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Check their offering out which comes to just under $400 for 300 CDs.

Man, slashdotters can be so fucking annoying sometimes...

1. Another defunct one: Turtle Beach Audiotron
2. Yet Another: KiSS DP-500
3. This one's actually for sale on Amazon: Roku Soundbridge M1000
4. Also for sale: Slim Devices Squeezebox
5. On the high ($2000) end, Denon AVR-4036 Receiver has streaming (among many other things.)
6. And the winner of our "strangest item": sermonaudio.com internet radio. Though I suspect you'd have to hack it to get it to play anything other than their content :)
7. Oh, I guess you don't have to hack it, you can just buy the un-sermonized version as Penguin Radio.
8. D-Link has a DVD player with internet streaming radio called DSM-320RD Medialounge. It's even wireless. There's also a HD version, the DSM-520.
9. Even Philips has a series called Boombox.

I'm sorry my initial example was poor. I just grabbed the first link and didn't look at it much. Nonetheless, there are umpteen fucking examples of streaming internet radio devices. Many of them are available on the shelf, even at places like Circuit Shitty. And I've seen several at Fry's, come to think of it.

I run Slimserver at home that accomplishes the same thing, minus having to upload all of your music to a remote site. Just create a playlist and point any player capable of streaming a URL at it and you're done.

I run Slimserver at home that accomplishes the same thing, minus having to upload all of your music to a remote site. Just create a playlist and point any player capable of streaming a URL at it and you're done.

I have had a MythTV box running for a few months (after earlier unsuccessful attempts with freevo and older MythTV versions.

I boght a Hauppauge PVR350 card (analog TV) and used the "MythTV on Fedora" howto (google) and I was very satified with the results. So satisfied that I bought another Hauppauge PVR500 card so that I ended up with 3 tuners.

My setup is non-standard for two reasons:

1. My HTserver (HTSRV) is located in my server room. This considerably improves the WAF and keeps the living room nice and clean and quiet. I transport the A/V signals over CAT5 (using two baluns) to the point where the cable-TV enters the house. There a modulator mixes the signal with the regular cable channels so I can watch my MythTV HTserver's TV-Out anywhere in the house.

2. Now I needed a way of controlling my MythTV server from behind any of my TV sets. To solve that I used my SqueezeBoxes ( http://www.slimdevices.com/ ). I wrote a Slimserver plugin (Perl) that taps into LIRC and allows me to control the MythTV server with the remotes from the Squeezeboxes.

I'm thinking of replacing my living room audio system with a pair of powered speakers so that I'll end up with 'just' a TV, a small Squeezebox and two speakers. No 5.1 speaker setups for me, I just can't stand all that clutter. ;)

There's another interesting project that I plan to look into. It uses Hauppauge's small and inexpensive $69 MediaMVP boxes (miniature diskless computers that run linux with Remotes and TV-Out) to build MythTV and SlimServer frontends:

http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/idx.php?pg=main

This is nice because it allows you to watch different programs & recordings on different TV-sets, which my current setup doesn't allow you to do. Worth looking into if you're interested in a distributed media network rather than just a boring HTPC or HTSRV ;)

X.

Maybe Slimserver http://www.slimdevices.com/ is what youre looking for. They have real nice clients in hardware which are also available in software and you can also use it to play streams. Great piece of software and its free!

try softsqueeze

http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.cgi?SoftSqueeze

but the player is really worth the price

the older model can be have for less then $200

yes, it does

go to the forums and search for unicode

http://forums.slimdevices.com/

I didn't find any "what's new" link on http://slimdevices.com/ for this edition of the squeezebox, does that mean that the packaging is the only new thing in this release? Thanks! -M

It does, it's just not on the front page... maybe they're ashamed of it, or something =D

http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_overview.html

Slim devices contributes to a GPL'd Server that is typically used to stream to their SqueezeBox player hardware. But, get this, there are software versions of the Squeeze box, namely 'soft squeeze' that emulate nearly perfectly the hardware features, and in some cases, is more useful. If nothing else, WinAMP can be used as a client as well, and it's playlist can be controlled via Slim Server (though some features are lost).

Here's some features of Slim Server that make this worth considering for your whole-house idea:

A. Any cheap PC with a JVM can be a client player
B. The server can keep multiple players in-sync
C. All clients can be controlled centrally from the server's web-interface
D. The server can proxy web-casts/streams to your players
E. The server allows you to bit-peel/transcode audio for a given client (ideal if you wanted to stream your audio to your office/hotel/etc)
f. Fairly Robust indexing/browsing.
G. iTunes integration

Check it out at:

Slim Server Download, all platforms

Soft Squeeze @ Source Forge

I'm in the same situation. Ogg was/is fine for computer and SqueezeBox play. I've used it for years and I still play what I have in that way. It's the non-computer bound devices that are the problem for me. An earlier reply to your post noted the iRiver offerings that play Ogg (which I've considered), and there are many others as well. Unfortunately, I've not yet found a portable player (let alone an in-dash car player) that meets all of my other (admittedly strict) requirements. I've sent many emails over the last couple years to various companies urging them to support the format (or one of my other requirements) in the hope that others were as well, to no avail.

So I've given up, but just for the moment. I'm in the process of re-ripping my collection as both low quality/filesize MP3 (for the car/portable) and FLAC. If a player comes along in the future that supports what I want, allowing me to encode even lower filesize (but equal quality) OGGs, I'll just write a script to do so using all my FLACs as a source.

Their SlimServer also works great for streaming music over the Internet.

Or you could a squeezebox (http://www.slimdevices.com/index.html) and keep the HiFi g

SlimDevices' squeezebox is the pro version of an Airport Express : Burr-Brown DACs, VFD display, 802.11g/ethernet, large buffer to cope with flaky bandwidth, built in FLAC support and a lot more. And the server software is GPL, supported on Linux, Win and OSX.

Have Fun!

Couldn't agree more. Just get a Squeezebox for $200 and spend the rest on hard drives.

There's already several things similar to this out there:

http://www.elanhomesystems.com/product/music/viadj /viadj.asp
http://www.slimdevices.com/
http://www.escient.com/products.html
http://www.request.com/us/

Try Squeezebox instead.

Hmm... looks like a Slim Devices logo on the window...

http://www.slimdevices.com/

get of their older devices for cheap on ebay, they rock. i've got 5 of them scattered throughout my house (3 different models, all running off the same server software on my debian box).

This is a cool project and Kudos to Linksys for using Linux as a basis for their NAS and Routers.

But TFA says "built-in 10/100 (not yet supported in litte-endian mode)". If I read this correctly the device works, but the network port doesn't. Hopefully someone can correct me and confirm that the ethernet port does work.

This would be a perfect low-cost always-on media centre server for Slim Devices Squeezebox Server

This is a cool project and Kudos to Linksys for using Linux as a basis for their NAS and Routers.

But TFA says "built-in 10/100 (not yet supported in litte-endian mode)". If I read this correctly the device works, but the network port doesn't. Hopefully someone can correct me and confirm that the ethernet port does work.

This would be a perfect low-cost always-on media centre server for Slim Devices Squeezebox Server

Best of all, their SlimServer software is open source (although, unfortunately, it's written in Perl, but atleast it's open source).

Rock on!

You're absolutely correct from what I've seen. Most of the audio manufacturers' flavors of wireless multiroom entertainment (a bunch are covered in http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?secti on_id=2&article_id=831&page_number=1) are awfully expensive, on the magnitude of dropping multiple thousands of bucks.

The key is the consumer-friendliness other posters have noted. Personally, I entered the world of open source when I pulled an old Pentium II machine out of the closet and installed the Slimserver software on it (http://www.slimdevices.com/pi_features.html ). I also like SlimServer because their hardware for wireless streaming is cheap compared to other solutions (roughly $300 if I remember right), so you can have mutiroom pretty cheap if you're providing your own server. I skipped the wireless hardware they sell for now and just have a second PC hooked up to the stereo.

Recycling a couple of unused computers meant my cost of entry was almost $0. I enjoyed selecting, installing and configuring an operating system, ripping CDs using EAC and LAME or FLAC, etc. But I have to think that most consumers probably don't want anything to do with any of that! They'll spend the multiple thousands of bucks to avoid the geeked-out installation, configuration, maintenance and day-to-day usage.

While we're on the subject: if anyone is considering dropping those thousands just to utilize their iPod or similar device in their house, I'd advocate that you to do something the article mentioned, but without the Sonos or any other fancy device: go buy a 1/8 stereo to RCA adapter for <$7 at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart, and plug your iPod into your stereo that way. Sure, you get no fancy touch-screen remote and the ability to change music while you're on the toilet, but so what? Your receiver (or even your TV!) likely has front-panel inputs. Plug your portable player into that: just because there's a video plug sitting there doesn't mean you have to plug anything into it.

• totally open sourced
  
• served with perl
  
• capable of every codec imaginary
  
• capable of digital and analog output
  

First off all the satelite radio services suck. There is no diversity of music. Just the same crap that Clear Channel and the other big conglomerates push on us. Secondly http://slimdevices.com/ has a really great OS product called SlimServer. Works over ANY networking that can be attached to a PC. Supports Linux and has a great hardware player.

http://slimdevices.com/

I use SlimServer alot. It comes with a software version of the SqueezeBox 2 (which supports ssl tunneling), it can also transcode on the fly to a lower bitrate (must install lame). This is a fantastic feature. I rip my music to mps vbr and transcode to a suitable bitrate for my outbound streams. SlimDevices also has a great support list and most questions are answered in short order.

Have you looked at SlimServer? It's an open source Perl server designed to power Slim Devices' MP3 players.

I used it for a bit, but ditched it in favor of Lincoln Stein's Apache::MP3. My SO still uses SlimServer to stream from home to work, though. The two coexist well on my little Debian server. I don't know if SlimServer supports FLAC; Apache::MP3 does.

Get it here

Runs great on my server, which is almost identical system to the one specified. It should handle everything you need, including multiple formats and transcoding.

Their hardware is not required (but as an owner of one, I can say it is cool).

The only time I am reminded of the iTunes DRM is when I attempt to play one of the songs I got off iTunes through the Squeezebox attached to the main entertainment center in our house - because the song won't play. Even then, I have to pay attention, because all you get is an extra half-second of silence between songs. I'd say Apple really did it right, though i'd love for them to license a decoder to Slim so I can play those songs on the stereo...

Well you could always get a real networked music player, like a Squeezebox.

This product borrows heavily from the OSS Slimserver product, which is primarily developed for the Squeezebox and SliMP3 by http://www.slimdevices.com/Slim Devices.

Still, looks like a nice box.

--
Does MSN censor search results?

http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html

I've only used it on Mac, but it works very well. You can select media from a web interface.

It's not the "best sound ever!" but the Squeezebox will play back uncompressed flac and wav files, and sounds pretty darn good to me. Analog and digital outputs, wireless or wired options (I strongly recommend the wired).

I also strongly recommend you peruse the mailing list archives first, because there is much past discussion of how the product compares to others for the exact purpose you describe.

Too bad its probably not true, given the history of the rumor above.

My 1st generation TiVO is already a box that sits in my living room, connected to my stereo, from which I could play songs/videos pulled off my hard drive. An I'm running Mac OS X. Considering I ended up buying a second device to do just the music piece of this http://www.slimdevices.com/ if Apple came out with a new TiVo that did this plus movies, I'd have to seriously consider upgrading my TiVO.

Its inevitable and obvious that Apple was going to eventually build a device to serve as the home entertainmentcomputer connection. For one thing, Steve Jobs said so about 8 years ago. They already have the codec to use for the video portion: H.264/AVC http://developer.apple.com/macosx/tiger/index.html , and obviously they've also done the music portion.

Whether or not they do an iVideos store is probably moot in the end. TiVo is a success just doing broadcast TV, the real growth would be becoming the defacto standard for digital cable and satellite. TiVO hasn't really persued this, but I expect Apple might, there's nothing sacred about the settop box business, and Apple has already show willingness to license iPod to other vendors like HP/Motorola.

Nor does iVideos require broadband. DirecTV is already marketing cheap movies to PVR owners like myself. Come to think of it, even without broadband you could easily sell a service that was satellite based and offered you a menu of 100 different movies a month. After all, over pay per view, I already have a menu of about 25 movies/month, and the only reason its only 25 is because they repeat the movie all day long. With a Tivo, they would only have to broadcast a movie once.

Hmmm... The TiVo already has a modem, so it could connect to a master server, order any movie from a long list of movies, then get the movie downloaded in one burst via the satellite. Since multiple people could mooch off the same movie download, it might be possible to have a list of 1000 movies available. If you picked an obscure movie, you might have to wait 24 hours for a download slot to open. It would be inconvenient, but if new releases were instantaneous (since you could start in the middle of any running download), its proabably acceptable.

So say $500 for a new box that plugs into my existing video crap, lets me download from a list of 1000 movies over my satellite dish, replaces my sqeezebox for music (one less thing), stores all my DVDs for easy playback (less crap in the living room). In a word, hmm...

TiVO couldn't do it alone, but Apple and TiVO could do it together.

The EFF's BayFF is having a related event next Tuesday in San Francisco. I'm planning on being there.

EFF Celebrates Innovation at BayFF!
Check Out the Latest Gadgets and Hang Out with EFF at Our February BayFF

WHEN
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2005
7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.

WHAT
Inventive Gizmos - A Celebration of Innovation

Innovation. We love it.
The upcoming BayFF is a celebration of all the technological wonders we've been able to enjoy thanks to the legal shield provided by the 1984 Sony Betamax ruling. Come check out cool new gizmos from local tech companies Elgato, Slim Devices, and Sling Media. EFF attorneys and tech gurus will talk about how you can help protect the pro-innovation environment that allows gadgets like these to flourish.

WHO
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Elgato - elgato.com
Slim Devices - slimdevices.com
Slingmedia - slingmedia.com

WHERE
111 Minna Gallery
111 Minna Street
San Francisco, CA
94105
415.974.1719
(map)

This event is free and open to the general public. You must be 21+. Refreshments will be served.

Squeezebox? Looks like an alarm clock (I have one on my bedside table), sounds great, nice big bright green display, alarm function, plays mp3, wma, etc etc, and streaming radio. Nice little unit ($200 for cat5, $280 for wifi).

Here

...that experience sure puts you in a minority. Even in their forums, people are quite positive. I was amazed to be able to download the software (as an rpm, to boot), install it, and choose from among a series of emulators. Bing: a slimserver look-alike on my desktop. I could get all the settings right in the expectation of the arrival of the box.

Meanwhile, check out the
NetGear groups. People are not happy with the NG software, even though it has a few nice features.

• I selected Roku Soundbridges. I like the interface, and the display. They can access the network using either 10/100 wired ethernet, or 802.11b wireless and provide analog and digital outputs to feed either powered speakers or your stereo. I have two hanging off the same server setup described above, and they work great.
  
• I can also "mount" the music shared in the manner described above with iTunes. I've only tested this w/ the winderz version, as there are no Macs in the house modern enuf to run iTunes.
  

• The slimserver software, and a software version of their client are available free from their web page. Try before you buy, or buy one squeezebox and use the software version on laptops elsewhere.
  
• Roku _might_ implement synchronized play in the future. I see no reason why they could not.
  
• Roku supports "tuning" internet radio stations. I plan to set up a stream, fed by another piece of software looking at the same set of files so that I have my own internet radio station in the house. I've used jwz's gronk, which is a web-based jukebox package for this purpose before with success, but will also consider grind this time around. I do not know if I will achieve synchronization this way or not, but I'm hoping.
  
• Gronk and Grind do not use ID3 tags, so when I originally ripped a lot of my music for Gronk, I didn't care about the ID3s. All of the rest of this software DOES care, so I have a bit of a mess on my hands.
  
• Gronk is written in Perl, so it's hackable. This comes in handy tweaking things like sort order, whether to include "the' in the band name, etc. JWZ also provides a demo version to play with on the site below.
  
• Another way to get the synchronized music, and to serve over wireless, although not the way you originally asked, is to set up an FM transmitter. I have not yet done this for this project, but my prior Gronk installation supported one of those micropowered fm transmitters intended for use with mp3 players in cars just fine.
  

• 
  Linksys NSLU-2
  Unslung firmware for the NSLU-2
  Roku Soundbridge
  Squeezebox and Slimserver
  mt-daapd on Sourceforge
  JWZ's Gronk
  Grind
  A review of a REAL FM transmitter
  

• Wireless
• Can synchronize between any number of players
• Supports almost every music format (except for DRM-protected media)

• Digital audio out
• Server software that runs on Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Windows, Mac OS X
• If you run it on a Mac, you can use your ITunes music catalog
• Open source software
• A plugin architecture to the software, so you can use the squeezebox to notify you of new email, weather, news, play defender or tetris, etc...
• An infrared remote control

you just install the slimserver software onto your music server and use it to stream music to your assorted laptops. it supports mp3, aac, vorbis and other music formats. the server can control multiple players and can optionally synch them, if you want the same music in diffrent rooms. you can control it from a web interface from any computer, and have it control any of the players.

the server and related software are free, it's the backend to the squezebox, which is a stereo component mp3 player that can do wifi. depending on your budget you can just use the free stuff and your old laptops/desktops, or you can get a couple squezeboxes. the squezebox is nice since it's got a remote, but it's not really necessary.

philo

you just install the slimserver software onto your music server and use it to stream music to your assorted laptops. it supports mp3, aac, vorbis and other music formats. the server can control multiple players and can optionally synch them, if you want the same music in diffrent rooms. you can control it from a web interface from any computer, and have it control any of the players.

the server and related software are free, it's the backend to the squezebox, which is a stereo component mp3 player that can do wifi. depending on your budget you can just use the free stuff and your old laptops/desktops, or you can get a couple squezeboxes. the squezebox is nice since it's got a remote, but it's not really necessary.

philo

you just install the slimserver software onto your music server and use it to stream music to your assorted laptops. it supports mp3, aac, vorbis and other music formats. the server can control multiple players and can optionally synch them, if you want the same music in diffrent rooms. you can control it from a web interface from any computer, and have it control any of the players.

the server and related software are free, it's the backend to the squezebox, which is a stereo component mp3 player that can do wifi. depending on your budget you can just use the free stuff and your old laptops/desktops, or you can get a couple squezeboxes. the squezebox is nice since it's got a remote, but it's not really necessary.

philo

I'm very happy with my SliMP3 :) Just want to point out that anyone can download the Slimserver http://slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html (compatible with Linux, Mac, and Windows) free of charge and stream to winamp. In other words, you don't need the hardware SliMP3 or Squeezebox player to use the open source server. Once your network is set up (wireless or otherwise) you'll be able to stream independently to any PC in the house. If you optionally download the Softsqueeze player http://softsqueeze.sourceforge.net/ (also free to download) you can synchronize each player so they all play the same thing. Then you can also synchronize volume controls accross all players or control volume independantly on each player. No, I don't work for Slim Devices, I just really like my SliMP3 and what they've done with the Slimserver.

Ahh yes, Slimserver! I have used it before and it works great. You can set up multiple streams, mulitple formats, internet radio, and if i remember right, using the squeezeboxes you can set it where the audio is synched. Its great and all you really need to run it is a halfway decent computer to be the server (more streams = more ram and processing power), and on the client side any computer capable of running winamp or xmms will work. Its well documented and has tons of plugins. It would be my choice. Plus its open unlike Itunes. Go HERE to get it.

Buy a box for each room that needs music, add any old (active) speakers (or a hifi amp), and you're good to go.

It comes with (Free & Open GPL :-) server software; It's perl, and modifiable to do all sorts of interesting things with the players. Slim Devices had a developer contest where you can see what people thought up. You can download the software and try it out before you decide to get the box - it can stream to XMMS or WinAMP just as easily as to a Squeezebox.

Each box comes with a remote, and they can all be controlled through a web GUI as well.

They come in both wired and wireless variants; The wired ones cost $200, The wireless ones are somewhat more expensive at $280.

The nice thing about them is that all the smarts are in the server - the squeezebox is basically just a network adapter, an MP3 decoder, and a soundcard (with a nice bright display and a remote IR receiver, of course). It will (knock on wood) last as long as I don't drop it on the floor, and I won't need to buy new devices next time the industry switches media again :-)

Multiple squeezeboxes can be synchronized to play the same stream; You can't sync a software player and a squeezebox, though (no buffering control over the SW player, i guess).

No Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Slim Devices in any way; I just love their product :-)

Buy a box for each room that needs music, add any old (active) speakers (or a hifi amp), and you're good to go.

It comes with (Free & Open GPL :-) server software; It's perl, and modifiable to do all sorts of interesting things with the players. Slim Devices had a developer contest where you can see what people thought up. You can download the software and try it out before you decide to get the box - it can stream to XMMS or WinAMP just as easily as to a Squeezebox.

Each box comes with a remote, and they can all be controlled through a web GUI as well.

They come in both wired and wireless variants; The wired ones cost $200, The wireless ones are somewhat more expensive at $280.

The nice thing about them is that all the smarts are in the server - the squeezebox is basically just a network adapter, an MP3 decoder, and a soundcard (with a nice bright display and a remote IR receiver, of course). It will (knock on wood) last as long as I don't drop it on the floor, and I won't need to buy new devices next time the industry switches media again :-)

Multiple squeezeboxes can be synchronized to play the same stream; You can't sync a software player and a squeezebox, though (no buffering control over the SW player, i guess).

No Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with Slim Devices in any way; I just love their product :-)

Install Slimserver (http://www.slimdevices.com/index.html) on a central server with all your music. Put a P3 laptop (or some other machine) with wireless in every room you will want music. Run SoftSqueeze (http://softsqueeze.sourceforge.net/) on each client, connecting to the server. Get a PDA with wireless and use Slimserver's built-in handheld skin to control your music.

Done!

Wired or wireless shouldn't make any difference, as you can use a wireless to ethernet bridge for any "wired" device. I had my house built within the past year, and made sure every room was wired. Here is what I used to get music to every room:
xbox media center Optical out, lots of other options.
Rio receiver running yarrs I have been using this for years, just a small device to play mp3's off of the network. You can hook speakers up to it directly or just use it as a component.
qcast lets you stream mp3's to your playstation 2. Not as useful or functional as the xbox media center.
netjuke this let's me stream music to any other computer in a nice and tidy web interface.

you can also go with a squeezebox but I have no experience with it. The rio is much less expensive.