Linksys Kiss Media Player 1600 makes out with Linux

I splashed out on a KISS 1600 media player the other day, hoping to stream music and videos from my PC to my TV in the living room. It ships with an application called PC-Link, which runs on your PC and streams your media over your network, but unsurprisingly this is Macindows only. Funny that, considering the Kiss 1600 itself runs Linux. Anyway, a quick search soon resulted in a few Linux applications that have been created to fill the gap. After almost-successfully trying PC-Link using Wine I settled on the cross-platform Kiss Now! from Nidaware. There are various other solutions available (see links below), but Kiss Now! is graphical, simple, and exactly what I was looking for. Most importantly, it works, but only after a little tinkering……

Install Kiss Now!

Firstly, make sure you have Java installed (sun-java6-jre package in Ubuntu and probably something similar in other distros). Then open up a terminal and follow the steps below…..

Create a kissnow folder in your home folder:

mkdir kissnow

Download Kiss Now!:

wget http://www.nidaware.dk/download/kissnow-linux.tar.gz

Extract the archive to your kissnow folder:

tar -xvzf kissnow-linux.tar.gz -C kissnow

Create a script to simplify opening Kiss Now! Create a blank text document and paste in the following text, making sure to insert your user name where highlighted.

#! /bin/bash
# Kiss Now Script
cd /home/yourusername/kissnow
java -cp kissnow.jar com.nidaware.nap.App

Save it to your kissnow folder and name it kissnow (no extension).
Sort out permissions for the kissnow folder so the script can be run and settings in the program will be saved

chmod -R 755 /home/yourusername/kissnow

Open/run the kissnow file from your file manager. Kiss Now! should be up and running! To start streaming local folders just choose the media type that you’d like to share then click the plus icon to add folders. To minimise Kiss Now! and leave it running just click the K icon in the system tray.
To add a shortcut into your Gnome menu just right-click your menu icon and choose Edit Menus then New Item. Insert /home/yourusername/kissnow/kissnow into the Command option, then fill in the rest as you wish. (The ‘K’ icon can be found in the graphics folder of kissnow)
The original downloaded package can now be removed from your home folder:

rm kissnow-linux.tar.gz

Happy Streaming!

Two alternatives to Kiss Now!….

KissNTel

kissd

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You’re currently reading “Linksys Kiss Media Player 1600 makes out with Linux,” an entry on R A N G L E

Published:: March 3, 2008 / 2:35 pm

Category:: Linux, Network, Software

Tags:: "kiss media player 1600", "pc-link", "pclink", 1600, alternative, kiss now!, kissnow, linksys, Linux, media, open source, stream

Mike 5.11.08 / 6pm

i have just come across the kiss 1600, it looks great but i use a synology ds207+ nas to store all my media, from what you are saying and info i’ve read on the linksys site, it would not connect to my nas as kiss now (or equivalent) needs to be running! is this correct?

at the moment i have a neuros osd that connects to my nas and pcs (that all run Ubuntu).

great post – thanks

correctname 5.11.08 / 7pm

Depends how your nas is sharing files, if it uses samba then it definitely wont work (with the 1600’s current firmware), if it’s uPnP then you might be lucky.
You could try installing Kiss Now on your Ubuntu box then see if you can add your nas shares to the Kiss Now server (not sure if this is possible as I don’t have any network storage to test it). This would also mean having your PC and nas on all the time though, which I guess kinda defeats the object of having a nas, i think this would be the only option for you.

Mike 5.11.08 / 9pm

The NAS does seem to allow uPnP. I thought it did but don’t really know what uPnp is. Anyway, in the NAS control panel there is an option to, “Enabling Multimedia Service allows users to browse multimedia files on the server through UPnP DMA.” so I might be in luck. I bought the DS207+ as it did seem to have good capabilities – there is a new big firmware release for it that I have not tired yet as well!

Although you are right, the point in buying the NAS was so I didn’t have to have a PC on all the time, I might try your suggestion with Kiss Now and network shares just for fun – when I have time.

Thanks for your very helpful reply.

Dave 9.20.08 / 11pm

Can anyone help me? I followed the instructions above and when I try to run the script nothing happens (the script appears to run but the program doesn’t run)?

Cheers

correctname 9.30.08 / 5pm

Bit of a late reply 😀 but anyways…..
I reckon you don’t have java installed. If you’re using Ubuntu make sure you have the ‘sun-java6-jre’ package installed. If you’re using another distro you’re on your own I’m afraid :D…..Failing that I suggest deleting the files and start from scratch (following the instructions word for word)…I just tried it on Ubuntu Intrepid and it still works fine for me. Good luck 😉

ChrisJ 11.6.08 / 11pm

I tried this, and I get a failure about an swt library not being in some java path. Have you seen this, and any idea how to fix it? I have Eclipse installed so swt should be there somewhere.

darkbliss 1.7.09 / 4pm

i really want a decent app for streaming media on linux and the nidaware site seems to be down any chance of you posting a link to the kiss now software?

adewii 7.5.09 / 9am

Hi The Kiss now developers website no longer seems to work. Is this software still developed, anyone know where i can get it?

Ray 9.3.09 / 10am

I am getting “no swt-win32-3333 or swt-win32” errors. I am using Ubuntu 9.04 and have downloaded libswt3.2-gtk-java. How am I getting errors for not having Win32 versions of SWT under Ubuntu? Any help will be appreciated.

correctname 9.30.09 / 10am

I’m no longer using the KISS player, so cannot provide any more assistance on this

cgacimartin 12.18.11 / 3pm

The link of Nidaware is broken, an alternative may be this project: http://kissdx.vidartysse.net/

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