Disklavier

Tom,

Thanks for your kind words.  It is appreciated.

It's funny that you mention how useless the tablet is.  I agree with you completely.  So much so that I already began the research to find out if I can get DKVBrowser running on it.  There is incredibly little information out there on this hitachi tablet, but I did find out what version of Linux it runs.  I have not yet found a way to get at the operating system, but I haven't given up hope.

Moving software off to the usb drive is unlikely, for now.  That problem, mostly, is that the piano rebuilds the database for the usb drive every time you turn it on...that means you would lose all information (names, comments, ratings, etc) every time...probably not what you want.  I'm quite certain that the internal 80gig drive can be replaced with a much bigger drive.  It's a standard hard drive that would just need to be mounted in another computer and copied.  People do this with their TiVo's all the time.  It's not for the faint of heart, though...and Disklaviers are a lot more expensive than TiVos. :-)

The biggest issue you have is that you are storing full audio CDs on your piano.  I know it's incredibly convenient, but you might be better off keeping a rack of CDs near the piano, and just putting them in when you want to sync to the piano.  It stores the CDs uncompressed, which makes no sense at all, and they are MASSIVE compared to Midi files.  For example, I think Yamaha touts that the internal hard drive could hold every single title they have available in their entire catalog... Hopefully they will add the ability to store CDs in a compressed format in the future (I'm not holding my breath.)

I think it's time Nancy started playing piano. :-)

-Kevin


----- Original Message ----
From: Tom Wheeler <tnwheeler@...>
To: disklavier@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 12:20:18 PM
Subject: Re: [disklavier] Kudos For DKV Browser










  


    
            Hi Kevin,


I think that all of us who own Mark IV's are deeply indebted to you for creating something that Yamaha could not or would not.  The keyword search feature alone is of enormous value.  Imagine having a guest over to listen to your wonderful wirelessly controlled piano and they ask for a special song, for example,  by Frank Sinatra and you have to manually move through every album on your Mark IV one at a time on a little screen to find the song they have requested.  It's just impossible when your database of recordings on the Mark IV gets large.  Now that is no longer necessary using the DKV Browser.  Then too, it is so much easier to enter new titles and information in to the Mark IV's database using my laptop's keyboard than the little tiny keyboard on the PRC-1.


Here is a thought for you.  When the Mark IV came out in the U.S. in late 2004, the TRC-100 tablet remote was a part of the package.  You could not buy the Mark IV without the TRC-100.  I took one look at the TRC-100 and thought, wow, this is a full-fledged Hitachi tablet computer and Yamaha can do all sorts of great things with it.  In fact, Yamaha has in the three years since introducing the Mark IV done absolutely nothing with the tablet remote to add to its original capabilities, which are actually substantially less than those provided by the PRC-1 pocket remote.  This lovely tablet remote with all sorts of card slots is totally wasted on the Mark IV! I wonder if there is any way to get DKV browser to run on the TRC-100?  If so, then one could dispense altogether with hauling a laptop into the vicinity of the Mark IV in order to run DKV browser and the TRC-100 would finally get the utility that it cries out for.  


The only other new feature that I would truly love but which you probably cannot add would be the ability to move some of my software from the internal HD of my Mark IV to the USB hard drive I have attached to the external USB drive that I have attached to the Mark IV.  Yamaha has never allowed this and they refuse to offer a larger internal HD for the Mark IV.  As a result I am stuck with the software I have because my internal HD is full. 


I do again want to thank you for the time and effort that you have invested in DKV Browser.  It fills a real need for Mark IV owners.  My wife Nancy has enjoyed working with you on the Browser project and it has gotten her (for the first time) really involved with the Mark IV.  


Tom
           
On Dec 15, 2007, at 8:13 AM, Kevin Goroway wrote:

Tom, I'm glad you are enjoying it.  But please don't forget to thank your wife Nancy as well.  She has been a big help (and having access to such a large database has been a great testing tool!)

Future plans?  That's not so easy to answer.  I want it to be completely stable (which it isn't yet, since you can be dragging items when the piano sends it a command to refresh everything), and I plan to keep adding features as they are requested.  One that is already partially implemented is the ability to choose the repeat mode (off, all, one, random), but it's a little bit counter-intuitive the way it works, so I'm trying to come up with something that would make sense (on the PDA, you can only choose these things while something is playing, but in DKVBrowser it would always be in front of you but meaningless. ..)

Let me know what features you want added!

-Kevin








    
  

    
    




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