Group Test: Wireless music streamers
Sends songs to your hi-fi with these four systems
Round up The Roku Soundbridge M1001, Logitech's Squeezebox Duet, Philips' Streamium NP1100 and the Sonos Digital Music System all offer ways to get the music on your hard drive to pump out of your stereo.
They do so in various forms with various extra functionalities and at various prices, but at the end of the day they all do basically the same job. All allow you to place your computer, Wi-Fi router and hi-fi in different parts of your house and still indulge in single-minded pursuit of the groove.
Logitech's Squeezebox Duet: smart remote, simple streamer
The Basics
Physically, the Roku and Philips streamers have the most in common, both having LED screens built into the main units and screen-less remote controls, so you have to be with in sight of the base units to use them.
Roku's Soundbridge M1001: a lovely bit of kit?
The Roku is a lovely and unique bit of kit: a silver tube 60mm in diameter and 255mm in length that sits on a rubber mount to stop it rolling about. The Philips is more work-a-day, being a 195 x 104 x 38mm block of a device with the main housing sitting inside a clear plastic sleeve – this could have been purpose-designed as a dust trap. The foam packing our review device came in had started to disintegrate so the gap between the device and the housing was full of black dust which was none too attractive.
COMMENTS
I am happy with my NP1100
As indicated in your review, set-up is simple for Roku and Philips. I have choosen the Philips because it was cheapest and didn't want to spend too much to test a new technology.
Result is I am very happy with my NP1100 which is quite nice and so easy to use. I am also amazed by the number of station available.
When I have plug-it in the first time, SW has been automatically updated and now BBC is working very well.
I really love this device which allow me to listen internet radio without PC and also all my MP3 on my Hi-Fi system.
Tks for your usefull comparizon.
Problems with Squeezecenter & Ubuntu
If your music sits on a Linux server, check that the Squeezecenter server software works on your machine before parting with your hard-earned cash on the Logitech offering.
There are known problems trying to get Squeezecenter 7.2 running on Ubuntu 8.04 and derivatives. The advice from Slimdevice's support team is limited to telling you to go and read the forums - thanks guys.
I for one have given up with this and am going to investigate the Sonos product.
Aren't these technically a violation of copyright?
After all it is making available to others. If they have a receiver and live close enough they could pick up your transmissions and GOD FORBID copy it onto a cassette tape, then encode it to FLAC (sarcasm).
Honestly though, surely there is a legal question about these devices. They duplicate the copyrighted works don't they. And transmit them to all and sundry.
Bloody Freetards, paying lots of money to make available copyrighted works. I think that you all should pay the artists, no the music labels on a per listen basis.
(....paytard)
Roku in Pinnacle disguise too
You can get a down market version of the Roku SoundBridge in Pinnacle clothing. DLNA compliant, I use a Buffalo NAS with a UPnP server built in. I generally use the web interface for all set-up as it's much easier than the remote, much better way to set up the radio streams. The Pinnacle version has an SD card slot for a local music library too.
I would avoid the Logitech
It's not DLNA compliant, and uses it's own propitery streaming system (something which if it were Sony doing this, would be dragged over coals for).
I like the idea of having the media info on the remote, but for the moment, my trusty Noxon2's work just fine.
