TECHrants: Technology Opinion News and Rumors

Playing .mp3s At Home
April 11, 2001 9:45pm


  It has been amazing to watch the .mp3 format unfold in front of me, from a small underground trading community to hot-selling name-brand commercial products. And now big companies are selling mp3 players for your car and your pocket. But we're still lacking a practical player for where we listen to music most: on our home stereo.

Much like the beginning of the car .mp3 deck, there are some nearly homemade solutions that are prohibitively expensive. That's because they are basically a computer with .mp3 software in a box. They are worth checking out, but not practical because of their $700-1500 price tags. Audio ReQuest is nice because it outputs its mp3 player, skins and all, to your television. Lansonic is a bit more practical; it seems to be more professionally constructed and works more like another audio component. These players increase their price with built-in hard drives, server software, and a number of other features that really are not needed.

Most of us already have our .mp3 library on our computers and prefer to play them from there. Yes, you can play your computer through your stereo, but that involves long, messy cables--if they are in the same room at all. If you use a notebook like me, then you must stay tethered to play music. And if you've ever used one of those analog FM or 2.4 GHz transmitters, you know they are completely useless because of static and interference.

Here's the ideal component I'm looking for: Something that takes an ethernet or 802.11 network, and simply has a TOSlink digital output. A major brand could produce that for $150. This would allow you to stream anything you wanted, from anywhere in your house. It would be purely digitial, and inexpensive. Can it really be that hard to accomplish? I don't think so.

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© 2001 Josh Wardell
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