Gadget lust strikes: SlimDevices have seriously updated the SliMP3 and renamed it “SqueezeBox” (apologies to The Who?) Now it’s got built-in Wi-Fi, digital outputs (coax and optical) and plays uncompressed WAV/AIFF). Hrmm… on the other hand, we haven’t hooked up the SliMP3 since we moved, which has encouraged us back into CDs and LPs — their own reward. Have to rethink the meaning of “essential upgrade.”
Slim is donating 10% of profits to the EFF – can’t argue with that. On a similar note, received an offer tonight, buried among the seemingly bottomless pile of credit card offers, to get a LinuxFund credit card; a portion of each purchase would go to funding open source programming efforts. At first I laughed. Seemed like hearing a Led Zeppelin song as soundtrack for a Cadillac commercial. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like Aikido; turning capitalist momentum against itself. Hrmm… the APR is same as mainstream cards, why not switch?
What is the advantage of turning back to your CDs and LPs?
Sean, not an advantage technically – it’s more about listening style. Rather than playlist or random play, poring over the album titles and selecting one willfully, listening start to finish. Also, it’s about appreciating the albums we’ve chosen over the years and opted to keep, rather than dabbling with all the downloaded stuff, which is essentially an unending experiment. Cool in its own right, but something is lost in translation.
Are you into Aikido now too Scot, or is it just for the sake of comparison?
Vincent, just for the sake of comparison ;)
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.