Thin Clients and iTunes

Question

Level 1

0 points

Thin Clients and iTunes

At NJIT we are looking to implement thin-client solutions for many of our labs. The technical team is in the testing phases and one hurdle they have run into is that iTunes is not running properly (we have a number of courses that have a lot of material on our iTunes U site).

Our technical team was wondering whether anyone else has run into a similar problem. I suspect that it is just one of the limitations but wanted to ask to see if anyone else has explored this issue.

"What we are finding is that iTunes has problems running in a thin-client deployment with MS Windows Server 2008 on a virtualized server. Only one user is allowed to run iTunes at a time; subsequent users receive an error that it is already in use."

In addition to the problems with running multiple instances of iTunes they report that: "video streams quite badly in this environment, with many gaps in both video and audio. During video playback the user cannot exit iTunes if they become impatient with the playback. We are currently testing deployment of thin clients on several different brands of thin client desktop units, and all exhibit similar behavior."

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mac Mini PowerMac, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Apr 29, 2009 7:47 AM

Reply

Answer 1

richwolf

Level 3

725 points

Apr 29, 2009 5:15 PM in response to haggerty

I don't have anything specific or useful to say about thin clients. So I'm going to defer to others. I just wanted to say some things generally with regard to this problem. I'll then bow out and let smarter heads try to help with specifics. 🙂

While iTunes U can "fee" as though it streams, it is not setup to be used in a streaming way. iTunes and YouTube, for example, do not compete with each other ... they are separate ideas, complementary takes on a similar problem. Videos you upload to YouTube are munged to be streamed ... and there are limits on the size/format on what you can do in YouTube (videos have to be no longer than ten minutes, for example). Still, a useful streaming comparison in your labs might be to grab something from YouTube you know to be in HD (or the "new high") format ... these streams would be comparable to the size and scale of what iTunes U "typically" uses for video ... at least H.264, 640x480 images, 128 kbs AAC transmitted to you at 900 (or 2000) kbits/second. Another useful comparison might be to play a movie trailer in the iTunes Store. These tests will give you a notion of where the problem might be ... are you trying to scarf up a lot of bandwidth in a lab which is probably using a lot of bandwidth already, for example?

But my broader comment is one everyone is probably tired of hearing from me by now. 🙂 🙂 Still, I'd be be remiss if I didn't mention it. The real genius of iTunes U, in my humble opinion, is the way it makes learning asynchronous. iTunes U is not some other YouTube-like mechanism for delivering content to a lab for a class ... rather, it's a way of leveraging the iPod/iPhone and turning it into a portable learning device. iTunes U is about taking advantage of the synergy that exists between a student's iPod and his/her instance of iTunes ... it's learning as personal as a playlist. If you, for example, have iTunes in a lab, I'm not likely to connect my iPod to it to get content. I could be talking out of my butt ... because I don't have any serious numbers to back me up at all ... but I'm betting that most students grab iTunes U content at home ... or on their laptops ... and not in a lab. If they do grab stuff in a lab, it would, very likely, be in a streaming way ... but I think the only way that happens is if a student is stuck or something ("I gotta watch that video before class at noon"). I never, for example, would myself want to listen to a podcast in a lab. Instead, I'd rather go home, download and sync the podcast, and carry it on my iPhone to the gym. My bet is most students think similarly. 🙂

Reply