Hacking the Streamium

UVwarning writes "I submitted a review to Slashdot about a month ago complaining about various problems with Philips' streamium MCi-200 (an Internet micro hi-fi system). The main gripes being that Philips controls which Internet radio stations you can listen to and that the PC-link software (which is used to serve MP3s from your PC to your Streamium) only runs on Windows. I managed to fix both of these problems by reverse engineering the PC-link protocol and writing my own pc-link server in perl, which can be run on practically any OS, *and* can trick the Streamium into playing any Internet MP3 stream that you want! This is a must-have for any Streamium user. Here is a more detailed article along with the perl script and an outline of the PC-link protocol."

Comments

Open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hrm... why give your money to a clueless old-skool consumer electronics concern when you can get something that comes out of the box with

• a polished user interface
  
• extensive API accessible through both HTTP and a persistent socket interface
  
• a plugin architecture for your own perl add-ons
  
• active hacker community
  
• full protocol docs published and supported by the manufacturer
  
• damn there's too much to list - just go to the site.
  

Re:No need for that

[videodriverguy]

But, that "fair use" only applies to the original user who did the reverse engineering. AFAIK (IANAL) publishing or distributing such efforts bring you right into the DMCAs targets. Hopefully someone will point out that I'm wrong.

bah, I'll keep my Audiotron

[Openadvocate]

I think I'll keep my Audiotron. At least I can play whatever I want in streams ans has an optical output for my preamp. And Turtlebeach actually listens to people on their mailing list and they release Firmware updates, including beta-ones to play with. The Philips unit, looks like something I would have in my kitchen(which is fine), but I'd really prefer the Audiotron in my stereo stack.