cliveb;312803 Wrote: > It strikes me that streaming audio is still in its infancy, and every > company that's having a go is doing it their own way. It's a bit like > VHS v. Betamax at the moment. (Or rather, it's actually more like the > plethora of competing recording technologies that were around at the > turn of the last century). > > The basic idea of streaming audio cannot become mainstream until the > dominant method of music distribution becomes integrated with the > playback technology (ie. in the way that I can buy an audio CD anywhere > and it'll play on any CD player). > > It'll be some years before an industry standard way of doing things > emerges. Unfortunately the eventual winner will be dictated by > commercial muscle rather than technical superiority. > > At this stage, all the pioneers (Slim, Sonos, Roku, McIntosh, Linn, > etc) are minnows. When the big fish (Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba et al) > agree on a format, the rest of the world will just have to like it or > lump it. Depressing, isn't it?
Clive, While your points are well taken, I still beg to disagree. As a very fine example of why I do so just take a look at the iPod. While the big fish stumbled around Apple came forward with a very easy to use device that literately blow the big fish out of the water and went on to become the de facto standard for portable music players. I believe that a similar thing is quite possible in the realm of streaming music devices and in fact, is not only possible but may actually be happening with the SqueezeBox and Duet. As further proof of Slim Devices market leading status just look at the competition - the audio companies either make poor sounding devices (MacIntosh), devices with terrible user interfaces (Linn) or devices which use a proprietary network protocol (Sonos). Only Slim Devices offers a stable user interface and a flexible device which works with standard network protocols. As for the idea of licensing, there are plenty places where the insides of the "Receiver" can be installed to very good affect. Build a "Receiver" into a home theater AV receiver and one now has a means of listening to music via one's iTunes collection (and remember that almost all iPod owners, except for those of us geeks with RockBox installed, have a copy of their iPod music sitting on their computer) or by streaming from the internet and also a very simple way of obtaining firmware updates for both the "Receiver" and it's host receiver. Add to all this the market muscle that Logitech brings to the table and the idea of licensing becomes a no brainer. -- 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 discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
