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

Sell one for less and pocket the difference

[2nd Post!]

It costs you $310?

Good, sell one to me for $320, and you can keep the difference.

C|Net tells me I can get one for $350. Heck, sell it to me for $330, I'm feeling generous.

Nice looking dumb hardware is what we want...

[Rolfje]

The general customer wants nice looking devices which connect to the internet. Philips has "tricked" them into buying this music device which you could build in a single ARM Linux board.

But hey, don't we want nice looking mp3 players? I know I would want my PS2 to play MP3's (which I've bought the Linux kit for... :-) Saves 1 noisy PC.

Post the Perl script everywhere, so we can still have it when Philips sues you ;-)

This might actually be good for Philips

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

My dad works for Philips, and as long as I can remember, they've been putting out products with reasonable or good quality and ofttimes a very nice technological edge, only to have them fucked up by some marketing droid imposing rediculous limitations on them.
Hell, that the software is put out only for windows I can understand: Philips has a pretty good relation to microsoft and has, afaik, never even bothered to look at alternatives, but I just can't understand why they limit the Internet-radio part to just a few 'philips-certified' stations. No brainer!
It's probably something to do with philips large interests in media groups (they have large stocks in some recording companies, and also in Vivendi, which does this kind of stuff too I think) and some marketing guy thinking this is a smart way to combine the two. Anyway, to make my point, someone making this thing useable, and removing stupid restrictings on it might actually make it *interesting* for consumers.

Re:Can this really be considered a "hack"?

[UVwarning]

Is it a hack? It allows you to listen to streams that you are not supposed to. I'd say that's a hack. Is it the product of reverse-engineering? Of course it is. I don't quite understand what you are getting at with that google link of yours. Yes, certainly XML is well documented and publicly available, but XML is not the protocol. The protocol only *uses* XML. There *is* such a thing as something being easy to reverse-engineer, and in this case it was fairly easy for me to, but the results are sweet. I can finally listen to BassDrive on my sterio. Yay!

Re:Could you explain

[Max Romantschuk]

...why do you need to stream something to another PC? If you have a LAN, you can play any file from wherever you want, no?

Files, yes. Content, including metadata about authors, styles and such: no. Just streaming files never ends up being user frienly enough. For you and me it's sufficient to locate a file. For someone else the ability to just "play movie" or "find rock music" is worth much more than a geek could possibly imagine ;)

Re:Build it yourself.

[Openadvocate]

I don't want a PC in my livingroom, but I do want to be able to listen to my mp3 files or internet streams. Sure I could build a PC for that, but it's not the same. I have had my Audiotron for a year now and I'd say that it would take a lot of work to make pc work as well. A units that fits with my other stereo components, a big display in front making easy to navigate and a remote control. I have had my computer hooked up to my stereo since I got my Commodore 64, and I am tired of it. It is hard for me to describe it, but the Audiotron is so easy to use that I wouldn't exchange it with it a PC, even if I got it for free. And there is no annoying and ugly machine with a noisy fan, nothing you need to boot first and maintainance time is zero.
I like that I just grab the remote control, press "Albums","Artists","Genre","Title" or "Net" and flip through them.