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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.

15 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. WOW! by j0nkatz · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!!

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  2. Beamer? by turtled · · Score: 5, Funny

    Only MP3 Beamer I can think of is the iPod for the BMW.

    Interesting, none-the-less.

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  3. $150MM?!? by aendeuryu · · Score: 5, Funny

    Picturing Dr. Evil, giggling and saying "Unless you give us 150 Million Million dollars!!! Mwahahaha etc. etc."

  4. Slimserver by Quixote · · Score: 5, Informative
    This appears to be an Asus Pundit with Linspire. The music server component is a hacked-up Slimserver, as clarified by Robertson himself (see link for more answers from him).

    Still, looks like a nice box.

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  5. And for $100 more... by sootman · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.

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  6. Re:Very interesting concept by sabernet · · Score: 5, Funny

    But according to Napster, iTunes can cost you 10,000$!!

  7. Finally! by MrAnnoyanceToYou · · Score: 5, Funny

    A machine you can put on autopirate and it works! A new generation of AI!

  8. Slimserver by jhernand · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. My free solution... by borawjm · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

  10. free schwag by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 4, Funny
    "It'd be excellent to get a review of one of these machines; looks like a good one."

    In other words, Slashdot editors want a free one to play with.

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  11. Sync to iTunes - How? by Slackrat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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?

  12. Re:This is actually pretty interesting... by Zed2K · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  13. MOD PARENT DOWN. by garcia · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do any of the moderators actually read the fucking article first?

    The CPU is a 2.4Ghz Celeron. It's not an expensive P4.

  14. is $MM a Britishism? International unit? by xtermin8 · · Score: 4, Funny

    $150 in M&Ms would not be so bad. If only my Ex-wife had only asked for that!

  15. Re:Very interesting concept by tdemark · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.