I'll chime in again... It's been interesting reading this thread looking at people's views. One thing that's struck me is the camps for and against convergence and who think covergence will/ won't happen. Personally I think convergence is already happening - new TV's, Blu Ray players etc. are network capable, there are numerous media boxes that will play just about anything you throw at it, and storage is getting cheaper everyday. Put all of this together and it's pretty simple for users to consolidate music, video, radio etc. playback via a single device that has outputs to your TV/ monitor and/ or hi-fi. That there isn't yet a coherent media interface is another story altogether - given time it too will emerge. Given infrastructure that comes with time I think we will likely evolve to a consumption on demand model for all digital media where users will have the option to pay a nominal fee to access digital content via the Internet, or have the option to purchase/ store the physical media much like we do today with CDs, DVDs, Blu Ray, downloads etc. The physical media option will likely be more expensive and may evolve to catering predominantly to the needs of the fringe consumer.
Whether the above does or does not appeal to the masses in the long term remains to be seen. There will also, always be people (myself included) who think of hi-fi when it comes to music, and would likely reject a converged media solution (barring storage). Given the above, it strikes me that the Squeezebox finds itself in a peculiar situation: focus on Audio and do that well, which confines the Squeezebox family to people who are serious about their music; or try to compete in the converged media space, which means Squeezebox has serious catching up to do. Looking at the current situation it appears to me that Squeezebox is being pitched at the general consumer, which means it's going to find itself competing in the converged media space, where, quite frankly, I don't think it stands a chance because it's a one trick pony (audio). To compound things, SBS does very little to make this one trick pony a standout. Adding things lile Facebook etc. belongs in the convergence space, not the audio space. That is not to say there isn't a place for this kind of integration in the audio world - it's a nice to have...but not at the expense of base functionality as is presently the case. So, in closing this rather lengthy post, IMHO Logitech are going to have to decide where they want to play with the Squeezebox range. Lack of clarity and resultant focus will have only one outcome: obliteration! -- audiomuze The problem with most music is I don't care to hear it again ------------------------------------------------------------------------ audiomuze's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=33613 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=72512 _______________________________________________ beta mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/beta
