Washington Post tries Aiport Express/Squeezebox
The Washington Post has posted an AirPort Express vs. Squeezebox article, which does a good job comparing the two devices. If you’re considering the purchase of one of these media receivers (and even if you aren’t) it’s worth the read. From the article:
Slim Devices’ system doesn’t accept song downloads bought at such stores as iTunes, Wal-Mart or Napster. This isn’t Slim Devices’ fault — this Mountain View, Calif., firm (www.slimdevices.com) has yet to get the necessary programming information from Apple and Microsoft, the creators of those sites’ copy-controlled music formats — but it’s still a major hindrance.
While Slim Devices works on this point, it ought to address a few other issues. The Squeezebox crashed a few times, requiring a forced reboot. Its bright, two-line LED display is impossible to miss but difficult to read, with characters maybe half the size of those on a DVD player’s readout. And the way to view the artist and album of a song, instead of just its title, is less than obvious (pressing the “Now Playing” button won’t do the trick).
I had no such problem with Apple’s AirPort Express — it includes neither a status display nor a remote control. I had thought those omissions would negate the utility of this tiny gadget, but after a week of living with it I’ve changed my mind.
Read it in full, here.
July 19th, 2005 at 9:58 am
I just setup a Pluto Home system (smarthome + media server). It’s really cool and works great with SqueezeBoxes. Just plug the squeeze box into an Ethernet jack. When it sees the squeezebox request an IP address it automatically installs the slimserver and sets everything up on its own. There’s no software to install at all. And if you have a Bluetooth mobile phone, that turns into the remote control—complete with cover art, access to playlists, etc. Plus, it knows how to control all the other stuff too—so when I start playing music on my squeeze box it automatically turns on the stereo and sets it to the right input.
There’s only 1 problem… They have these interactive maps so I can see what’s playing around the house and make the same thing play in multiple destinations. If all the destinations are squeezeboxes, it’s great. But if some are squeezeboxes and some are media PC’s, Pluto uses slimserver to go to the squeeze boxes, and videolan to stream to the PC’s—and the 2 ‘groups’ are not in sync. They say it’s because the only slimp3 player that emulates squeezebox2 and runs under Linux requires Java. Pluto sends a network boot image to all the media pc’s in the house—that’s how it turns your other PC’s into set top boxes. They don’t want to add the whole java runtime to the net boot image and bloat it just to get a slimp3 player. There are 2 open source C++ slimp3 players that are small and lean, but they are old and don’t support the new protocols.
So, is anybody out there working on a C++ squeezebox2 player? This is the only small piece that’s missing. With that piece this would be a total sonos killer. You would still have a cool GUI with cover art. But it’s even better than Sonos’ because it uses your existing mobile phone—one less thing to lose—and your music follows you automatically as you move throughout the house. Plus it does movies—not just music. And controls a/v equipment and home automation too. And costs 1/10 the price.