I, too, have a 360 and a squeezebox. Aside from the issues already mentioned: sound quality, fan noise--boy is it loud, lack of display, and awkward interface (I can't emphasize enough how poor the interface is for music when compared to a squeezebox), there are other limitations worth considering.
- The 360 won't synchronize with other 360's to provide whole-house audio, nor any central way to control such a system. - You'll either have to store all your music on the 360 or have a windows PC on at all times to run windows media connect. Slimserver can run on a windows PC, small NAS devices, linux PCs, macs, take your pick. Or it can operate without a PC via squeezenetwork. - I haven't explored it fully but I don't think the 360 can do internet radio. Interestingly, I've found I use this as much as, or perhaps even more than my personal music collection. - The 360 won't do Pandora. - It was briefly mentioned, but it warrants expounding on: the 360 doesn't support many file types. I think only WMA and MP3 are supported (probably wav, too?). But certainly no flac, ogg, shorten, AAC, or ALAC support. - Slimserver offers a ton of flexible ways to interact with the server and device. The web interface offers anywhere-access, as well as palm/pda/nokia770 control via a very slick interface (thanks to Ben Klaas). The CLI offers an installer an easy way to integrate the SB into an AMX/Crestron system. - Slimserver allows you to easily stream (with transcoding, if necessary) to many types of devices, locally and remotely, enabling you to more easily consolidate your music collection to a single, centrally located, server. All that being said, given the way I use my setup, I think that the lack of a display on the 360 would be the single biggest reason why I wouldn't part with my squeezebox. I played with HTPC's for a while but never realized just how important the display was until I got a squeezebox. I'll spontaneously put music on in the house much more often than I ever did in my HTPC days. -- azinck3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ azinck3's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=3967 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=23614 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
