Slashdot Mirror
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."
that being Sony will sue him into revoking via DMCA,... LOL
So you dont even read the post ehh. It clearly mentions Philips' streamium MCi-200. So if you must first post, then first post correctly.
... whenever a text is transmitted, variation occurs. This is because human beings are careless, fallible, and occasiona
Philips sues *you* and throws *you* in jail!
Seriously, you're going to taste the blade of the DMCA pretty soon. I mean, what if Philips wanted to sell you this new-found freedom for $39.99 in the form of a "Freedom Xpansion Pack(tm)"?
So get your mirrors on, bitches!
I don't know, Philips might be okay with this... It's not like they're making more money from the restrictions, or losing money from his hack, or it's affecting other customers. Microsoft doesn't want modded Xboxes on live because it affects service for others (really people, why does a linux xbox need to be on live? Sure, it's a pain to take the chip out every time, but it's also a pain to lose every other game to a 13 year old with a wallhack). Printer makers don't like toner cartridge hacking because they lose money. But Phillips doesn't have any financial reason to sue the guy... they may do so because they want to control their products, on the other hand.
Props for sticking it to the man but isn't the Stream/ium just a set of speakers connected to the internet?
What's the difference between this and simply streaming music to your computer, then streaming it out of another set of speakers?
Maybe it's the idea of replacing radio with a true people's medium? Maybe wrenching power away from the media moguls and using the internet as the peoples voice to listen to/stream the music they want? In that case why did you buy the Stream/Ium in the first place? It obviously only connects to Phillips approved content and judging by this statement: " Digital connectivity also enables the Streamium MC-i200's digital connectivity to receive additional services and features from Philips and its partner companies as and when they are offered. Details of available updates for both the Streamium MC-i200 and the FW-i 1000 will be posted on the Philips Audio website, www.audio.philips.com." It sounds like its going to be collecting data about you.
If you get an error, type "OVERRIDE" or "SECURITY OVERRIDE" and then try the optimize command again.
Now that it's so much more useful it seems like a good deal.
That red on alloy look is kind of quaint and so retro 20th century though. Do they come in another color ?
yeah, except reverse engineering is generally held to be "fair use." just because something is in a EULA does not mean that it is legally enforceable.
my pet machine
You've just "reverse-engineered" HTTP and XML.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The slimp3, if you've not heard of it, is a thin-client that will play mp3s streamed from the server. The server is written in perl, and kicks much ass. I'm pretty sure that people are using the server as a front end to their mp3s (as the server can also feed an http stream), even without owning the slimp3 hardware.
Those with perl-talent should totally be able to hack the existing (open source) slimp3 server into supporting this hardware as well.
Granted, I'm not too sure how much the slimdevices folks would appreciate this, but the two projects seem ripe for marriage.
AM/FM Tuner Card___$ 20
100 Watt Speakers__$ 50
TV Tuner Card______$ 40
Linux of choice____$free
Total Cost_________$310
What do ya know? Cheaper than the Streamium, yet I can play movies too.
First of all I'll admit I didn't read the article...
;)
What I did do was start wondering if there are any open standards to do things like this... I've been thinking about making a box at home to serve mp3s and movies, which would then be played at various devices (my desktop PC, my tv-attached laptop etc...)
This might not be quite on topic, but are there open standards for linking devices for serving and playing back media in a user friendly fashion? Sure you can do things like this, but the whole user friendlyness is critical for me, or rather my girlfriend, who won't have any of it unless she can use it too
.: Max Romantschuk
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.
GPL Deconstructed
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 ;-)
do you? It doesn't seem anybody does...
They are losing something. It's not money, it's not customers... it's control. Sometimes that's more important than either of the others.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Reverse engineering is a techincal term, not a medal. Difficulty of the project does not come into play when determining what the project is. This was a reverse engineering project.
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.
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.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
1. Should Phillips fight this as much as they can?
2. Should Phillips welcome it as added value for customers?
3. Should Phillips start to release just the hardware and specs, and simply let other people do their software work for free?
Interesting business idea if nothing else, sucker others into working for you without having to pay them, and then feed them that it is because of their freedom...
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!
technically, it is reverse engineering.
Is it as complicated as using a hexadecimal dumper ? He never said so.
Its a good hack given that it works on any platform.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
...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
.: Max Romantschuk
Somebody explain to me what genius at Phillips thought it would be a competitive advantage to control the stream a customer could listen to, and why that's an advantage.
Oh. Advantage. Righto. Gotcha. Phillips thought, gee, we can force users to listen to only these channels, and then we can get those channels to pay us with money from the additional ad revenue they can get by claiming all those captive ears.
Except. I'd never buy, for instance, a GE TV that would only tune in NBC, the network owned by GE. In fact, I'd be so offended by that idea, I'd make a point not to buy GE or watch NBC. (Let me emphasize that GE does not sell an NBC-only TV or tuner, as far as I know.)
I'm in the market for something like a Streamium. But now I definitely won't buy Phillip's Streamium product, and I'll be very disinclined to buy any Phillips products, because I now know they don't want customers, they want customer ears to sell to "strategic partners".
In fact, I'll be very disinclined to buy anything without an open specification.
I bought an Archos Jukebox. It's great hardware. It's built-in firmware is definitely substandard software. An open source replacement, Rockbox, is an order of magnitude faster, and far far more configurable.
But I can't use the open source replacement, because Archos won't release its specification for my model of Archos. (I'll be able to use it soon, thanks to some remarkable reverse engineering by the Rockbox team.)
I have a simple proposition for hardware manufacturers: I'll buy what I can use as I wish to use it. I won't buy your product to become a commodity you can sell to your partners. You want to profit, manufacturers? Sell an open specification product. Don't try to sell me to advertisers.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
If the box won't connect to the 'huge range... currently on line', but only a smaller, Philips authorised, range, then that's false advertising, which, in Europe, anyway, is illegal. So before wasting time hacking the box it would be worth dropping a line to the Advertising Standards Authority or your national equivalent, or to your local Trading Standards office.
Remember, as Lessig points out, the law is also code, and has APIs you can use.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
From the last example in his protocol list, it looks like streamium might open up a port that allows hard drive access through a web interface. Could this be possible? I bet there are plenty of streamium users who dont/wont have firewalls. Will it be the end user or the manufacterer who gets sued by the RIAA for copyright violations?
-AC.
The SliMP3 is cute, but to use it in, say, my kitchen I'd need a separate amp and speakers. In my living room I stream MP3s to my surround sound setup via an FM radio transmitter on the back of the server box upstairs, controlled via VNC on iPAQ or laptop. What I really want is something battery powered and portable that can stream mp3s off my home server wherever I go: this looks like it *might* be a possibility here - comments?
Why not? He's forcing the hardware to do something its designers/makers didn't intend.
l ashdot-hackers-think-they're-doing types, what's not to like?
By studying the hardware and software, he's succesfully extended the functionality of the device... why wouldn't this be reverse-engineering? Am I misunderstanding the term? (If I am, I'm sure hordes of ACs are just itching to tell me so)
Aibo owners make their dogs do all kinds of crazy stuff (that sony didn't intend) and extend the functionality of those devices; I'd say it's about the same thing... clearly a hack.
Now, he may not be trying to "stick it to the man" using Philip's device this way, but he's made a useful product more so... Unless you're some kind of anal It's-my-proprietary-design-what-do-those-damned-s
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
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.
my sig
Streamium - Streaming at a premium!
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
No , the protocol is XML. Ie the XML data is all thats in the data packet and its in plain ascii. The only thing wrapping it will be the TCP/UDP and IP headers.
Hi,
r eceiver.as p
? Ca t=&PHPSESSID=
i ons/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?sku=M975-1036
instead of going with this why not use a Rio Receiver instead?
http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/rio_
It's a nice little box developed by the same guys who invented the Empeg, the coolest Linux based car radio in the world. The RR can be bought for $129 at Tigerdirect and there are lots of units on eBay which can typically be had for around $90.
It has an ethernet port, HPNA (if you don't want to run any wires through your house), built in amplifier, RCA out, headphone out, remote control. They only include a very barebones software for Windows which is basically a DHCP/NFS server that bootstraps the unit and allows it to download an embedded Linux version. But there are several servers for running on your own Linux machine.
I just bought one off of eBay and like it a lot. The sound quality is very good and there is an active developer community at the Rio Receiver discussion board:
http://rioreceiver.comms.net/php/ubbthreads.php
Here's one reseller Tigerdirect:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat
regards,
Heiko - not affiliated with Tiger/Sonicblue