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A Serious Contender for the Couch Throne

Posted by Zonk on from the tux-in-unusual-places dept.

TractorJector writes "It is no secret that the competition for global domination in the operating system market has moved from the desktop to the living room couch. The Olive Symphony, a Linux-powered hi-fi wi-fi stereo hub, stands a decent chance for a prime position before the living room throne."

8 of 184 comments (clear)

  1. So... uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really... why do I need a "stereo hub"?

    I've got a stereo. Is that not good enough?

    This doesn't seem like it will be very likely to bring linux to the masses. Anyone who is enough of a technophile to be able to find a use for this thing already probably knows what linux is already.

    1. Re:So... uh... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      i'll tell you why - i have a VCR, a DVD player, a CD changer, a game cube, a receiver, and a digital cable box. this is not an uncommon setup. i have four remotes, and going from watching a movie to playing a game, or to recording a tv show, or to doing anything else involves a nightmarish process of changing the receiver to AUX1, or to VID2, or changing the audio output to dolby 5.1, or changing the aspect ratio on the TV to...

      imagine if you had to go through this same process on your PC every time you wanted to go from listening to an mp3 to watching a video. it's insane.

      you see where i'm going? all of these machines are dumb - none of them talk to each other. if i put in a DVD, i want the TV and all the audio components to know what's going on. if i turn on the game cube, i want the components to know what's going on. that's what this machine does - it makes stuff just work out of the box.

  2. Oh Joy! An MP3 player! by Suicyco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really, isn't that all this is? Its a networked mp3 player that looks like a stereo component - because it is, but whats the big deal? It has linux?

    What "throne" is it supposed to capture? Networked dvd players do this, plus they play movies. A mythtv box does much more.

  3. Hmm by pmdata · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For $899 it better deliver my morning toast. I'm all for linux, but isn't the whole idea open source, low cost and "do it yourself"?

  4. Serious contender? Not hardly. by Quarters · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It's a streaming MP3 player with a job/shutle dial, a menu system not unlike an iPod, and a CD burner.

    Why would I be more interested in that than, say, a $99 Tivo that can stream MP3s, has an accessible UI, and can also record video.

  5. Does anyone remember the time by multiplexo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    When /. actually contained useful news stories about the tech industry and other areas of interest to geeks? I seem to recall such a time in the past. Now we have duplicate stories, stupid questions in ask /. and blatant product placements such as this one. It's a friggin audio player that uses embedded Linux. Big fucking deal! Nothing to see here folks. Move along. And if TractorJector had actually looked at the website he would have seen that the software to control the beast is proprietary and only available on MacOS X.

    Would it be too much to ask the "editors" of /. to stop posting stories of the form "There is a new device X out there that is controlled by Linux. Look out Microsoft/MPAA/RIAA/TSA/CIA/FBI/DoJ/Apple whoever because they're soon going to 0wnz0r all of your base!". I mean really, the fact that someone has come out with an MP3 player that is controlled via embeded Linux isn't news. It might have been eight years ago, but it isn't in 2005.

    --
    cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
  6. Re:hi-fi wi-fi by Dominatus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Wifi has been a term for years, are you just now seeing it?

  7. Re:Because audiophiles have a lot of money... by Quarters · · Score: 3, Insightful
    As an audiophile and someone who sells equipment and music to audiophiles, I can vouch that this is EXACTLY what they want.

    You just defined the product in a way that will guarantee that it isn't a mass market winner. No niche product marketed to a select few with arguably better ears and money to burn will ever gain the "couch throne" (or whatever equally ridiculous faux title the article used).