Turtle Beach Network Audio Appliance

Polo writes: "I always though it would be cool to create something like this. Here is a look at the 'Audiotron,' a standalone device you hook to your stereo system and that networks with your PC to play MP3 files. This version uses that strange HPNA network standard (sends network data over copper phone wiring without interfering with the phone calls). Future versions will support ethernet and USB. Now if someone got this working with Linux, you could serve your MP3 library to multiple rooms in the house as separate streams. Obsolesence nears for my 200-disk CD changers ... " Hmm. What happens if you already have HPNA networking? That aside, this looks like a good toy for the MPAA as well.

Comments

Re:You'd think you are kidding...

[irix]

Try the preceding few sentences:

Computers and general-purpose computer peripheral devices are not covered by the Audio Home Recording Act. This means they do not pay royalties and they do not incorporate technology to prevent serial copying. As a result, this also means that copying music onto a computer hard drive is not permitted. It is copyright infringement, and a violation of federal law.

How much more straight-forward can this be?

If you read http://www.riaa.com/tech/tech_ht.htm, you will also see it says in a couple of places that you are only allowed to make digital copies of music for your own use with certain devices.

No PC CD-R drives for mixed CDs, no MP3s, just people who make copying hardware (read: audio CD-R) that have paid a royalty to RIAA.

Thats great until...

[lalas]

... the RIAA decides that streaming mp3's from your bedroom into the living room violates the very foundation of the DCMA.

Remember, if you want to listen to "your" music in different rooms... you had just better go out and buy 2 CDs. l

Home Phone Wiring

[Ephro]

Many people forget that a house is normally wired with 4 conductor phone line ( green - red | black - yellow ) If you make sure that the black and yellow are connected in all the boxes, and the junction boxes in your house you can effectively have an additional private circut in your house. This is especially useful if you do have to deal with something propritary here. Another fact that most people forget is that RJ-45 is 8 conductor, where orange, orange-white, blue, and blue-white are used, so it is again possible to run an additional ethernet line through the same cable, or as I have done in the past put two analog phone lines down with the ethernet signal. In theory you may run into problems with induction fields, but I have never had a problem. You can also do other useful things, like use the black and yellow wires to run a mono feed of mp3s from your computer to your stereo.

You'd think you are kidding...

[irix]

but you aren't.

I'd imagine that lawsuits will follow for all of these companies, since according to RIAA the only way you can have a legit mp3 is if that was the original format that it was distributed in, or if it is the public domain.

Of course, RIAA may or may not have heard of something called fair use.

So what's with HPNA ?

[scott@b]

HPNA is in effect a xDSL. There are HPNA transceivers that replace the normal 10Base transceivers connected to an Ethernet controller chip or port (like some embeddded CPUs have). There's are 1 and 10 mbps versions of HPNA, the 10 is where everything is going. Range is several hundred feet, up to about 500. Coexists with your xDSL drop.

What's the difference between this and using phone lines or FM radio? With the HPNA interface you're effectively in a 10Base based network, sending the digital form of the data (music) rather that converting to analog and transmitting. It should be a higher quality output at the far end.

What's the diff between using HPNA and your existing network. Not much, unless you're like most of the general computer using public who don't have cat5 throughout their house but can string phone line.

Timothy does it again..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Cost of one Audiotron: $499.00

Cost of a 486 with a cheap NIC, SoundBlaster 16, some RCA cables and a 50 foot Cat 5: $80.00

One requires a proprietary driver and takes orders from Winblows 2K.

The other peacefully coexists with other machines on your network, is accessable from a variety of platforms instead of just one, can be upgraded, repaired if necessary, and replaced easilly. Did I mention it runs Linux, can perform more functions than simply an MP3 server, and can download new MP3's while you sleep?



Bowie J. Poag

Why use phone lines? Use radio waves...

[SydBarrett]

Unless you get two of these things, you might be better off with a good FM transmitter. Just make sure there's a spot of your FM dial that's blank. You can build one yourself or get a cheap one. All Electronics has a little battery powered one that has a jack for plugging into your sound card for about $15, and runs on AAAs. If you have multiple boxes that can handle MP3 or some other format, and have enough empty space on the dial, you can have a transmitter for each, and select a "stream" by tuning the dial. And since all of the stuff would be under one roof, the signal should be plenty strong.

Then again, maybe copper wire could produce better sound than radio waves?

Hey, what the hell. Boost up the signal and make your own pirate station! :) Well, as long as you use a good filter to kill harmonics, which is the way most pirates get busted. The harmonics from the signal bleed over police/fire channels, which doesn't make them too happy. Then the FCC looks for ya....

X10 already has a wireless solution

[hardaker]

X10, the makers of the great home-automation products, already sell a wireless version of something similar. Specifically, it is merely an audio sender/receiver that can plug into the back of your stereo. They market it as "MP3-Anywhere", but could obviously be used for anything. For the windows users in the crowd, it comes with plugin's for some of the popular mp3 players so you can control it remotely using an X10 remote as well.