So we want the SB to own the home. I agree with what's been said before: reliability, integrate other music sources, remote access to one's music, "lend an album" to buddies.
I gave a system to my parents, and a server to my brother. I am preparing a 3rd system for a friend. None of them are geeks. My parent's system (and my friend's system) uses a "big" server that holds video and other media in addition to music. It operates under power management and wakes on demand to play music or wakes ahead of alarms. Saving power is very difficult and overall the experience is degraded. On the server, PM has to be i. OS-state aware (I think we need a dummy driver that receives/blocks PM events) to avoid shutting down the laptop when music has stopped because you concentrate on something else and ii. predictive to wake/keep alive to match listeners past usage pattern (make it "seamless" -pardon my French). My brother's system is a smallish 24/7 embedded platform. That's way better for QoS. He never goes to squeezenetwork, barely knows there is one such thing. It runs a fully featured SB server, with plugins. (IR blaster, weathertime, powersave, ...) The devices are wireless in general, and this is sub-optimal. Big FLAC files won't always stream, there are disconnects, etc. Perhaps power-line could give i. an independent network, ii. reliable operation ? On each machine this is a VPN that links their server to a "maintenance" zone on my net. If I want I go to the machine, do fixes/updates, I can fire up a player at their place if needed. I think this is a must. My friend (the next customer) wanted to have the same A/V setup as I have at home. "I'll do it for you, I have spare parts for the server. Get the players." That wasn't enough. Then I added "You know, I do remote maintenance if you have a problem" and he took the plunge. 1-year into using the system, my parents didn't rip their CDs. Too complicated. They are using a subset of my library (so sue me) and the radio. My brother's system uses a detachable USB drive to put music on, but that's still not easy enough. Auto-rip, remote CD-player sharing, perfect tags *and* quality covers are needed. Something easy to use like the CDplayer plugin, with files that would stick in the DB afterwards, and the possibility to reorganize the mess later. I have also bought a few records from iTunes, to put it in their DB. The amazon store is nice but the proposition is a bit weak right now imho. (besides I want to avoid transport of physical goods whenever I can.) We need the drm-less, lossless store. Finding music in the DB is not easy enough. Maybe a genius-like feature could help. Trackstat can drive this I guess but there is a learning curve. The thing should propose something to play next. What I would like to have, personnaly, is better browsing experience. An e- and paper book, with the art and liner notes. My folks would use the paper book if there was a way to "talk to the player" from there. Maybe they'd use an e-book. Clearly, I am not talking about a remote with 3" LCD screen. Not even of an iPhone. I don't party much anymore, but if the players had 2 channels out, I could listen a bit in advance to what is supposed to play next, and do a bit of DJ-ing. If players had a mic, we could have room correction, volume leveling and the like. (And use the player as a baby-phone as well ?) Concerts: integration w/ something like ticketmaster. The player knows where I live, and what I like. Maybe the band plays nearby ? High-bitrate, by invitation, listening to events. My folks won't go to the Bayreuth Festival, but they would buy their virtual seat if they could (or I would offer them!). FM radio gives us the excitement, but not the sound. Playlists with actions. That's a bit geeky I guess. Mix system actions with the playlist, so that you can raise/lower the sound before a song, have genius match the last played album, playlist enter sleep mode past a certain hour, ... Instant operation. I want to insist on this because the current trend we see w/ SBs is to have things that take seconds to boot/wake. This is no good at all. Feel and response time of the thin clients have to be preserved. Use and RT OS or whatnot, but -long- unreliable response time using a player is just unpalatable. I will be amazed the day I hear the Touch does the analog VU-meter screensaver. I think I am done. Sorry for the noise. Erland, I salute your fighting spirit :) -- epoch1970 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ epoch1970's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=16711 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=72512 _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
