garym wrote: > I'm just thinking out loud, but it probably needs to be a niche product > for me. I'd pay triple the price for a squeezebox-like quality product > that had the software to back it up (i.e., not some sort of hacked > DLNA/upnp). > > Those that just want simple will end up with appleSomething that can > stream to their home system via their ithing and/or an appleTV or > something. And more power to them. It works (mostly), it is simple, and > you don't need to understand much of anything to use it. Even the music > lovers I know get a very glazed look when I try to explain how my system > works. And don't even bother trying to talk about gapless, ReplayGain, > perfect sync across different players, automatic downconverting of > > 16/44.1 files so that players all work, etc. > The question is just if it needs to be niche or if it's enough that the people behind it really understands music listening so they can do the right prioritization. Personally I suspect there is something in-between niche and mass market, if it's more software oriented than hardware oriented it's also easier to find a common ground, for many companies in the market today it's often the hardware that result in that they have to choose to either be niche or be mass market.
DLNA/UPnP is an example of a software driven approach, where you can get mass market hardware and high quality hardware and make it work in the same system depending on your needs, the problem with DLNA/UPnP is just that parts of that standard is too generic and more optimized for video usage than advanced music listening and whole house audio. So while the media server part of the DLNA/UPnP standard works for music, the rendering and control point parts have problems related to music listening which are hard to solve and make compatible between different hardware manufacturers. In hardware oriented solutions, like Apple, Sonos or solutions by Hifi manufacturers, you are typically restricted to a certain market segment by the hardware which makes them prioritize software features to be included based on the hardware market segment they have chosen to place themselves in. Due to this, these systems is rarely good both for audiophiles, whole house audio, advanced music listening and ease of use, typically the hardware forces them to select one or another. It's also hard for hardware oriented solutions to try to market a single brand both to audiophiles and mass market users, usually you need to select one type of users because audiophiles will generally not respect the brand if it's also sold to mass market users. Audiophiles is also a complex segment because the marketing is controlled by magazines and HiFi stores, so even if you would be able to attract the actual audiophile users, it might be hard to market the product unless you also attract correct magazines and HiFi store owners. I believe Slim Devices had some issues related to this when they tried to get respect for the Transporter among audiophiles. I think Olive One feels more hardware oriented than software oriented, so I suspect they are going to get themselves into similar issues as Apple, Sonos and other HiFi manufacturers have, but it's a bit early to tell this for sure at the current stage. I would also be a bit worried that their community funded/designed approach, which is more software oriented, is going to make it hard for them to do the right prioritization. It can easily turn them into a geek product that won't get them the necessary volumes to survive on longer terms. Logitech tried to do both high-end niche products like Transporter and Squeezebox Touch and low end mass market products like Squeezebox Radio, which covered a very large spectrum of users, their problem was just that their management never really fully understood music listening and whole house audio and this is clearly illustrated with the priorities they made when they released the UE Smart Radio concept. They did understand part of the problem and removed some complexity related to server switching, but the way they prioritized features to simplify the device clearly shows that they didn't understand music listening and releasing it with a single device showed that they didn't understand whole house audio. All this resulted in a simple internet radio kind of product and still trying to sell this to a price placed in the niche segment is not going to work, if the UE Smart Radio would cost $50 (or possibly up to $99) it would be a difference scenario, but at $179 people will expect it to do a lot more than it currently does. Still, it's going to be interesting to see how the market evolves during the next 6-12 months, if we are lucky we might get a lot of new creative products who tries to take a part of the market segment which Logitech no longer fills. I think it's probably going to take a year or two before we see the result, because companies trying to take a part of the market probably started to adjust their strategies after the Logitech shutdown decision and it's going to take some time for them to develop the products before they are ready to announce them. New actors will likely have a bigger chance to create something fresh because they are going to be more open minded and won't get stuck in old principles used by existing products, the challenge for them is just going to be to convince us that they will still be here five years in the future. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ erland's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3124 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=97599 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
