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Hello all, quite interesting thread you have here. I find the argumantation that the geekieness of the Squeezerange hinders its success with the average joe totally right. For rising sales you have to look at the customer first! Most of them have no idea what a nas is nor do they know how to set up a home network. Also they have no idea how to rip their CD collection. In the mediacenter world they just plug the CD in their Mediacenter and get asked if they want to add this CD to their collection. Most of the time this works great. You will get wma files or Mp3 as you like with album art and so on. With itunes it's pretty much the same. This funktionality is totally missing in the Squeeze World. You can take any Windiows PC to rip your collection and after getting it on your disk it's quite easy to point SC to your Library, but still there are people who wouldn't even know where that damn data is stored on their Windows machines (even if it's in their my musik folder). So for convenience there should be something like a Music ripper SqueezeCenter Machine (Called SqzeezeIn or SqueezeVault or whatever...) in a nice case maybe looking a little like the SBClassic beefed up in height and depth. This Unit should have a SB classic display that just asks the user if he wants the disk he just inserted to be added to his collection or just played. It should be remote controllable with a standard Squeeze Remote. The Unit should be dummy proof so that the average Joe doesen't need to think about ripping. An advanced mode for the .flac (put your favorite format here) fan can be accessible via the Squeezecenter Web frontend. The machine should use PC hardware wich is widely available for much less money than any custom chips ever will be. You just need to take away any unnecessary hardware from that board and drop a throttling CPU in that uses minimal juice when idling. But you still would have the Horsepower for when it's needed. This is important because the customer isn't going to wait for a library scan, he will just think the unit is defect (or even worse that ist's crap) if it takes too long. This unit uses maybe 10-15W more than a nas (in idle), but you would have much more userfriendlieness and a faster responding server. You can get a sub 40W PC with standard hardware nowadays with no problem. This unit might be used as a nas too but it shouldn't be the main focus. The focus should be easy setup and hassle free ripping. The headroom of pc hardware would give room for future upgrades via software and would allow the device to grow with the needs of the user. If the Unit would be able to find every SB in the household without much configuration, for example plug every unit in via Ethernet and the Units get their config without the user doing anything, except telling the system if the unit will stay wired or will go wireless and maybe which accesspoint (if that can't be avoided. This would make it really easy to use for someone who doesen't want to care about networking and so on. If this central Unit would also be an Wifi host for the others, the whole wifi setup problem would be gone. That could be an option but as with the old SB3s the wireless would sell much better. I know it's not very popular around the Sqeezefolks to have something like onboard sound in one of their devices, but in this case it would be a cheap way of giving the unit even player capabilities via Squeezeplay and the built in SBC Display. Because of the not totally silent nature of a server it would be no high end listening device anyway but for many customers a very silent system would be good even as a player. It should be possible to reach noise levels of for example the 2nd generation PS3 which will be acceptable for most (non audiophile) people. I think a unit that makes the System esier to use for The beginner would expand the possible customer base alot. There are many people who do not get into network players because of the set up problems so make it esier for them! Greetz surly ps. I think there would be a market for something like that in the 5-600 range. If you think about the time you save, it could be even more expensive. If it can be made cheaper fine with me! And for the NAS crowd there could be a kit with just the Display and a link to the software so that the naysayers could Squeeze something like that in their slowish nas devices. Happiness for everybody! -- surly ------------------------------------------------------------------------ surly's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10473 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=43198
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