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Mix Wi-Fi and Portable Digital Audio, Get Aireo
Midwestern gadget freak writes "What do you get when you mix Wi-Fi and digital tunes? The Aireo, which syncs with a PC over a high-speed wireless link instead of a cable or dock. It packs in other features not found in an iPod, but has a measly 1.5 gigabyte drive and won't work with any of the top music-download services. Its maker isn't a household name, but Best Buy will sell the things in a few weeks."
The summary says it has a measly 1.5 gig hd. Yes, some MP3 players of 20g or 10 or 40, but 1.5 is still a lot for many many songs. Hours on end to be truthful. If you frequently have time to update with your computer, I can't imagine 1.5g being a limit.
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When a female asks if you want to see her Aireo and doesn't lift up her shirt
Why is it that the iPods are still the #1 seller? Is it brand name recognization, or is it just that maybe Apple's product is better in the long run?
Did they just design the thing before the new 4gb mini drives came out, or could they not get a deal on them? I mean, with a 4gb drive, they could at least compete with an ipodmini on capacity. Right now they are in that awkward place between memory based and drive based players-- too heavy to jog with, but too little to store your whole collection.
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Crudely Drawn Games
Once again, a contender enters the field with completely different hardware specifications, obtuse pricing and little forecast on who will be dominating the field in 2004 and 2005. From my point of view, it is an innovation of merit, wireless access to your computer, on the fly playlists and a iPod mini-esque agenda to annouce, but... 1.5GB is the bare minimum I would believe for an audio prepherial.
Apple and HP should't lose too much sleep over this devices redeeming wireless factor, the fact it isn't a household name is becoming irrelevant as more consumers become aware of competing technologies but because it doesn't play buddies with iTMS or even Napster 2.0 is distressing, especially as the music download services enter maturity
But still, cool technology, useful placement, wrong time
Kudos to it
I like this thing. I don't need 40 gigs or 80 gigs or whatever when dealing with a portable music player. I want it to be small and I need more storage than 128 megs. 1.5 gigs is pretty good. I also don't care if it doesn't work with any of the music services. I don't want that DRM'd crap. Until they get things right I can find all the music I need on P2P. I dissapointed that there biggest sell point is that it is wireless. But I guess I-pod wins design and lots of other players are smaller so you go with your strengths. What is the price I didn't spend enough time looking to find it.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
you work for them don't you?
This post sounds like and advert, same copy as the site and everything...
Just a few small points.
1. How does it get 'wireless' power? I assume it needs a power cable to charge the battery. Maybe incar?
2. With a mac the ipod syncs when it is docked, so the list would be.
a. get ipod from car
b. dock ipod
c. sleep
d. put ipod in car
3. Its a bad idea to leave valuables in the car
4. The thing that cracks me up most is the 'Pick your playlists' bit. With only 1.5GB vs 15GB in the same price ipod (which has 10x capacity but is 'overpriced'?) many will need to pick the mp3's they want in the software for this thing, more so than any ipod user.
5. FM transmission is cool, but way lower quality then a wired connection
6. Syncing over wifi to a car is going to take a long time, 11Mb/s max, prob 1-3Mb/s in reality, bit slower than the 400Mb/s of firewire.
Just my 2 cents,
It doesnt say anywhere (or does it??) that it can link up with other Aireo's so whats the point? sticking a wireless link in it just so you dont have to plug the cable into your computer!? Ok so it could be cool if you want to leave it in the car or something but its not designed as a car stereo box so you would have to be pretty lazy to justify that. What would be really cool is if it could communicate with other mp3 players on the street so you could listen to what others were listening to (like jacking in with headphones but wireless) or even better, swap music with people. Im guessing they didnt do this for "legal" reasons but hopefully someone will come up with a firmware hack.
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won't work with any of the top music-download services
Sure it does, if it plays good ole' mp3s... because the "top music download services" are always going to be the free ones... perhaps the author meant "top pay services"...
You could also broadcast a live audio from anywhere with network access, as well...
I don't think this is an 'iPod Killer'. The phrase iPod killer assumes that the development of the iPod will stand still at the current stage of development, which it obviously won't.
I think if Steve Jobs has any brains at all, wireless will make its way into the next iPod. I don't think that video (rumoured to be in the next iPod) is a killer app on portable units, but I could be wrong. I can see a future for video combined with wireless - the possibilities are endless here, especially with vehicle mountings.
That said the Aireo is certainly a nice unit. The original postings saying that a 1.5 gig drive is a disadvantage is completely wrong. When you have wireless, you have unlimited storage - it is just remote to the device.
The only thing the Aireo will have to overcome is the iPods strong branding. Kudos to the Aireo for being the strongest contender yet!!!
Think of it as a wireless file server. Too bad about the drive size, but an interesting combo. Looks like the 'mini' computer intel(?) was pushing a while back. I suspect these are being made by the same folks who bought the polaroid name.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
I think that this product is a step toward what the majority of /.'s are seeking for portable audio devices. I am intruiged by this product, primarily for the wireless capabilities it possesses. I have been researching audio systems for my car which would allow me to wirelessly update my musical selections. I had looked at the CAJUN Car Audio Jukebox, but this device comes close as an option. I dream of finding a local merchant that makes custom Mini-ITX cases, and installs them in my vehicle inexpensively. But I will consider this, as an alternative to my dream car audio system.
is it that bad seein a hot chick again? if i see a hot chick walkin down the hall i dont say "repost"
And it has a built-in slot for small flash-memory cards to transfer photos from digital cameras to its hard drive, a feat the iPod can match only with a Belkin add-on. This feature isn't fully operational on prototype Aireos but is scheduled to be available with finished devices for sale.
I find this to be the most interesting feature it lists. I do digital photography as a hobby and I've always thought this feature would be awesome for an mp3 device. I personally have a hard drive based storage device (the MindStor - discontinued) for offloading my media but it's still rather large and bulky. There are also a bunch of portable storage devices with video screens out that play mp3s but the mp3 functionality is an afterthought.
I would love to be able to replace my ipod with a device that can function as both which still being compact. I would buy that in a second.
Ogg is like beta. Technically superior, but (almost) nobody cares.
..don't panic
Firewire 400 Mbit/s (or 800 if you have the later type)
Wi-Fi 11 Mbit/s (or maybe 54 if you're lucky enough to get it to work).
I daresay if wireless synching becomes popular they'll put it in the iPod soon enough.
Wireless synching is a good idea, but you still have to plug the thing in to charge. In that sense, it hasn't gained any physical advantage over any other player. The interface for the iPod, especially on windows, sucks ass. If plugging it in automatically synched it and it automatically un-docked itself when done it would be every bit as good as the Aerio. Now... If someone could just figure out a way to charge these gizmo's wirelessly we'd be set!
Did anybody ever catch that newscast about people hired by companies to promote products secretly? It was on cbs.
Some of these actors would be on the streets, and keep asking passerbys to take picture of them and another actor on that brand new camera that just came out.
On the more insidious end of the scale, they would hire pretty women (believe me, those REAL lookers in bars) to go smoke in bars, and give cigarettes/ask for a light. Men would of course be eager to please, and they would see what the lovely lady was smoking.
And then...there were those that were paid to surf around public forums and do publicity like "I totally saw "whatever" movie, it's really good!, you have to see it!". Basically it's manufactured word to mouth. If parent isn't one of those drones, he's trying to look like one.
Your steps are a bit redundant, why not add
* open the door to you house
* go inside
* turn computer on
* wait for computer to boot
You dont need to start Itunes, it starts automatically when you dock the iPod.
You also dont need to pick playlists.
Unless its the first time docking you dont need to wait a while either its basically instant.
You want a complaint about waiting to syncing 10+ gigs wirelessly and compare that to a firewire or usb2 sync.
Yeah I do think the iPod is a bit overpriced and Im not an Apple zealot but if your gonna complaint at least be accurate.
I've been working on for a few months. We are a 20-gig hard-disk-based car product, with a REAL interface, and a wireless link (which can sync to a number of services). We also showed versions of our products at CES this year which can play MPEG1/2/4 (and DiVX) in both home and car flavors.
If you're interested in music around the house, might I suggest a low-power FM transmitter?
;-)
Then you can buy cheap receivers, and put them all over the place, and listen to the music that's on your server.
Virtually no server configuration required! And if you time it right, you can have it play your theme music while you pull into the driveway
And that's not a troll. The market for portable music players is already crowded with 'almost-there' devices. iPod is slick but doesn't play OGG. Neuros plays OGG and has MyFi (the two things I look for most) but the interface is kludgy and it doesn't work with OS X. The iRiver has OGG capability but no MyFi. All have much larger capacity than this device. Why would I be interested in this if I'm already not buying the competitors' products that are already on the market with better specs? Seriously, why would you bring a product like this to market?
...just don't park too close to the neighbors who have the same device and atrocious taste in music!
According to the features list, you should be able to listen to what other people are listening to. It contains an FM transmitter, as well as an FM receiver. I suppose they put the transmitter in for use in the car, but you could techniqually search the radio waves for someone elses transmitter.
try looking for stuff like this.
Ok the first time you connect the Aireo it'll take forever to transfer your mp3s, but future connections should only take a few seconds. Why? Because as soon as you download a mp3... or two, or ten... you wirelessly send them to the device. And how long does it really take to send a mp3 at 11mpbs? 3-5 seconds? Do I really need 400mbps to transfer a 4mB mp3? I think not.
"FM Transmitter is worthless/unnecessary"
Depends on what you do with it. This is the perfect mp3 player for your car: you can send mp3s to it wirelessly and listen to them through your radio with your stock radio, no wires needed. What could be a better mp3 player for your car stereo? You'd need to keep it powered while in your car though, so you'll probably end up leaving it running 24/7 plugged into the cigerrete lighter, but if it can play mp3s for hours with tiny built-in batteries then it can't suck that much power so your car battery will be fine.
I really hope they come out with a car stereo version. A car stereo with a 10+ gig iPod drive, mp3 cd/dvd+-rw player with the ability to transfer songs from cd to hd and can play songs from mp3 dvds instead of cds, wireless 802.11 access, and of course FM and all the other features an aftermarket stereo includes.
That's a lot to pack in a car stereo, but I'd imagine it would be possible. I'd also like to see a way to keep the 802.11 active with the car shut-off, since I don't want to run out and start the car just to transfer some mp3s.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Time after time slashdotters complain about there being no good OGG players, when iRiver's iHP120 has been out for months: iRiver iHP120 at Amazon It has a 20GB harddrive, plays MP3, OGG, WMA, WAV and ASF, has high quality MP3 recording with adjustable bitrate, has an FM Tuner, optical out, in-line remote with backlit screen, a longer battery life than iPod (16 hrs), and acts as a USB 2.0 harddrive with no software. Note that a firmware upgrade is required for OGG playback, but most of my music is in OGG and it plays perfectly with the update.
For practical purposes, this thing has comparable capacity to one of those mini-iPods: it can hold far more songs than you can play on one charge, but it is far too small to hold one's entire music library. This really looks like a nice evolution of the disk-based player and technically like a great improvement over the mini-iPod.
The fact that it doesn't work with "major music download services" isn't surprising either: major music download services are proprietary and they are trying to create and leverage monopolies. Their creators have neither the interest nor the engineering skills to support a large number of clients--it's both easier and financially more interesting to them to tie their services to players running their own software.
Of course, if I pointed out that if Apple released this, people would be falling all over themselves saying how innovative the company was, I'd get modded down instantaneously by Apple's mod-squad, so I won't point that out.
I think you've missed the point.
If you read there website it says it uses an FM TX to send the audio to the car radio, that is going to be lower quality than listening via a wire connection, I am not talking about the Wi-Fi link.
And if you knew anything about wi-fi you would know it is bi-directional, so both devices are transmitters, yes you CAN get good wi-fi, but it requires at least one good arial, and that device isn't all that big and last time I checked neither is my laptops arial. If you are wardriving you only need to passivly pickup other peoples signals from large arials which will give better connections because they are big (ie base stations designed to give really good reception).
The FM if for sending an analog audio signal, the wi-fi is for file copy, different things.
Archos has various accessoris that let you transfer files from a CF card to one of their very portable hard drives that also play mp3s and mpeg4 video.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
- Drive past building with open WiFi network.
- Download all their MP3s.
- Profit.
Warsharing?CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
While it's good to see another hard drive based player in the market with some innovative features, I can see some problems with it:
Syncing over wifi is great, if a bit slow, but I don't think it will affect sales of devices like iPods for two reasons:
1. Many people who want players don't have wifi. The most likely to have wifi are people who own new Powerbooks, who are also the most likely to buy iPods as it's also made by Apple. It wouldn't really be worth getting wifi just so you could sync with the player, that would greatly increase the cost of the device.
2. The wifi syncing is really only useful for people who want to leave the player in their car. Otherwise, it's so little hassle to plug a player in to a cable or put it down in to a dock, either of which you'd need to do anyway to charge it (in the case of the iPod.)
OK, so lets say you can leave the player in your car attached to the cigarette lighter to keep it charged (my car doesn't have a cigarette lighter socket, but lets leave that aside.) Now, I can see a problem where the battery in the player is getting lots of short charges from the car. This isn't good for rechargeable batteries - they're better if they're allowed to drain completely and then charged up. So I can see a problem like the recent fuss over iPod batteries degrading quickly happening with the Aireo player as well.
If the player is in the car all the time, it won't matter if the battery doesn't work for very long, except for when you want to take it somewhere out of the car.
Really, car-wise, I can't see this beating the portable CD player I bought which plays discs of MP3s. It's not particularly great (it was a cheap one, much cheaper than the Aireo) but then again neither is the stereo in my car. However, when I want new music I can burn a new disc on my computer and leave it in my car. I effectively have infinite storage, and back-up of my music in one go. Also, if I buy a new CD I can listen to it on the same device, rather than having to take it to a computer to encode it. Now some proper car-based CD players have the ability to play discs of MP3s, if you want a good car-based experience they might be a better bet.
Back to the cable-based syncing: I'm not discounting that Apple, Creative and other MP3 player makers will put wifi in to their future devices. Once wifi becomes very widespread it will probably make sense. However, monitoring for wifi networks is going to be a drain on the players battery, so it will probably be something that needs to be turned on and off, which means if you forget to turn it on there's no difference between having to go and find the player and turn it on against finding it and carrying it to the computer and plugging it in.
And, lets face it, you're probably going to go to that computer anyway. That's the thing with MP3 players - generally they're carried around by you anyway, so having it in your pocket when you go to the computer anyway and plugging it in when you're there really isn't much of an effort. At the moment syncing involves bringing two pieces of personal equipment - the personal stereo and personal computer, together. You don't really need wifi for that, a cable is probably going to be long enough.
"What if they're using IE?" "I've dumbed Mozilla down to cope with it." - BOFH
Here is why this is important.
Think about the marketing forces behind commercial radio stations, their value can be summed up as "driving consumer preference by making music available in a channel that exposes users to advertising messages."
Something like this (which I have been waiting for for a while now) can make it so that Pepsi, instead of paying to have Britney on their commercials, can just buy her new song from her for $1MM outright, and have access points which automagically d/l the song to you whenever you go into a Pepsi vending establishment.
In other words, moving back to a world where music is too cheap to pirate. Why bother downloading from Kazaa if all you gotta do is buy a Pepsi at lunch, or go to McDonalds instead of BK, or Mobil instead of Shell. This does two things:
1. Seriously reduces the need for record companies, really all you would need is some sort of clearinghouse.
2. Disintermediates all the middle men in radio advertising, since companies can now directly affect consumer preference, rather than coming up with tricky ad copy to do it and then baiting us to listen to the ad with a kewl tune.
Where do you get *your* entropy?