apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I considered the Squeezebox along with others, but settled on Creative's Wireless Soundblaster Music Adapter.

http://www.creative.com/products/product.asp?prodid=9192

What I like most about it is that (1) the display is on a large LCD screen on the remote, so its always easy to read and (2) the remote works by radio frequency rather than line-of-sight, so I can change my music playing on the stereo in living room while I'm cooking in the kitchen. Its also $100 cheaper than the squeezebox.

The only downside is that it cannot play streaming internet radio stations (i.e. Shoutcast, Musicmatch, etc.), though the Squeezbox can.

Food for thought.

D

If you have a TiVo, you can duplicate some of this device's functionality with the (free) Home Media functions... you just have to hook your TiVo up to your home network with a wee adapter and then install the Home Media software on your computers.

I'm using the OS X version, which is just a small System Preferences pane that's really painless to install. You can listen to any songs or playlists from iTunes through the TiVo, as well as play slideshows of photos from iPhoto.

It's something to take a look at if you have TiVo already -- especially since a broadband adapter runs about $20, compared to $280 for adding another device.

(I sound like an ad... you'd think they would give me a commission or something!)

I just setup a Pluto Home system (smarthome + media server). It’s really cool and works great with SqueezeBoxes. Just plug the squeeze box into an Ethernet jack. When it sees the squeezebox request an IP address it automatically installs the slimserver and sets everything up on its own. There’s no software to install at all. And if you have a Bluetooth mobile phone, that turns into the remote control—complete with cover art, access to playlists, etc. Plus, it knows how to control all the other stuff too—so when I start playing music on my squeeze box it automatically turns on the stereo and sets it to the right input.

There’s only 1 problem… They have these interactive maps so I can see what’s playing around the house and make the same thing play in multiple destinations. If all the destinations are squeezeboxes, it’s great. But if some are squeezeboxes and some are media PC’s, Pluto uses slimserver to go to the squeeze boxes, and videolan to stream to the PC’s—and the 2 ‘groups’ are not in sync. They say it’s because the only slimp3 player that emulates squeezebox2 and runs under Linux requires Java. Pluto sends a network boot image to all the media pc’s in the house—that’s how it turns your other PC’s into set top boxes. They don’t want to add the whole java runtime to the net boot image and bloat it just to get a slimp3 player. There are 2 open source C++ slimp3 players that are small and lean, but they are old and don’t support the new protocols.

So, is anybody out there working on a C++ squeezebox2 player? This is the only small piece that’s missing. With that piece this would be a total sonos killer. You would still have a cool GUI with cover art. But it’s even better than Sonos’ because it uses your existing mobile phone—one less thing to lose—and your music follows you automatically as you move throughout the house. Plus it does movies—not just music. And controls a/v equipment and home automation too. And costs 1/10 the price.