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A Serious Contender for the Couch Throne
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."
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.
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.
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"?
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.
This thing is, in fact, neither a couch NOR a throne nor indeed any form of seating?
qntm.org
...and it's not the one in the living room.
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.
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Looks really rather similar
These guys (hermstedt) need a good kicking at the moment because they are up to version 2.0 of their firmware and still have not released source code.
Putting that to one side, I have one of these and it really is rather good.
Wifi has been a term for years, are you just now seeing it?
Whats it consist of ? A hard drive , a basic display ,a cheap MB , and a cd rom . Sound familiar ?
It should
Those are all components of an XBOX minus the screen . SO figure a display might cost $100 to implement . How much does an XBOX cost ?
Is it cool?
Yes.
Is it worth $899 ?
NO .
I just bought a laptop from dell for less than that .
The price makes it laughable .
Actually there is a sizable market for classical music playback equipment, in the ultra-ultra-high-end. Many audiophiles (who really are just people with lots of disposable income and who think they have better hearing than anyone else) like classical music and jazz. Whether they become audiophiles out of an actual appreciation of classical and jazz music, or whether they like classical and jazz music because they're some of the only recordings which really sound much better on a serious high-end audio system, I'm not sure. If you read Stereophile or some of the other mags like it, it becomes clear that the tail wags the dog in a lot of areas ... people spend thousands of dollars on a stereo, and then go out and hunt for discs that actually have enough detail in the recording to sound better on them.
But the audiophile market is incredible fickle, and I'm not sure whether a product like this would do well or not. (Although Stereophile did pick the iPod as one of its components of the year a while back...) Maybe if it was designed to work with huge volumes of uncompressed high-resolution music data, they could carve out a niche for it. But otherwise, and until somebody comes up with a way to rip SACDs and DVD-As, who cares. Also, the lack of a digital-out for use with an outboard DAC will probably lose them points in a review.
Anyway, just my thoughts. The hifi audio world is a pretty strange, sometimes twisted place (where else can you spend $500 on a 3-pin IEC power cord?), and I don't think these guys are entering it correctly if they want to succeed there.
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Yeah, but does it run Li--oh wait.... Damn, there goes my post.
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.
I was about to say, "No, TractorJector didn't write that. It was cut and pasted verbatim from the first sentence of the article. Have the common decency blah blah blah." But hmm, now this is odd. It seems that every Slashdot story that TractorJector has submitted has been a Mad Penguin article by Christian Einfeldt.
Christian Einfeldt, if you are indeed TractorJector or are affiliated with Mad Penguin in some way, please have the monads to disclose in your Slashdot submissions that you're the one who wrote the article. Really, it's okay to pimp your own stuff one the web. Everybody does it now that blogging is the current fashion. But submitting the articles under a pseudonym (especially ones with naive editors, like Slashdot) is just a wee bit underhanded and deceitful.
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).