled with it, but now that I did, I found a directory "iPod_Control" with the music in it. Playing one song off it right now, in fact - in Quicktime. Seems to working, and the ID3-tags are present. What is missing is my playlists, and the folder organization seems arbitrary, but the files ARE there. Remains to be seen how well that works in practice. It is noted that this feature also works with cameras, so most likely it's just reading the disc. Wonder if it works with movies?

Using a USB drive did strike me as an option. I'll see if I find one at a decent price, but I don't intend to buy an MP3-player to my existing home cinema, I'm considering getting a home cinema system that may also (as a bonus, because that is not its main feature) be compatible with the iPod that I already own. More of a question because I'm interested than one that will influence my buying decision.

I don't expect protected iTunes files to be playable. Converting them to a playable format is still legal under Swedish law (around here, you are permitted to circumvent copy protection on files you legally own if you cannot otherwise play the files, if you have special needs, for research etc - you just can't pass those files on) if I want to.

[P]

dupe

[icruise]

That directory is not visible unless you enable viewing of invisible files in the finder or Windows explorer. The folder wouldn't be visible to a device like the one you were talking about. There's probably a way to permanently turn off the "invisible" attribute for those folders, but you're still faced with the problem that, as you say, the file names are just random strings of letters, and if memory serves me songs from the same album aren't even kept in the same folder. So even if the device was able to see these files, actually finding a particular song would be pretty much impossible.

[P]

Clarification: The FILENAMES are OK, it's the names of the FOLDERS that are random. The ID3 tags are also still there. We'll see, it looks like I'll buy it.