MP3beamer Released

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Posted by Hemos on Monday February 28, 2005 @05:10AM from the connect-to-everything dept.

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.

9 of 191 comments (clear)

WOW! by j0nkatz · 2005-02-28 05:12 · 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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Beamer? by turtled · 2005-02-28 05:13 · Score: 5, Funny

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

Interesting, none-the-less.

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$150MM?!? by aendeuryu · 2005-02-28 05:13 · Score: 5, Funny

Picturing Dr. Evil, giggling and saying "Unless you give us 150 Million Million dollars!!! Mwahahaha etc. etc."
Slimserver by Quixote · 2005-02-28 05:15 · 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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And for $100 more... by sootman · 2005-02-28 05:16 · 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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Re:Very interesting concept by sabernet · 2005-02-28 05:16 · Score: 5, Funny

But according to Napster, iTunes can cost you 10,000$!!
Finally! by MrAnnoyanceToYou · 2005-02-28 05:18 · Score: 5, Funny

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

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My free solution... by borawjm · 2005-02-28 05:21 · 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?
Re:Very interesting concept by tdemark · 2005-02-28 05:34 · 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.