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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.
EVEN BETTER! It appears they are selling just the software for $70 to let you use your own machine as the "beamer" hardware. OS included!!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Reminds me of Tivo for the musically inclined. Consumers do seem to like black boxes, as long as they work right the first time. I'd look at this for myself - it would be nice to have a music only drive and dedicate one machine for that task. Four hundred is a decent price point as well.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
Only MP3 Beamer I can think of is the iPod for the BMW.
Interesting, none-the-less.
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Picturing Dr. Evil, giggling and saying "Unless you give us 150 Million Million dollars!!! Mwahahaha etc. etc."
Still, looks like a nice box.
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Does MSN censor search results?
Having your music on one box might be appealing to some - heck, it is to me. Part os it is I dont want to keep a 550 watt machine going solely got music streaming - it does make a dent in your electric bill. It appears to be pretty portable too - if the functionality is as expected this will be a hot seller IMO.
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
...you can get a Mac Mini to do just about all that and more. I have mine hooked up to my TV doing most of what this does, as well as playing games, showing slideshows, and ripping and playing DVDs.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But according to Napster, iTunes can cost you 10,000$!!
A machine you can put on autopirate and it works! A new generation of AI!
My little site.
This product borrows heavily from the OSS Slimserver product, which is primarily developed for the Squeezebox and SliMP3 by http://www.slimdevices.com/Slim Devices.
I use my roomates machine to stream and store all of my music. He doesn't notice and it cost me no money.
Did I mention that he's not very computer literate?
In other words, Slashdot editors want a free one to play with.
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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?
Or you can download slimserver for free. Granted the $70 fee gets you linspire, but I'm willing to bet someone wanting to do this has the ability to download linux iso images and do the install themselves and for free.
Do any of the moderators actually read the fucking article first?
The CPU is a 2.4Ghz Celeron. It's not an expensive P4.
$150 in M&Ms would not be so bad. If only my Ex-wife had only asked for that!
Not that I don't agree with you, but you do realize that the specs for a power supply list how much power it _can_ supply, not how much it _does_ supply at any given point?
For example, the server that I use for development, storage, MP3, SMTP, IMAP, HTTP, SMB, etc is an AMD 2600 with two (2) 200GB 7200 RPM drives and 1 GB RAM.
Even though it has a 400W power supply, I've measured that it uses 140W.
Regardless, your point still stands as the server costs about $15 / mo to run.
Just pay a kid 10 cents per CD to drop them in the mp3beamer for you. Like Robertson himself did.
Thanks for this link. I did measure various components of my homebrew PC, but never thought of using a commercial outlet meter on it. I need to check that out. No matter what, I got a 3.0 GHz CPU and 9 fans - I know I'm leaking fuel out of it!
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
If you are worried about the electric bill, build a mini-itx based system. They can be ran off of a 60 watt power supply (some require 90) and would make a great dedicated music server. They are not powerfull enough to worry about your electric bill.....and some can be nearly silent (no fans) except for hd and cd noise.
Stop signs are only Suggestions