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Music Media Hardware

Hacking the Streamium 164

Posted by timothy from the make-it-do-your-bidding dept.
UVwarning writes "I submitted a review to Slashdot about a month ago complaining about various problems with Philips' streamium MCi-200 (an Internet micro hi-fi system). The main gripes being that Philips controls which Internet radio stations you can listen to and that the PC-link software (which is used to serve MP3s from your PC to your Streamium) only runs on Windows. I managed to fix both of these problems by reverse engineering the PC-link protocol and writing my own pc-link server in perl, which can be run on practically any OS, *and* can trick the Streamium into playing any Internet MP3 stream that you want! This is a must-have for any Streamium user. Here is a more detailed article along with the perl script and an outline of the PC-link protocol."
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Hacking the Streamium More

Hacking the Streamium

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  • Reaction? (Score:1, Redundant)

    by Shishio ( 540577 )
    Well I'm too sleepy to think much beyond the fact that Phillips probably won't like this.

    How long before version 2 units that prevent this, or some other propietary work that forces someone to do some more reverse engineering?
    • Probably an order of magnitude longer than it will take for some enterprising geek to break it.
    • I think Phillips will be quite pleased with this news. I don't see the huge demand for the Streamium at this point. What a better way to boost sales for a marginal seller. Look what Hack-ability [tivocommunity.com] has done for another of their Products, Tivo [tivo.com]. I Know I Wouldn't have bought one if I knew I couldn't hack at it.
  • The XML schema is publically available [google.com], the protocol is plain text, and XXML itself is widely documented and implemented. I'm sure the provided Perl script iis a nice application, but its hardly the product of "reverse-engineering".
    • Reverse engineering is a techincal term, not a medal. Difficulty of the project does not come into play when determining what the project is. This was a reverse engineering project.

    • Re:Can this really be considered a "hack"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UVwarning ( 635160 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:27AM (#5318104)
      Is it a hack? It allows you to listen to streams that you are not supposed to. I'd say that's a hack. Is it the product of reverse-engineering? Of course it is. I don't quite understand what you are getting at with that google link of yours. Yes, certainly XML is well documented and publicly available, but XML is not the protocol. The protocol only *uses* XML. There *is* such a thing as something being easy to reverse-engineer, and in this case it was fairly easy for me to, but the results are sweet. I can finally listen to BassDrive on my sterio. Yay!
    • technically, it is reverse engineering [webopedia.com].

      Is it as complicated as using a hexadecimal dumper ? He never said so.
      Its a good hack given that it works on any platform.
    • Why not? He's forcing the hardware to do something its designers/makers didn't intend.

      By studying the hardware and software, he's succesfully extended the functionality of the device... why wouldn't this be reverse-engineering? Am I misunderstanding the term? (If I am, I'm sure hordes of ACs are just itching to tell me so)

      Aibo owners make their dogs do all kinds of crazy stuff (that sony didn't intend) and extend the functionality of those devices; I'd say it's about the same thing... clearly a hack.

      Now, he may not be trying to "stick it to the man" using Philip's device this way, but he's made a useful product more so... Unless you're some kind of anal It's-my-proprietary-design-what-do-those-damned-sl ashdot-hackers-think-they're-doing types, what's not to like?

    • Well, Philips' marketing and packaging is fairly ambiguous about what you can listen to.

      Connect to Multiple Online Music Services, it says; now this sounds like "Streams that Philips wants you to listen to".
      General alarm bells would be sounding already with that part of the blurb if it wasn't for:

      Online Radio:
             Go global! select from thousands of stations of music, news, sports and special interests in any language, from every region.

      Which would lead me to think "Great! this listens to all the channels globally which run from shoutcast style systems (re: Mp3 capability)

      And I would have been wrong.

      And it would have gone back to the store in a hurry.

      Anyway; I've always fancied making one of these myself, possibly with a Mini_ITX form factor [mini-itx.com] :) - And then hook it up to a significantly larger [jblpro.com] sound system ;)

  • In IMPERIALIST AMERICA (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:39AM (#5317842)
    Philips sues *you* and throws *you* in jail!

    Seriously, you're going to taste the blade of the DMCA pretty soon. I mean, what if Philips wanted to sell you this new-found freedom for $39.99 in the form of a "Freedom Xpansion Pack(tm)"?

    So get your mirrors on, bitches!

    • Stupid Screwball (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Philips is not even an American company, you moron.

      *sigh*


      • Philips is not even an American company, you moron.


        It doesn't matter as long as the guy, who did this, is.

        • Why would it matter if he was or wasn't an American?
          We imprisoned Manuel Noriega in Florida for breaking
          American laws, although he was a Panamanian citizen
          living in Panama. That's just the most famous
          example. There are a thousand Afghanistani patriots
          now imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for defending their
          country against attack. Heck, we don't just
          prosecute people, we assassinate them without trial,
          regardless of whether they are citizens or not, or
          whether their supposed crimes are capital offenses
          or not (as in Yemen recently), so it would not be
          outside of the customary practices of the U.S. to
          simply kill anybody in their home, anywhere in the
          world, for breaking an American law.

  • Personal use (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zabieru ( 622547 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:40AM (#5317844)
    I don't know, Philips might be okay with this... It's not like they're making more money from the restrictions, or losing money from his hack, or it's affecting other customers. Microsoft doesn't want modded Xboxes on live because it affects service for others (really people, why does a linux xbox need to be on live? Sure, it's a pain to take the chip out every time, but it's also a pain to lose every other game to a 13 year old with a wallhack). Printer makers don't like toner cartridge hacking because they lose money. But Phillips doesn't have any financial reason to sue the guy... they may do so because they want to control their products, on the other hand.

    • You don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by dsanfte ( 443781 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:16AM (#5317962) Journal
      do you? It doesn't seem anybody does...

      They are losing something. It's not money, it's not customers... it's control. Sometimes that's more important than either of the others.
      • I said that, actually. I just think companies are more likely to sue if there's money in it, or if it helps them.
      • I accept control is important - but they only want to keep control as money and customers would follow after they'd lost it. Personally I'm quite happy for my modded Xbox not to be allowed onto Live. Live is a service they offer with conditions attached - if you don't like the conditions then don't accept the service.
        • Control is important because the money DOES follow.

          Without control, you can't force the broadcasters to pay you a fee, no matter how small it might seem.

          If this player could play just any audio stream, then after the sale of the box, that is the end of any revenue they see. You don't think they will make any revenue if you listen to a Shoutcast stream? You don't think anyone sending such a stream is going to do anything but laugh out loud if Phillips asks them for money.

          In fact, one of the economics basics about any monopoly is that control and market share are the most important thing. IBM figured this out by the mid 1950's. Control is more important than...
          • Profit
          • Legality
          • Public opinion
          • ...anything else
          If you have control then the profits will follow. You can set prices arbitrarily. (The very definition of control.) Get slapped with a legal fine? Just pay it. You can gouge prices later to make it up.

          Another way to see this is... if you have control then your only purpose must be to turn the purchaser of the box into an ongoing revenue stream.

    • Re:Personal use (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      What if they wanted to sell the programming tech docs? What if they wanted to sell you access to other streams? What if they wanted to sell you a Linux driver?

      It's like a drug company creating a disease and then selling you the cure.. or the mafia selling you liberty.. tech companies can deny you something you have in the first place, and then offer to sell it to you. *That's* what control is all about.
    • If they are planning a more expensive model with these features enabled they will most likely loose money. People will buy the cheaper product and unlock the features of the more expensive product.

    • Re:Personal use (Score:5, Interesting)

      by octalgirl ( 580949 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @08:43AM (#5318491) Journal
      I don't know, Philips might be okay with this

      But they don't have to be, and that is the problem with the DMCA. here is a perfect example of someone taking a product manufactured by someone else and saying "hey wait a minute, I can do this, this and this" -- and make it better. Make it more fun. The DMCA does not allow for this type of play/inquizitiveness (word?), or experimentation. And that is the problem. People do this all the time, with little things, and big things like electronic products. Like speakers. I know there is no programing involved, but in early days, people would say, 'hey, I want better sound', then plug their stereo into their computer. It was many years before you could actually buy surround sound speakers/sub woofers to go along with your computer. The manufacturer can't be expected to think of everything, and just because they planted the seed, does not give them exclusive rights to all the fruit born of that seed.
    • I agree. The reason this artificial limitation was probably put in was to insulate themselves from potential lawsuits claiming the Streamium promotes piracy via illegal webcasts (e.g. those not paying their royalties). This way, Philips can say they took "adequate" steps to make sure only "authorized" streams could be played.
    • I dont think there was a EULA like Microsoft's warning against tampering with the equipment. If you want to mess around, Philips will tell you that your warranty will be voided, thats all. For those quoting DMCA and stuff,suppose I have a stereo and I make internal and external modifications and publish it on the web. I *bought* the stereo, not *licensed* it. Therefore its no business of the manufacturer to tell me what I do or don't with the stereo.

  • I guess I don't see the point (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nizcolas ( 597301 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:42AM (#5317859) Homepage Journal
    Props for sticking it to the man but isn't the Stream/ium just a set of speakers connected to the internet?

    What's the difference between this and simply streaming music to your computer, then streaming it out of another set of speakers?

    Maybe it's the idea of replacing radio with a true people's medium? Maybe wrenching power away from the media moguls and using the internet as the peoples voice to listen to/stream the music they want? In that case why did you buy the Stream/Ium in the first place? It obviously only connects to Phillips approved content and judging by this statement: " Digital connectivity also enables the Streamium MC-i200's digital connectivity to receive additional services and features from Philips and its partner companies as and when they are offered. Details of available updates for both the Streamium MC-i200 and the FW-i 1000 will be posted on the Philips Audio website, www.audio.philips.com." It sounds like its going to be collecting data about you.

  • Now maybe I'll buy one (Score:3, Insightful)

    by HughsOnFirst ( 174255 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:46AM (#5317869)
    Now that it's so much more useful it seems like a good deal.
    That red on alloy look is kind of quaint and so retro 20th century though. Do they come in another color ?
    • here [netgate.net]. It's the other Phillips streaming stereo. Even has a bigger speakers and an obscure, non-XML protocol rooted in universal plug and play. I wrote a Java program to make it play m3u playlists, including ones with stream URLs. Tried to post a story on my hack before but evil slashdot rejected it.

  • Open? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:49AM (#5317877)
    Hrm... why give your money to a clueless old-skool consumer electronics concern when you can get something [slimdevices.com] that comes out of the box with
    • a polished user interface
    • extensive API accessible through both HTTP and a persistent socket interface
    • a plugin architecture for your own perl add-ons
    • active hacker community
    • full protocol docs published and supported by the manufacturer
    • damn there's too much to list - just go to the site.

    • Re:Open? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ditchimo ( 650892 )
      "old-skool".
      I think Philips makes some of the best electronics products out there. Other manufacturers just make products to show "good numbers", Philips actually thinks about the interface, and make thinks that work very well. I.e., if you would take a Sony and a simmilarly priced Philips boom-box, the Sony will have higher power, etc, but the Phillips usually sounds better and has a better thought-of interface.
      I really think that "old-skool" is not that bad, experience with what actually works and how to make a usable product counts.
      Now of course, the streamium might not be the best example...

    • Re:Open? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Taken from slimdevices.com: "SLIMP3 is an MP3 player that streams your music from your computer to your home stereo over your network without loss in sound quality."

      WTF

      Streaming without loss of quality? I don't know what network the people who make SLIMP3 use but MY TCP/IP network never degrades the quality of the mp3s I transfer over it.

    • No amp or speakers! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RMH101 ( 636144 )
      The SliMP3 is cute, but to use it in, say, my kitchen I'd need a separate amp and speakers. In my living room I stream MP3s to my surround sound setup via an FM radio transmitter on the back of the server box upstairs, controlled via VNC on iPAQ or laptop. What I really want is something battery powered and portable that can stream mp3s off my home server wherever I go: this looks like it *might* be a possibility here - comments?
      • Why not use an RF remote to controll the mp3 player on the server, this way you don't need VNC and the hefty computing device, add an UHF transmitter to the video card's output and you can even see the tracks list.

    • Re:Open? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Philips gets it when it comes to some things. Just because they're big and "old-skool" doesn't mean they're clueless.

      http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020206_eff_philips_a le rt.html

      http://www.eff.org/alerts/20020503_eff_thanks_ph il ips.html

    • Re:Open? (Score:2)

      by mosch ( 204 )
      damn... that thing is nice. It's almost exactly what I was looking to get my sister for her birthday. If it included S/PDIF out and 802.11b networking, I'd have been willing to plunk down up to $500 for it. Does anybody know of a device that has those features?

      Admittedly, it's the best device I've seen so far.

      • Re:Open? (Score:3, Informative)

        by Zathrus ( 232140 )
        About the closest to what you want is a TB AudioTron [audiotron.net] -- no 802.11b support directly, but you can use a wireless hub or whatever to make it work. The AT is $250 + whatever for the wireless stuff. It does have a S/PDIF output, which most of the other network music appliances lack. It also supports a wider array of formats than just MP3 - but no OGG or FLAC support directly (you can use Samba's on-the-fly conversion to do it, if you have the CPU power on the server).

        It's larger than the SliMP3, and doesn't have as bright of a display, but that's about it for the differences as best I can recall.
  • You've just "reverse-engineered" HTTP and XML.
    • Okay, "Lord Bitman", I'll assume that you're just sleepy and not stupid. We can wait for the next article about a new P2P app and for you to derisively claim that the author "only reverse-engineered TCP" to do that.
      • if, rather than instantly seeing that it's TCP-based, he spends countless hours pushing raw binary around, eventually coming up with something which, to TCP, is broken, then yes. Did you even read his code? "#Streamium doesnt like spaces", no, HTTP doesnt like spaces. It also doesnt like :,@,#, NUL, etc. Streamium has nothing to do with it.
        • if, rather than instantly seeing that it's TCP-based, he spends countless hours pushing raw binary around, eventually coming up with something which, to TCP, is broken, then yes.

          So his program is a bit of a hack, and he's not using ::XML_foobar. That's *hardly* a reason to go after the author and claim that he was trying to "reverse engineer" XML or HTTP. Many, *many* programs that generate simple XML don't use libxml, and the same is even more true for HTTP. Hell, I'll bet that less than .1% of software that generates HTML uses any kind of a library to do it. There's no need for it.

          I suppose you could say that he "reimplemented" a tiny part of HTTP, but he's certainly not reverse engineering it -- what he reverse engineered was the protocol that Streamium uses that sits on XML. To bash the author for this is attacking someone that just handed you a piece of software. If you don't like it, fine, write a "better" version that uses w3c-libwww and libxml. Don't try to insult him.

  • This would be sweet if they hacked the slimp3.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jshare ( 6557 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:54AM (#5317900) Homepage
    ...to support it.

    The slimp3, if you've not heard of it, is a thin-client that will play mp3s streamed from the server. The server is written in perl, and kicks much ass. I'm pretty sure that people are using the server as a front end to their mp3s (as the server can also feed an http stream), even without owning the slimp3 hardware.

    Those with perl-talent should totally be able to hack the existing (open source) slimp3 server into supporting this hardware as well.

    Granted, I'm not too sure how much the slimdevices folks would appreciate this, but the two projects seem ripe for marriage.

    • The SlimP3 is platform independent - ethernet and your software is all it needs

    • Re:This would be sweet if they hacked the slimp3.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:09AM (#5317946) Homepage
      Granted, I'm not too sure how much the slimdevices folks would appreciate this, but the two projects seem ripe for marriage.

      I've had a few beers so I'm a litle reluctant to reply, but what the hell. Our company is BUILT ON open source. We give you the source, you give us your improvements, together we make a better product for you.

      Selling hardware pays our bills, so obviously we're not in this so that people can use our free software in place of the shit that Philips ships. Sorry but we bought a Streamium to evaluate (as well as the Onkyo, Turtle Beach, and Motorola offerings), and all I can say is BIG CONSUMER ELECTRONICS COMPANIES CAN'T DO SOFTWARE FOR BEANS. That's putting it lightly.

      So our software is GPL. Anyone can use it. Heck, you don't even have to buy our hardware, you can download the server and try it out using Winamp as a client.

      But our software is just part of the experience. When you buy the SLIMP3 you get a high quality client that works great, looks great, and isn't encumbered by any DRM or internet radio restrictions. We listened to our customers and nobody is asking for that. What they are asking for is: a great UI, great performance, support for 500GB mp3 collections, cross-platform support, an awesome web interface, etc etc, and that's what we deliver.

      So yes, it's GPL, and we like it that way. How exactly our products are "ripe for marriage" I don't know. Have you seen a Streamium in person?

  • Build it yourself. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mikeophile ( 647318 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @03:56AM (#5317904)
    Walmart PC_________$200
    AM/FM Tuner Card___$ 20
    100 Watt Speakers__$ 50
    TV Tuner Card______$ 40
    Linux of choice____$free

    Total Cost_________$310

    What do ya know? Cheaper than the Streamium, yet I can play movies too.

    • Sell one for less and pocket the difference (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 2nd Post! ( 213333 ) <gundbear.pacbell@net> on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:07AM (#5317940) Homepage
      It costs you $310?

      Good, sell one to me for $320, and you can keep the difference.

      C|Net tells me I can get one for $350. Heck, sell it to me for $330, I'm feeling generous.
    • Hmm, you didn't include the price of a silent power supply, CPU cooler, and solid-state storage...

    • Re:Build it yourself. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:16AM (#5318605)
      I don't want a PC in my livingroom, but I do want to be able to listen to my mp3 files or internet streams. Sure I could build a PC for that, but it's not the same. I have had my Audiotron for a year now and I'd say that it would take a lot of work to make pc work as well. A units that fits with my other stereo components, a big display in front making easy to navigate and a remote control. I have had my computer hooked up to my stereo since I got my Commodore 64, and I am tired of it. It is hard for me to describe it, but the Audiotron is so easy to use that I wouldn't exchange it with it a PC, even if I got it for free. And there is no annoying and ugly machine with a noisy fan, nothing you need to boot first and maintainance time is zero.
      I like that I just grab the remote control, press "Albums","Artists","Genre","Title" or "Net" and flip through them.
    • What do ya know? Cheaper than the Streamium, yet I can play movies too.

      You can play movies without a monitor?

      Well, I suppose you can play them, just you won't be able to actually see them.

      Mark
    • Having ur review slashdotted______Priceless

  • Standards? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:01AM (#5317915) Homepage
    First of all I'll admit I didn't read the article...

    What I did do was start wondering if there are any open standards to do things like this... I've been thinking about making a box at home to serve mp3s and movies, which would then be played at various devices (my desktop PC, my tv-attached laptop etc...)

    This might not be quite on topic, but are there open standards for linking devices for serving and playing back media in a user friendly fashion? Sure you can do things like this, but the whole user friendlyness is critical for me, or rather my girlfriend, who won't have any of it unless she can use it too ;)

  • Nice looking dumb hardware is what we want... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rolfje ( 650661 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:09AM (#5317947) Homepage Journal

    The general customer wants nice looking devices which connect to the internet. Philips has "tricked" them into buying this music device which you could build in a single ARM Linux board.

    But hey, don't we want nice looking mp3 players? I know I would want my PS2 to play MP3's (which I've bought the Linux kit for... :-) Saves 1 noisy PC.

    Post the Perl script everywhere, so we can still have it when Philips sues you ;-)

  • Save yer money... Build your own iNet rAdio [cpan.org], where you control the content.

  • This might actually be good for Philips (Score:5, Insightful)

    by YeeHaW_Jelte ( 451855 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @04:55AM (#5318048) Homepage
    My dad works for Philips, and as long as I can remember, they've been putting out products with reasonable or good quality and ofttimes a very nice technological edge, only to have them fucked up by some marketing droid imposing rediculous limitations on them.
    Hell, that the software is put out only for windows I can understand: Philips has a pretty good relation to microsoft and has, afaik, never even bothered to look at alternatives, but I just can't understand why they limit the Internet-radio part to just a few 'philips-certified' stations. No brainer!
    It's probably something to do with philips large interests in media groups (they have large stocks in some recording companies, and also in Vivendi, which does this kind of stuff too I think) and some marketing guy thinking this is a smart way to combine the two. Anyway, to make my point, someone making this thing useable, and removing stupid restrictings on it might actually make it *interesting* for consumers.

  • Question is (Score:5, Interesting)

    by forgoil ( 104808 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:17AM (#5318090) Homepage
    1. Should Phillips fight this as much as they can?
    2. Should Phillips welcome it as added value for customers?
    3. Should Phillips start to release just the hardware and specs, and simply let other people do their software work for free?

    Interesting business idea if nothing else, sucker others into working for you without having to pay them, and then feed them that it is because of their freedom...

    • Re:Question is (Score:2, Informative)

      by Jedi Alec ( 258881 )
      Wouldn't be the first time. Philips is well-known for being very Windows oriented, but if someone decides to hack up a *nix driver for one of their devices, they certainly don't mind linking to it from their website...just don't expect any help from techsupport getting it working ;-)

  • --rant=true (Score:5, Interesting)

    by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @05:55AM (#5318169) Journal
    Somebody explain to me what genius at Phillips thought it would be a competitive advantage to control the stream a customer could listen to, and why that's an advantage.

    Oh. Advantage. Righto. Gotcha. Phillips thought, gee, we can force users to listen to only these channels, and then we can get those channels to pay us with money from the additional ad revenue they can get by claiming all those captive ears.

    Except. I'd never buy, for instance, a GE TV that would only tune in NBC, the network owned by GE. In fact, I'd be so offended by that idea, I'd make a point not to buy GE or watch NBC. (Let me emphasize that GE does not sell an NBC-only TV or tuner, as far as I know.)

    I'm in the market for something like a Streamium. But now I definitely won't buy Phillip's Streamium product, and I'll be very disinclined to buy any Phillips products, because I now know they don't want customers, they want customer ears to sell to "strategic partners".

    In fact, I'll be very disinclined to buy anything without an open specification.

    I bought an Archos Jukebox. It's great hardware. It's built-in firmware is definitely substandard software. An open source replacement, Rockbox, is an order of magnitude faster, and far far more configurable.

    But I can't use the open source replacement, because Archos won't release its specification for my model of Archos. (I'll be able to use it soon, thanks to some remarkable reverse engineering by the Rockbox team.)

    I have a simple proposition for hardware manufacturers: I'll buy what I can use as I wish to use it. I won't buy your product to become a commodity you can sell to your partners. You want to profit, manufacturers? Sell an open specification product. Don't try to sell me to advertisers.

  • Advertising? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Simon Brooke ( 45012 ) <stillyet@googlemail.com> on Monday February 17, 2003 @06:24AM (#5318219) Homepage Journal
    I quote from http://www.audio.philips.com/news_press/PR_MC-i200 _080102.asp [philips.com], third paragraph:
    Via broadband Internet access, the Streamium MC-i200 connects to the huge number of radio stations currently online

    If the box won't connect to the 'huge range... currently on line', but only a smaller, Philips authorised, range, then that's false advertising, which, in Europe, anyway, is illegal. So before wasting time hacking the box it would be worth dropping a line to the Advertising Standards Authority [asa.org.uk] or your national equivalent, or to your local Trading Standards [tradingstandards.gov.uk] office.

    Remember, as Lessig points out [stanford.edu], the law is also code, and has APIs you can use.

    • Well, in America false advertising is expected, if not required, in order to get the ad on TV. If it isn't a lie, it doesn't get played. (Regardless of legality.)

  • Security? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    From the last example in his protocol list, it looks like streamium might open up a port that allows hard drive access through a web interface. Could this be possible? I bet there are plenty of streamium users who dont/wont have firewalls. Will it be the end user or the manufacterer who gets sued by the RIAA for copyright violations?

    -AC.
  • Okay, so I don't see it on Philips site: How much, and is it out yet? It looks pretty cool, but I think it'd be much better if it had a small internal hard disk for mp3 storage. Personally, something like this would be much more effective as a component for a home stereo system. Many companies like Denon, and Onkyo have similar MP3 network access built into their top of the line receivers, but offering something like this as a stand-alone component for a cheaper price would be great!
    • Try checking at shopping.yahoo.com [yahoo.com]. I've found it to be the Google of online shopping. I haven't been able to stump it with any currently available product yet.

      The answers, by the way, are "$380 to $400" and "yes."

  • bah, I'll keep my Audiotron (Score:4, Informative)

    by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:04AM (#5318553)
    I think I'll keep my Audiotron [turtlebeach.com]. At least I can play whatever I want in streams ans has an optical output for my preamp. And Turtlebeach actually listens to people on their mailing list and they release Firmware updates, including beta-ones to play with. The Philips unit, looks like something I would have in my kitchen(which is fine), but I'd really prefer the Audiotron in my stereo stack.

    • The Audiotron is a bit more open to customer added radio stations. The device forces you to use the turtleradio web service, but you are able to add your own stations to your personal turtleradio directory. That's a plus.

      On the negative side: you HAVE to use the turtleradio.com directory, and I don't like it. The webinterface is ugly and it takes a lot of clicks to add a single station. You can't load a personal station list directly to the device.

      The people at Turtlebeach could be a bit more open here!

      • It's true that it is a b...h if you are going to add a lot of stations yourself but for me, it was a one time job. Also the idea that I can get new stations without looking for them is great.
        However, one fears what the future will hold. I wouldn't be surpriced if many stations went to be pay stations only.
  • Why? Because you have to be 100% sure that the code reading and writing the value (presumably using fprintf() or similar) has the IP address in *local* byte order , not network byte order when doing it. 2 hosts with different endian processors will write the same numeric value differently as ascii text if that numeric value is in network order and all the TCP/IP APIs required network byte order to function correctly. I see potential for problems here.

  • Sounds expensive... (Score:3, Funny)

    by jez9999 ( 618189 ) on Monday February 17, 2003 @09:54AM (#5318781) Homepage Journal
    Streamium - Streaming at a premium!
  • ..philips Streamium.

    I just ran a wire from my home stereo to my linux box and then wrote a simple web interface [fperkins.com] to madplay which I control through my Audrey that sits in the kitchen.

    Read about it here [fperkins.com] Source is here [fperkins.com]

    It works great for me. Some little bugs, but I'm very happy with it.

    I will say that the hack is cool though. Good work.
  • What's described here is not so much a hack of the Streamium itself as a reverse-engineering of the XML-based protocol used by the MusicMatch Jukebox Media Server. The Streamium requires MM Jukebox to be loaded on at least one PC on the local subnet for the PC-Link feature to work.

    It works like this: The Streamium sends out a broadcast UDP packet -- sorry, I forget which port at the moment, but it's in my notes -- and any PC with the MM Jukebox Media Server loaded sends back a UDP packet in response. The collected responses are displayed on the front panel.

    The XML format is interesting, as it is sort of a page-description language over XML. There are root-nodes, menu-nodes, and leaf-nodes, and these correspond to tracks and subcategories. But all of this, of course, it automagically generated by MM Jukebox (Genre, Title, etc...). So this perl script is really of limited usefulness until someone can graft it to something like XMMS which keeps and categorizes tag information.

  • Hi,

    instead of going with this why not use a Rio Receiver instead?
    http://www.sonicblue.com/audio/rio/rio_r eceiver.as p

    It's a nice little box developed by the same guys who invented the Empeg, the coolest Linux based car radio in the world. The RR can be bought for $129 at Tigerdirect and there are lots of units on eBay which can typically be had for around $90.

    It has an ethernet port, HPNA (if you don't want to run any wires through your house), built in amplifier, RCA out, headphone out, remote control. They only include a very barebones software for Windows which is basically a DHCP/NFS server that bootstraps the unit and allows it to download an embedded Linux version. But there are several servers for running on your own Linux machine.

    I just bought one off of eBay and like it a lot. The sound quality is very good and there is an active developer community at the Rio Receiver discussion board:

    http://rioreceiver.comms.net/php/ubbthreads.php? Ca t=&PHPSESSID=

    Here's one reseller Tigerdirect:
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati ons/SearchTool s/item-details.asp?sku=M975-1036

    regards,

    Heiko - not affiliated with Tiger/Sonicblue
  • For filling me in. Now I'll be sure to not even buy this product.
  • A coworker of mine was examining one of these devices two months ago and found that the http server in the PC side software supplied with the streamium would serve any file he specified - whether or not it was found in the media database. Of course, one would have to know the file name and path to make the URL, but there seemed to be no provision against probing. I have no idea whether this has been corrected in the current version. When informed of this, the CTO, whose new toy it was, quickly disabled the server side software. I would be cautious in exposing any PC running this server. To say the least.

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