I bought two Squeezeboxes a year ago, and now a Roku Soundbridge, which probably is "the" competition. And to be honest, when I show both around to friends, the Roku clearly wins - hope I am allowed to say this here - I'll try to explain what people like more about it, and why two of those I showed bbought a Roku as well.
Soundbridge wins over Squeezebox: * Setup: plug in the Soundbridge, and it'll show your PC (see next topic), every dummy can do that. Plug in the Squeezebox, you've got to enter your IP (DHCP didn't work well back then, and home users often don't have DHCP), enter the server IP (otherwise I had problems as well)... the first, I can give to my mother, the second I can only recommend to friends who know their network, which is about 5% of them. * Connecitivity: plug in the Soundbridge, and you'll see iTunes, Windows Media Player or a dedicated Firefly installation. Plug in the Squeezebox, and you have to install its special server software. Having it connect to something existing, I can again give even to my mother, telling people they need to install this special software, I hear "oh well, nice idea, but with my luck, I'll spend days getting it to run"... * Speed: having the PC running all the time? Few people I know would want that. The alternative: an old PC in a corner where the noise won't harm, or for people who also think about energy consumption (a 24/7 PC can use up a few hundred Euros here in Germany), a NAS. But while using a 200 Mhz NAS with Firefly and a Soundbridge is lightning fast, a Squeezebox connecting to Slimserver on that machine is soooo slow. And Firefly is a good proof that platform independent code is possible even in C and doesn't need that slow Perl stuff. Squeezebox wins over Soundbridge: * Display: visualisation and progess bar are advantages; sadly no t ones that weight a lot imho, since the size allows to choose songs from about the same distance. * Plugins: quite nice to have the weather on it in standby mode, for example. But to be honest, Plugins are geek features for a small percentage of possible users. * Web interface: Slimserver has a nice web interface. I like the ability to browse (even though on the NAS its quite slow) and create playlists that way. But then... the point of a stand-alone player is to NOT switch the PC on to manage. A dedicated remote with display like the earlier mentioned one could be a very nice advantage, but the web interface in itself, while being quite nice, is something for people who sit too much in front of their PC, not for casual PC users. Neutral: * Sound: lets be honest, this is still mostly about MP3s. Audiophiles may gain something from the Transporter etc., but the big consumer market won't hear any difference. * Security: WPA for the Soundsbridge took a long time - and that SD was caring about WPA security is in my personal eyes a very important thing... but then, I'm more thinking about security than most people. To me and my recommendations to others, that weighted more than all the Soundbridges advantages... until now that Roku has WPA. Summary: Within a year of having Squeezeboxes, people looked at them, liked them, but found them too complicated once I explained the additional work. Within a week of having a Soundbridge, I had someone buying himself one as well (and that guy knew the Squeezeboxes). So if you want to hear my opinion what could be made better: have a server thats available as native bytecode (can still be OS and multiplatform), and make those boxes able to connect to iTunes and WMP at least (in the worst case with some kind of really easy to one-click-install proxy software) to give users instant success. Or in shorter words: improvements that would allow you to give one to your mother with the confidence that you won't need to help her. Competition has proven that it's possible ;) -- CCRDude ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CCRDude's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=8478 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=31324 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
