Setup and First Impressions
We don't ever do unboxings here - in fact, there's an outstanding Golden Goldfish Award for the world's most inept video unboxing. But figuring we may never see this in captivity ever again, here's the box.
Internet radio is the main pitch, here
Not a lot of fancy packaging
Music Centre, remote... that's pretty much it
The box contains the radio and the infrared remote control, which requires two AAA batteries. Nokia Home Music is strictly a static unit, there's no battery compartment and it's designed for indoor use only. Simply attach the FM antenna and plug it in. Switching on the device prompts you to choose a WiFi network, 802.11g is supported, or you can plug in an Ethernet cable.
Next page: Sink Testing
COMMENTS
Networking
Humm UPnP and DLNA supported...are these two protocols OS supported by the nowadays Apple products? No!? So, why blaming Nokia for not supporting Apple products and not blaming Apple for lack of support for two widespread protocols, uh Mr Orlowski?
Backend support
A persistent issue I have with internet radio devices is their reliance on a web server somewhere to keep running and providing the routing information for each channel. Does this radio need to talk to Nokia to work properly? I guess they should be around for many years to come, but who knows if this service will be something they continue to value? Looks interesting though...
The cult of "i"
What a nightmare having to spend all that time reading an article when you could have been fiddling with your "i" devices which have a reputation for *hite sound quality.
£100 too much
So, no built in storage and it's basically just one of their £20 phones with a mono speaker, a few ports and no phone or battery. No iPod support is inexcusable at that price point (though it wouldn't be a major selling point for the device) and NO storage for podcasts or DAB (or even MW/LW)? No wonder it was buried alive.
That thing must cost practically nothing to make. Sell it for £30-£40 and they'd have a winner. They could even build some kind of marketplace around music sales to the device.... oh wait....
My coat's the one with the iPhone and N95 in the pockets. :-)
Reciva?
Good this it isn't Reciva internals. That would kill it utterly.
It might be OK for internet radio, but it's completely pants as a network media player. What would you think of a player that barfs if there's more than a few hundred tracks on your media server?
