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Review: SliMP3
So what is it? Its a small MP3 player with no internal storage of its own. It has an ethernet port, RCA audio outputs (you'll need an external amp!), and a power plug. It has a really bright little screen for displaying song information and a remote. It's about the size of a car stereo faceplate, but a little thicker.
It doesn't have a fancy plastic box. The backside is simply an exposed circuit board. But thats sorta the idea: this is a toy that can work for users, but is also hugely designed to be a hacker toy.
Configuring the device is easy. The latest version has DHCP, but I tested it on a network that lacked the protocol. I put the IP in of my 'Server' and gave the unit its own IP and I was off and running. The server is a perl program you download from the Slim Devices web site. It supposedly will run on on Linux, Windows, MacOS, FreeBSD, BeOS, and MacOSX. It worked great on my linux box. Trivially easy. This unit was the easiest to set up of any MP3 player I have ever used. Of course, I was already running Linux and had Perl ;)
You can control the SliMP3 with a remote control, but the server optionally can just serve up HTML on a high port number and set your playlists up via an acceptable web interface. And since its perl, its all ready for you to hack yourself. The code itself is fairly legible... there's a mailing list, and it is actively being developed.
The closest competitor to the SliMP3 is the Audiotron. The audiotron is almost the same price, has an optical output, a more developed HTML interface, and is physically a nice stereo component. It is a far more mature product. But the audiotron uses SMB file sharing and controls everything within itself. The SliMP3 uses an open source server program to stream the audio to the player. So the smarts are mostly on the PC. Which of course lends itself to easy hacking.
The interface currently is pretty sparse. Some places display filenames where ID3 tags would be preferred. I was unable to get it to load a 20,000 track playlist. But the server software is under active development, and these things should both be resolved in a not-so-distant release.
There are a variety of cool projects that could conceivably be hacked into this thing. A GTK-Perl interface would be super smooth. Cross-fade functions. Intelligent playlist creation. Tivo style thumbs up-thumbs down track rating for music playback. And this is the first MP3 player I've seen that things like this are possible because the code is right there and ready to rip apart. It's even legible!
If you need a pretty box, or demand optical connections to your reciever, go with the audiotron. If you want something tiny, or just want to hack at your MP3 player stereo component, this is a great way to go.
I am loooking at my watch, waiting 15 seconds plus the overhead time...here I come
lameness filter encountered!
I like reading about the same thing mentioned in various stories and posts over and over again!
FUN!
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between
man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship,
that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions,
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people
which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment
of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall
of separation between church and State."
Thomas Jefferson
January 1, 1802
"They say you can't legislate morality. Well, you certainly can."
John Ashcroft
Chicago Tribune
May 25, 1998
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Everyone now, finish this sentence:
Frequent readers of slashdot know I'm...
..bwahahahah.
Check out the results of the w3c validator
(Yeah, slashdot doesn't have to be consistent, they don't have to obey the open standards they promote, but you'd think at least the OSDN navbar would be correct.)
yeesh.
-Rob Ewaschuk
Your use of decimal makes your post useless.
-- Hexadecimal.
What's with the decimal? Do you want people to think you stupid? Maybe you are.
-- Hexadecimal.