It is funny, the discussion about additional form factors is also a hot topic in the sonos forum. Looks like there are at least four general form factors required by the audience: 1. HiFi rack like, no amplifier included (as the audiotron was) 2. compact sized, no amplifier (slim devices, creative sbwm) 3. compact sized with amplifier (sonos, rio receiver in the past) 4. outdoor boombox with batterie, amplifier, loudspeaker (not there, yet)
As the units don't sell in the millions I understand that it is a no-go to have four production lines in place for all that variations. May be a major audio brand can do it, but they still don't get right on track with their music server/client approaches. As far as I remember the users from the audiotron did not start a discussion for other packages. Slim and even more sonos have a discussion on that since the beginning. One might assume that therefore option (1) is most preferred by the users. ok, that's more a guess than a valid conclusion ;-) But I have a friend who likes his audiotron more than the slim because of its turn-knob-navigation (which is definitely cool) and the HiFi rack compatible form factor. Have you thought of selling alternative housings so that the user can easily change the case by himself according to his needs? May be the next design step is to modularize the squeezebox inner components into a module that fits into several housings slim devices can offer. Having that, would give others a chance to step in with more special and innovative housings as an after-market with housings for the pool, garden, childs, wall installed, with amplifier, with batteries, etc. just an idea... -- docbee _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
