MP3beamer Released
An anonymous reader writes "MP3tunes, Michael Robertson's new music venture, has released a snazzy linux music appliance called MP3beamer. The $399 box auto-rips CDs and imports MP3s and then connects to iTunes, Java devices, media receivers, web devices even WinCE units with handy feature to "sync" songs from server to remote machine for offline playback not just streaming - see screenshots. Last time Robertson launched something with "Beam" in the name it led to avalanche of lawsuits and more then $150MM in legal payments with BeamIt from the old MP3.com." It'd be excellent to get a review of one of these machines; looks like a good one.
Reminds me of Tivo for the musically inclined. Consumers do seem to like black boxes, as long as they work right the first time. I'd look at this for myself - it would be nice to have a music only drive and dedicate one machine for that task. Four hundred is a decent price point as well.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
In the product FAQ, they mention an MP3Beamer Sync component that automatically syncs your iTunes collection with your MP3Beamer collection. I'm curious how they pulled this off. Does the iTunes Sharing protocol (DAAP) support file upload? Or are they pushing the music in some other way?