Media servers with thin clients are the way of the future, discs are dying, hopefully soon to be dead.
While having some sort of mode to play local media might be useful to a few, it goes against the whole ethos of the slim design and to my mind would be too big a shift. Why not let the billions of NAS device makers come up with something that does this over ethernet (and is a little more powerful than current options) - leave it to them - this is their area of expertise. With one of those and a basic network, you've essentially got what you want, no? I'd *much* rather see a bigger, better screen, a better DAC and general audio improvements, and maybe a TV/VGA out for album artwork/lyrics/visualisation (not as something required, just optional, and still streaming from a server). Having an optional TV/VGA out keeps the basic screen available for browsing etc (and complete operation WITHOUT a TV, very important), but the TV out DOES open a world of possibilities for visualisation and general prettiness not currently available, and probably not available without making the device itself much more expensive IF you go for a much better screen in the device itself. Even if people do NOT want a TV where there music is, they can choose to pop a small LCD into their stero area for visualisations instead, or live without. Ethernet in every room is the future. It's so flexible - we've just added a streaming video player and while it's not without bugs it too is a major step forward. It ties into everything - basically, all our media comes from various sources (video cam, downloads, online stores, etc) - it's centralised and processed/cleaned up. And then it's available to everyone all over the house through thin clients, 24 hours a day, based off of one relatively powerful (but quiet) server. Not a NAS because I can't find one powerful enough to keep things super zippy. This is a FANTASTIC way to live and make your media available - very very flexible, and you find yourself using things in all sorts of new ways - and you don't need a big, expensive, noisy PC in each room. Just the appropriate low power, quiet, clients ou want in that room. -- bossanova808 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ bossanova808's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=619 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=30399 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
