JackOfAll wrote: > > ickstream from what info has been given, is a cloud based music delivery > platform. Their client API is not based on how an LMS client currently > talks to the LMS server. Possibly the Touch could have a applet that > connected directly back to the ickstream cloud for music delivery. > Just to make this clear in case our statements so far have been ambiguous and to avoid misunderstandings: ickStream is NOT a streaming service and you will NOT have to use any cloud service to stream music from your local computer or server. ickStream does - among other things - provide a cloud service to enable use of online music sources. It will also use a cloud service for convenience functionality like configuration, authorization and device management as well as unified access to some functionality (for example favorites) for people who do not want to run a server 24/7. But it will not require a permanent online connection to play your own stuff.
Yes, our devices and servers don't talk to each other like Squeezeboxes and LMS do. And one of the driving motivations for this was that - unlike the MySqueezebox.com or UE Smart Radio solutions - we do not want a player to be completely controlled by an online service in case you do not run a server 24/7 in your home. And I know from personal user feedback just how many people do not want that. Logitech knows this, too, it's why they made the change with the Smart Radio. > > I assume you would have to purchase some sort of subscription from > ickstream, but I don't really know as they haven't released a great deal > of info. > Which is mainly because we don't know all of the details ourselves, yet. Some of the features we want to provide to users will probably not be free for us, too. You'd probably be surprised for how much of the functionality that comes for "free" with LMS Logitech actually pays money. And yes, the operation of our service will obviously have to be paid for, too. Such is life. But I believe it's in the very interest of users, that a provider sees them as their customers. Customers have a power to decide whether they like a product or not and whether they want to use it or not. They are not dependent on the goodwill of a company who has sold them a product a long time ago and for which they are now just a cost factor. The latter is something that has haunted this industry a lot. Logitech is actually still a pretty user friendly case - after all they have not discontinued anything yet and do still promise to keep around their infrastructure. Try to get software updates for a 2 year old model of your other favorite mainstream HiFi brand's device to make it compatible with a new service and you know how it feels to not be in their core business. As to comparing ickStream and Community Squeeze: IMHO they are focusing on different things. My understanding is that Community Squeeze wants to provide a software framework on which LMS can be run and that provides a Squeezebox compatible software player solution for the Community Squeeze hardware or other hardware devices that can be used as a player or server. With other words: they want to enable you to build your DIY Squeezebox. ickStream aims to provide a software and service framework to allow easy use of online and local music sources and make the use of streaming devices easy and accessible. This framework shall enable commercial vendors or non-commercial developers to focus on the products they are good at building without having to develop and operate the whole system for themselves and hopefully allow users to mix and match devices from different providers. A lot of people have been looking for a "standard" (like UPnP) to allow different devices to interoperate but as things stand, only the lowest possible denominator ever has been agreed upon and actually implemented on most devices resulting in notoriously bad products. This problem is what we want to overcome. I don't exactly know whether the Community Squeeze software platform and specifically SqueezeLite will be open enough and have APIs to add 3rd party contributions like ours but since it's building on the Squeezebox legacy I assume it will allow Applets or something like that, too, and LMS of course already has the capability to build plugins for it so I hope a coexistence and integration will be easy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pippin's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=13777 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=98521 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
