cliveb;313070 Wrote: > Interoperability most definitely *is* an issue. At the moment, we > already have an industry standard for music distribution: the CD. We > get around lack of interoperability among hard disk based playback > systems by ripping the CD and populating our hard disks in an > appropriate manner. But this is a cumbersome process, and the > mainstream music consumer won't be interested - what they want is to be > able to buy their music and play it without any kind of messing about. > > What's needed is a mechanism whereby they go online, buy the music they > want, and it appears in their audio playback system ready to go. That > will require an industry agreement as to how music will be delivered > electronically. If you have multiple incompatible systems for playback, > you'll need multiple delivery systems, and due to inevitable licensing > complications each artist's material will end up available only on a > subset of the various systems. What are you going to do when you > discover a new musician you like, but whose albums are not available on > the system you've invested in?
Clive, Once again you bring up some very valid points but once again you fail to take into account what that annoying little device, the iPod, as shown us about people's willingness to learn about how to work with digital music files. As funkstar so rightly pointed out, most of the problems with digital music files are due that scourge of all things digital known as DRM. Add into that the various reports floating around the net that not everyone's iPod is filled with files purchased from the iTunes store and one can see that people are more than willing to work with several different file formats to get the music they want. Perhaps the greater issue will not be file format but rather file tags since tags are at the heart of every software based digital music system, especially Squeeze Center. So, if anything, some kind of tagging standard will need to be developed to move hard drive based music systems, whether streamed, like Squeeze Center, or computer driven, like iTunes, forward into mass market acceptance. But don't kid yourself because the computer driven systems (by which I mean playing back one's hard drive based digital music files through one's computer's audio system) are already well on their way to mass market acceptance, it's the streaming systems which need to catch up and Slim Devices is in the driver's seat as far as that is concerned. Another thing that has not been mentioned thus far are all the iPod based music playback systems which have been sold. One takes one's iPod and plugs it into one these iPod based boom boxes and gets an easy way to play one's digital music files on something other earbuds or a computer. Placing a Slim Devices "Receiver" into an AV receiver would serve a similar purpose but without the need for an iPod or any other hardware besides a computer and properly setup home network, two things which many households already possess. Basically I see it as a win-win situation and hopefully someone at Slim Devices will see it this way as well. -- ralphpnj Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -> Snatch -> The Transporter -> Transporter 2 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=48945 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
