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Music Media Wireless Networking Hardware

Wi-Fi Enabled Stereo From Philips In Beta 98

Posted by timothy from the get-in-on-the-ground-floor dept.
Orangerobot writes "Philips Electronics is undergoing the beta test for the latest model in the Streamium line called the MC-i250. You have to trudge through a cheesy Flash presentation to get all the details, but it looks pretty good: Wi-Fi, CDDB support, online playlist management and more. It looks like they might actually get it right." Reader UVWarning's review of the current generation of Streamium indicates plenty of ways the next generation could improve on the current one.
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Wi-Fi Enabled Stereo From Philips In Beta More

Wi-Fi Enabled Stereo From Philips In Beta

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  • article text (the phillips site was acting /.'d (Score:5, Informative)

    by trelanexiph ( 605826 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @06:56AM (#5527936) Homepage

    Philips Streamium MC-i250, the world's first Wireless Broadband Internet Micro Hi-Fi System.

    The MC-i250 builds on the highly interactive audio features of its predecessor. Only this time, it's wireless. Effortless access to a whole universe of music in any room in your home, within your home network - without wires, without boundaries.

    Product highlights

    It is as unlimited as your imagination.
    Create and explore your very own universe of music:

    Personalized Internet Audio:
    Pick'n'mix from a vast catalogue of artists, music styles and eras to create a personalized station playing your favorite music.
    Online Music Charts:
    Enjoy the best of your favorite music styles with dedicated online charts - all updated daily.
    Online Radio:
    Go global! select from thousands of stations of music, news, sports and special interests in any language, from every region.
    INFO! Service:
    Press the INFO! button to receive an email with detailed information on artists and tracks.

    Virtually unlimited
    -Wireless connection to your home network
    To be well and truly connected, wireless is the way to go. You can virtually stream digital music, access award-winning online music services and your PC's music files - from any room in the house.

    All this is made possible with the uniquely powerful concept of Wi-Fi - wireless fidelity.

    (Wi-Fi, also known as 802.11b, is the international leading industry standard for wireless broadband networking.)

    The missing link - PC Link
    PC Link wirelessly connects you - and your family - to not just 1 PC but all the PCs connected to your home network - at the touch of a button. And you can savor your vast collection of music through Philips' patented wOOx speakers for unmatched, deep and dynamic bass sounds.

    Get personal - My.Philips
    Created exclusively for Streamium users, My.Philips.com lets you log on to access and manage your vast online music collection, get special links to premium partners, download latest software updates, check out news and information, or even make purchases.

    This extended online product interface lets you venture where you want to go, while maintaining control right at your fingertips.

    Here, now, always - Futureproof
    The upgradeable Streamium MC-i250 is a secure investment. Get the latest scoop on online upgrades and stay up to speed with changing technology, new products and services. As a proud Streamium owner, you become part of a privileged league once you register with My.Philips. If it's hot and happening, here and now, you will be the first to get it...always.

    Ex-stream-ly feature-packed Audio System
    The Streamium MC-i250 offers multi-format CD playback and a full-function FM/AM tuner. Powerful (2x50 Watts) wOOx speakers ensure mighty, impressive sound.

    Built with brains - and brawn - this amazing set can handle both MP3 and mp3PRO compression formats. Its 5-line display shows artist, track title and time elapsed. A user-friendly jog dial scrolls quickly and accurately through stations and tracks. Top technology right at your fingertips!

    Want to know more about MC-i250?
    Full details are just a click away...

  • Limited music stations (Score:4, Interesting)

    by YeeHaW_Jelte ( 451855 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:03AM (#5527947) Homepage
    If this thing is limited to certain internet music stations like its predecessor, you can write it off without thinking twice.

  • They are playing right into my lap... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:04AM (#5527948) Homepage
    My WLAN enabled home media server plan is getting hotter by the minute... bwahahaaa!

    No, but seriously, this is really the solution which makes sense... Why do you have to physically put a disc into your stereo to listen to something? It should be enough to buy the rights to listening (CD or not), have it on a media server of your own or stream right off the net.

    Think of the possibilities for internet radio stations and indie artists if every home stereo could do stuff like that... yay! :)
    • Their servers would die because of the overload as these indie bands can't pay for servers and bandwidth themselves and there is still no viable business model for online radio, wether it is indie or Britney...

      • Re:They are playing right into my lap... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:27AM (#5527993) Homepage
        Their servers would die because of the overload

        Not necessarily. Unless I'm misinformed IP broadcasting enables streaming to multiple recipients using one TCP-feed. And solutions like PeerCast [peercast.org] are creating yet another option.
        • IP broadcasting can be done, especialy when IPv6 arrives but even then the carriers will want more money than broadcasters have. On the internet, both sending and recieving party pay.

          Peercast will die the fate of popular P2P networks. Hailed as "the more users the better it works", the reality is: "too many users and it dies becasue non of these users have enough bandwidth to be hub". I have seen 10Mbit connections die because a PC was a Kazaa host. Kazaa saw it had a lot of bandwidth and made it a master.
          • Broadcast music has always been free (as in beer, as well as freedom) ever since, well, broadcasting. I could listen to music for free, AND make a personal recording. Simply packaging it in TCP/IP and streaming it over WiFi does not make sense.

            What I'd like to see is a CD/solid state RAM-based system that can play MP3 CDs and 'one-touch-record' about a 100 hours of audio. This would be useful when I do some loud-thinking, and my secretary could make notes and write articles later.

          • Re:They are playing right into my lap... (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:27AM (#5528356) Homepage
            Peercast will die the fate of popular P2P networks. Hailed as "the more users the better it works", the reality is: "too many users and it dies becasue non of these users have enough bandwidth to be hub". I have seen 10Mbit connections die because a PC was a Kazaa host. Kazaa saw it had a lot of bandwidth and made it a master. Ofcourse IT infrastructure shut this PC down.

            A carefully designed P2P protocol will not necessarily suffer this fate. If I remember correctly the PeerCast protocol is designed to avoid this by rerouting streams when a link gets saturated.

            Generally speaking design can greatly affect a P2P network. I'm not surprised that Kazaa would have a problem like this, but don't forget that even DNS and Usenet are in a very real sense P2P applications. P2P doesn't mean that an application has to be completely disstributed (like gnutella) or centralized (like napster). P2P is about having autonomous nodes accomplishing a task together. Protocol design is the key to harnessing all that power lying around.
        • You're misinformed, it's IP Multicasting that you're thinking about, and unfortunately, that's a distant dream on the real internet.

    • Re:They are playing right into my lap... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by squaretorus ( 459130 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:35AM (#5528005) Homepage Journal
      Danger Danger. I might buy a licence to listen to my new Coldplay album this week and assume its a licence FOREVER. But - the bastards go bust and shut down the service 3 years from now to replace it with a SUBSCRIPTION service - now I have to pay a $20 initial purchase plus $5 annual subscripiton for that album.

      No. I wan't some media! In my hand - that plays on generic hardware. No more. No less.
  • Nice idea, but it will be expensive and its only a boombox and although Philips's sound better than most, it will sound like one.

    WiFi or not, I'd rather still have a Turtle Beach Audiotron [turtlebeach.com] connected to my home stereo!

  • WiFi (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Multics ( 45254 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:13AM (#5527975) Journal
    Though an aside to the actual product, as I pay attention to netstumbler results I've come to the conclusion there is only so-much bandwidth in the WiFi sky and in technological areas (like offices or dense housing) there are soon (if not already) not enough channels in the WiFi system to do all the things that people are talking about doing...

    Do we need a WiFi NetRadio adding to the constant din of packets in the limited bandwidth available?

    -- Multics

    • Broadcast music has always been free (as in beer, as well as freedom) ever since, well, broadcasting. I could listen to music for free, AND make a personal recording. Simply packaging it in TCP/IP and streaming it over WiFi does not make sense.

      What I'd like to see is a CD/solid state RAM-based system that can play MP3 CDs and 'one-touch-record' about a 100 hours of audio. This would be useful when I do some loud-thinking, and my secretary could make notes and write articles later.

  • why bother? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:15AM (#5527981)
    Get yourself a $200 PC [walmart.com] (lots of other companies are offering them as well) and you'll have something much more flexible, without Philips or some other company spying on you.

    • That's not the point! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by RMH101 ( 636144 )
      I already have a server with hundreds of MP3s connected to a stereo. I want to be able to listen to my mp3s whilst I'm in the kitchen, whilst I'm in the bath, wherever. A *portable* solution rocks: it's not meant to replace your main hifi, but to extend it. This is *exactly* what I wanted a few months ago when all I could find was the SliMP3, a separate amp and speakers and a wireless bridge-expensive and NOT PORTABLE. this looks like a great product, I want one.

      • Re:That's not the point! (Score:5, Informative)

        by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:49AM (#5528184) Homepage
        Here's what I do:

        I have an old PC ("the server") that has my music collection and is wired to my stereo, and wired to my LAN.

        I mostly work on a wi-fi laptop.

        I use remote desktop software to control what's playing on the server. That way, no matter where I am, I can control what's on the stereo, using any audio source available to the server (whether it's my software or services like Rhapsody or other Web sites or Internet radio).

        You can use pretty much any remote software, such as WinXP's Remote Desktop or PCAnywhere or VNC (I have some notes about that here [turnstyle.com]).

        Next, you could also make that same server-based collection available for playback over your LAN -- and even out over the Internet (if you have enough upstream bandwidth).

        Andromeda lets you do that, provided you're running a Web server that can do PHP or ASP.

        That all might sound complicated, but it's not, and it's really convenient.

        My 2c, -Scott

        • To get a portable solution, next step is to get a 20UKP FM tranmitter to hook up to the music server. This means anything within 100 feet or so can tune into it: I can use a cheap old radio to listen to mp3s in the bath without the risk of drowning my laptop. I can also sit in the garden and listen to it without worrying someone will nick my laptop whilst I'm making a brew as well...
          • I never tried an FM transmitter, but I did get a 900MHz doo-dad (perhaps from X10?). It didn't work so well -- it was too sensitive to interference from other devices (especially the microwave) and I don't use it anymore.

            I live in NYC, and I most of my wireless stuff gets a little flakey at times.

      • You mean like a handheld with a WiFi card? Or a small, low-end laptop? Or a Mini-ITX board in small case?

        PCs come in more form factors than stereos. One of them fits your need, at a reasonable price.

        • Nope (Score:1)

          by RMH101 ( 636144 )
          If I want a portable boom-box style wifi device then I want just that. A handheld or a laptop won't pump out 10w or so of sound, and is a hell of a lot more expensive than a standard boom box. A mini ITX box doesn't run off batteries either, and non of them are ruggedised, have a radio, cd and maybe a tape deck in it either. I really think a wifi enabled boombox fills a gap in the market.

  • hp's new Digital Media Reciever is similar (Score:4, Informative)

    by Rkane ( 465411 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:16AM (#5527985) Homepage Journal
    hp [hp.com] has a Digital Media Reciever [hp.com] that sits on a wifi network and scans the network for shared folders with music, AND pictures. Then, it plugs into a stereo/tv using s-video and rca cables. It seems to me that this whole phillips stereo is just another version of the same things you can already do with a computer and the hp DMR.

    For the record, I do acknowledge that the DMR is SERIOUSLY lacking in that it can't do video. When they support DivX, I'm all for it.
    • Does anyone know whether the HP receiver requires Windows software? Or does it just need an SMB share?

      It lists Windows as a system requirement, but doesn't specify whether it *really* needs Windows or not. I think the device looks really neat, but I don't have Windows, and am not about to go buy it just for this.

  • more impressed by this (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Sabalon ( 1684 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:22AM (#5527989)
    HP has a box that does something similar - the hp wireless digital media receiver ew5000 (DB226A#ABA) (tried to add a link, but session vars didn't help)

    It hooks to your TV/receiver and connects with wireless or cat5 to the PC.

    Though the first time I saw a pamphlet for this, it made it sound as if it would stream digital video as well, but looking at the specs, it appears the video out is just for menus and jpgs.

    Still, it's small, would easily fit in with other components, and since it uses the TV and not some small LCD, probably a lot easier to navigate directory trees.

  • Hmmmmm (Score:1, Funny)

    by archetypeone ( 599370 )
    Ex-stream-ly...

    Who imagineered this word?

  • More Phillips hybrid tech... I wouldnt buy it (Score:3, Informative)

    by sleeper0 ( 319432 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:35AM (#5528004)
    I owned a Phillips DVX-8000 which was one of their last attempts to bring some of the pc world to the stereo cabinet.

    The DVX-8000 was a high quality onkyo receiver coupled with a built in pentium 233 (modern at the time) and PC DVD player and line doubler. This system cost about $5000 new in 97 but quickly got dumped by phillips because it was a disaster. Custom software that never worked right, no upgrade path, custom hardware that broke, no vision for the future. They never bothered with any real software updates (it was never even able to run windows 98) and was so laden down with custom hardware including the video system that there was really nothing an end user could do. Once the units were out of warrenty thats the last phillips ever touched one leaving all of their owners stranded.

    This new phillips system seems novel but i would never consider buying one considering what a poor track record they have with their other 'experiments'

  • Zeroconf support (Score:2, Insightful)

    by iJed ( 594606 )
    Since I seem to remember Philips being a supporter of the zeroconf (Rendezvous) standard it would be nice to see this having support for this. Then maybe it could support playlists from the next version of iTunes.
    • Found this on the Apple website:

      ?Apple and Philips share a vision for the future,? said Gerard Kleisterlee, CEO of Royal Philips Electronics. ?We both believe that consumers want devices throughout the home to talk to each other, so that, for example, the music stored in iTunes on your Mac can play through the Philips stereo system in your living room, or the photos stored in iPhoto can be displayed as a stunning slideshow on your Philips Flat TV. Rendezvous helps realize this dream. Philips is particularl

  • Wi-Fi (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:42AM (#5528018)
    If they're really trying to build a device to listen to music from any room in the house, as they say in the article, they're going to have to use something other than 80211b ... in my apartment, I get a weak signal just from going 80 feet between rooms, with none of the obvious obstructions except walls, even when all doors are open and I hold my laptop in the air and rotate it. They can say whatever they want, but if people are buying these to listen to stuff at opposite (or even not-so-opposite) parts of their house, they are going to be *sorely* disappointed.
    • That's all highly dependent on the equipment in use. My TiBook has that famously weak antenna, but it still gets a solid signal anywhere in the house, and a little outside. My iBook gets a usable signal almost to the street (300 feet or so). Oddly, my AirPort WAP seems to put out a signal with its internal antenna(s) than my LinkSys (1.1) WAP does.

      My $0.02... make change as needed....

    • Re:Wi-Fi (Score:2, Funny)

      by jamesangel ( 621361 )
      I get a weak signal just from going 80 feet between rooms

      Sounds like you need to get a smaller apartment. Want to swap? In my place you can just turn on the stereo and hear it everywhere...

    • That's kinda like saying that the internal combustion engine needs to be replaced because your model T can only do about 35mph. You have poorly desinged/operating wireless equipment, period. Your complaint has nothing at all to do with the wi-fi standard, you simply need a better base station and/or adapter for your laptop.

      I gave my fiance an old linksys PC Card for her laptop when I first set her up wirelessly, she couldn't go 30 feet and 2 walls away without having problems. So, remembering why I ditc
  • ogg?
    wep?
    pc link to a mac or a linux?
    can we have more than one on a network?
    any no is a show stopper for me.
    • ogg? wep? pc link to a mac or a linux? can we have more than one on a network? any no is a show stopper for me.

      Face it, Ogg Vorbis is dead as disco. You're a statistic and irrelevent. MP3 support is the only thing 99% of the people want. Philips isn't going to waste their time with satisfying a tiny percentage of uber-geeks who demand some oddball encoding format when everyone else uses MP3. I'm sure they'd rather spend their research dollars adding Windows Media audio support and Real Player support

      • <i>Face it, Ogg Vorbis is dead as disco.</i>
        No, it isn't (disco neither, for that matter).
        Why I want ogg is because I have a lot of it allready encoded (far more than mp3) and I don't want to re-encode it (those are my CDs).
        Perhaps most people want mp3 because it is what is most used on kazaa and friends, but this reason is irrelevant for me.
        Now, saying I'm a statistic and ignoring me is in total contradiction with currents trends in marketing. They can, for a small cost, provide me with a solut
      • The same was said about Linux, we are rolling out 100 servers this week.

        Laugh now, it is just a matter of time before the format is supported.

  • How about some real innovation! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Macka ( 9388 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @08:22AM (#5528106)

    I was quite tickled when I stumbled on the iTrip [griffintechnology.com].

    It turns your iPod into an FM transmitter, so that you can listen to your mp3's on your home hi-fi, or on the car radio!

    Don't know why this hasn't been thought of before. It's a really cool idea.
  • Try something like this...and this page is over a year old. [kentidwell.com]

    Consumer goods are just that...for consumers. You want something that matches your needs, and you're not a middle-of-the-road consumer, you know you're better off DIY.

    ./...the first stop for consumer reports?
  • All this stuff is exciting and steps in the right direction. This new Philips stereo is great for those who want a portable option, and the SLIMP3 and HP Digital Media Receiver look great for those of us who want to integrate this kind of technology into a component system. The prices are getting reasonable, and the sooner I don't have to worry about physical media to listen to music, the better.

    But why no digital audio out on the HP and Slim devices? Seems odd...these things are obviously targeted at geeks

    • True, One of the reasons I got a Audiotron [turtlebeach.com], was because of the optical output.
      btw, they should have a new line of boxes out "any day now".
      Oh yeah, and to all the "just build a PC". It's hard to explain, but a device like the audiotron works really well. Streaming and MP3s really get nicely integrated into your current setup in a way no homebuilt mp3/streaming-pc-player can to. It's easy to use with the remote or front panel. no fans humming, it just "feels" like another stereo component, which I think is
      • Cool. Looks promising. How do you (or anyone else with one) like it? Is the sound quality, feature set, etc., good and mature enough at this point?

        Also, what technologies does it use for connecting to your computer? Is it something that would work with a Mac (bearing in mind that Macs support SMB networking)?

        • The sound is great, someone had some complaints about the analog output being to weak and a small hum. I don't know if that is a general problem since I only have used the digital output.
          It should work with Mac too, I have seen a few Mac users on the mailing list. I connects just fine to my Linux box using Samba. They release new firmware a couple of times each year, and more often beta versions are also available for one to play with. I use it a lot for shoutcast/icecast and Windows media stations and of
    • Wait... Let me see if I got this right:

      You want this snazzy MP3/WMA/(insert other compressed audio format here) player. But you wouldn't buy it because it doesn't have digital audio out so you can get that 'CD' quality sound?

      I can think of some technical reasons why they don't do this. Maybe they change the clock rate of the DACs to match the sample rate of the MP3 being played. Then an additional (costly) sample-rate converter would need to be added to maintain a constant SP/DIF clock. But even s
      • My knowledge of stereo equipment isn't as complete as I'd like it to be, so if you'll set aside the sarcasm for a minute I'd like to know what you mean.

        Obviously I'm interested in good sound, and I bought a fairly nice receiver for that reason. My understanding is that a digital connection (from a digital device, anyway) to a receiver is going to deliver better quality sound than an analog one, and I had presumed it's because that method virtually guarantees no loss of quality: The information that hits the

        • I wasn't trying to be TOO sarcastic, but fair enough...

          Analog signals, like those that come from the RCA outputs on your CD player, can be affected by every stage along the way from the CD player to the speakers. In that signal path, noise (static, resistor noise, AC hum) and distortion ('clipping', not-quite-linear amplifiers) can creep into the signal. You may notice that most stereo equipment documentation mentions a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This is a measurement (though standards DO vary and y

  • I've got... (Score:3, Informative)

    by vjmurphy ( 190266 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @09:06AM (#5528253) Homepage
    And Audiotron hooked up via Linksys ethernet bridge; plan on getting a Slimp3 eventually, as well. I don't see a reason to lock myself into wireless as a method to hook up any of these devices, though: the audiotron works with phoneline networks and plain wired ethernet, which works for me.

    I do have a Motorola wireless SimpleFi, though, which uses RF. Cute hardware, but the software
    is horrible: it would take me too long to set up (plus, there doesn't appear to be a way randomly play songs). It sits unused these days.
  • I tried to get in on this a while back (on the beta). The way it was setup is if you got selected (totally at random), they'd send you the device and it was yours and you had to tell them what was wrong with it. After the beta period, you'd fill a form out and tell them what you thought. As payment, you'd get to keep the beta device (I think). I think that this is a excellent idea. I bought a Toshiba e740 and I am still semi putting up with little problems. Every once in a while, you'd fire up the WiF
  • Why not integrate the wifi stuff into the loudspeakers? Just put your 110/220 in the speaker and voila, done. If you really want a user interface, put it on the remote.

    I guess it wouldn't work if you want a CDR/MP3 player, but the same can be done there too.

    There should only be one sort of wire: power wires (because I haven't thought of a better solution for that).
  • I have a Streamium MC-i200 in my garage (yeah, I spend a lot of time there). Here's the environment: Connected to the Ethernet port is a D-Link DWL-810 [dlink.com] Ethernet-to-wireless bridge, which talks to a Netgear MR314 [netgear.com] in my upstairs office. Also in the office is a media server, which is simply an old PC with a big hard drive. Finally, I have an old notebook that sits on my A/V tower downstairs, with a Y-cable from the stereo minijack out to an unused set of audio ins (MiniDisc, I believe). The notebook is
  • Besides a high price, limited music content, and OS restrictions, my.phillips.com even blocks my browser - Opera, and I'm on a PC.

    Miraculously, the site works when I tell Opera to identify as IE.

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