Squeezebox
I have just received delivery of my brand spanking new Squeezebox. Wow, what an amazing piece of kit.
I've often wanted something that will allow me to play music on my Hi-fi without having my rather noisy PC on at the same time. For one, the quality out of my Hi-fi is drastically better.
A friend at work found this device and bought one and was very happy with it. So I thought I would get one too. It's spectacular. It streams all my music off my Linux file-server over a Wireless connection (also has Ethernet, but hey why bother).
I was slightly concerned about the server software, thinking it would have to be something you run on Windows whilst logged in. Which is no good to me. It's not though, its a daemon which runs on multiple platforms. For *nix it comes in the form of a perl script that launches into the background.
Setup was painfully easiy. I just started the daemon on my server. Plugged in the Squeezebox and went through the on-screen setup. All I had to do was tap in my encryption key for the wireless (never fun, but could have been worse). It picked up the SSID and an IP from my DHCP server.
The interface is very simple, but very effective. Being able to quickly jump between menus and navigate about without interrupting the music.
Including support for SHOUTcast it is easy to narrow down searches for streams and select them to play. There is a slight delay before playing, but that is expected. It is worth noting there is no delay between song transactions - which is nice.
The screen is a crisp, clear, LCD screen. Data that is too long (e.g. long track titles) scroll automatically, and there is a size and brightness button on the remote to quickly change the display settings. Handy for being on the other side of the room.
Everything about it can be configured to just however you like it. It will even scroll news headlines from the BBC rss feeds when idle if you want it.
Down side is it currently only supports WEP encryption and not WPA.
It picked up all music files on my MP3 store, including my partner's iPod contents, but it cannot seem to play these files despite being able to read all the data from the files. I haven't looked into why this is and if it can be fixed yet.
From what I have seen on the manufacturer's website it is highly easy to mod the code and get plugins to do more weird and wonderful things.
Within a minute of seeing it my Father was thinking about buying two. That was, until I told him the price. It is a little expensive, but for the features it has it's well worth it. Perhaps a lite version would be better for those who don't want so many features.
I'd give it 4.5/5
I've often wanted something that will allow me to play music on my Hi-fi without having my rather noisy PC on at the same time. For one, the quality out of my Hi-fi is drastically better.
A friend at work found this device and bought one and was very happy with it. So I thought I would get one too. It's spectacular. It streams all my music off my Linux file-server over a Wireless connection (also has Ethernet, but hey why bother).
I was slightly concerned about the server software, thinking it would have to be something you run on Windows whilst logged in. Which is no good to me. It's not though, its a daemon which runs on multiple platforms. For *nix it comes in the form of a perl script that launches into the background.
Setup was painfully easiy. I just started the daemon on my server. Plugged in the Squeezebox and went through the on-screen setup. All I had to do was tap in my encryption key for the wireless (never fun, but could have been worse). It picked up the SSID and an IP from my DHCP server.
The interface is very simple, but very effective. Being able to quickly jump between menus and navigate about without interrupting the music.
Including support for SHOUTcast it is easy to narrow down searches for streams and select them to play. There is a slight delay before playing, but that is expected. It is worth noting there is no delay between song transactions - which is nice.
The screen is a crisp, clear, LCD screen. Data that is too long (e.g. long track titles) scroll automatically, and there is a size and brightness button on the remote to quickly change the display settings. Handy for being on the other side of the room.
Everything about it can be configured to just however you like it. It will even scroll news headlines from the BBC rss feeds when idle if you want it.
Down side is it currently only supports WEP encryption and not WPA.
It picked up all music files on my MP3 store, including my partner's iPod contents, but it cannot seem to play these files despite being able to read all the data from the files. I haven't looked into why this is and if it can be fixed yet.
From what I have seen on the manufacturer's website it is highly easy to mod the code and get plugins to do more weird and wonderful things.
Within a minute of seeing it my Father was thinking about buying two. That was, until I told him the price. It is a little expensive, but for the features it has it's well worth it. Perhaps a lite version would be better for those who don't want so many features.
I'd give it 4.5/5