------------------------------------------------------------------------ A poll associated with this post was created, to vote and see the results, please visit http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96660 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Question: Would you buy a new Squeezebox player if it became available? - Yes , if less than $100 - Yes, if less than $200 - Yes, if less than $500 - Yes, if less than $1000 - Yes - price is no object; I just want the best sound - No - I would NOT buy another Squeezebox player ------------------------------------------------------------------------
cliveb wrote: > That is a fair point, and certainly there would need to be such a > turnkey device available. > > Vortexbox is a good example of how this could end up working. They offer > for free download a pre-built server. It's really simple to take pretty > much any old PC you have lying around and install Vortexbox. Or if you > want to buy a ready-built device, you can buy a Vortexbox Appliance. > > For a player, I envisage a downloadable Raspberry Pi boot image > pre-configured to run Squeezeplay/whatever that someone can just stick > on a SD card and plug into a Pi. Control would be via the server web > interface and/or iPeng/etc. And for those who just want to buy a working > device, an enterprising company could sell pre-built "RaspberrySqueeze > Appliances". > > But let's face facts: there will never be mass market appeal for this. > Nobody is going to make their fortune doing it. > > And regarding the online services (which I admit that I never use): > let's be realistic and admit that this side of the ecosystem cannot > continue without the support of a major player. Who else will be able to > cope with the hassle and cost of negotiating with the likes of > Pandora/Spotify/whoever. And who's going to pay to run the central > servers? Strikes me that the correct way forward is to develop > Squeezebox Server plugins to support online streaming services and > return the ecosystem to its original vision, where the user must run a > local server. Hi cliveb, All great points, and I tend to agree with them. The question of own music vs services is an interesting one. I would envisage supporting very high quality playback of music stored on your local server(s) at up to 24bit/192kHz (which you can readily buy these days), but would also have to continue supporting, and even expand the cloud service offerings. I terms of services, moving away from current model of all services going though a cloud portal and back into a plugin mode is a possibility - there are pros/cons to this, but both ways are workable in my opinion. I have a fair bit of experience in this as I was a co-founder of a company which did a bunch of deals with the likes of Rhapsody/Pandora/etc - company shall remain unnamed for the purpose of this discussion :) The point here is that a re-vamped product range - if it was to go ahead - would, in my view, focus on both very high quality local playback and a rich set of services, hopefully providing the best of both worlds at reasonable price points. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ moos_man's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=57497 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=96660 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
