Laptops Desktops Monitors & LCDs Graphics Cards Handhelds Phones Software Networks Printers More »
search
AnchorDesk

David Coursey
How to beam audio--and video--around your house

David Coursey
Executive Editor, AnchorDesk
Friday, Dec. 12, 2003
TalkBack!Add your opinion
Let me make the first of my end-of-the-year predictions: Someday, 2003 will be remembered as the year digital audio receivers (also known as DARs) finally became interesting.

Top drawer DARs
Digital audio receivers are really coming into their own: Three out of four recently reviewed units were named Editor's Choices.
Of course, nobody will actually remember this signal event, except for the people who sell these devices. But I believe that, sometime in the not too distant future, DARs will be as common as the home stereo systems to which they're connected--except, of course, they'll be built into other devices, so we won't even talk about them anymore. But I believe that this is the year in which they really began those simultaneous marches to ubiquity and oblivion. Such is progress.

IN CASE I've already lost you, allow me to remind you that DARs are devices that allow you to play the music stored on your PC on your home stereo system over your home network. They've been around for a while now, but this past year they've both improved and significantly come down in price.

(Let me say right here that I hate the name "digital audio receiver." When I think of a "receiver," I imagine something that picks up radio waves, like an AM/FM receiver or my XM Satellite Radio receiver, which pulls in digital signals from a transmitter out in space. A DAR may be wireless, but that does not make it a receiver--not in my column, anyway.)

The best example of this hardware is the Prismiq MediaPlayer, which besides serving as an illustration of the fact that all the good names have been taken, is all the rage among my friends who care about such things.

The Prismiq streams digital audio and video, receives some Internet radio stations, and can be adapted to wireless networks (which makes it much easier to install if you don't already have Ethernet cable in your walls). After installing the MediaManager software on a PC, you create a media library that the MediaPlayer hardware can access. The PC acts as a server, and the MediaPlayer hardware--which hooks up to your TV and stereo--is the client. You control the MediaPlayer with a remote control or optional keyboard using menus that appear on your TV screen.

My friends are buying the Prismiq because it does all that for a price--$250--that seems reasonable for something that could be overtaken by other technology in a year or two.

BY THAT TIME, it will be easy to buy TVs and audio equipment with DAR technology built-in. In fact, Philips (the gang-that-couldn't-shoot-straight of the U.S. consumer electronic industry) has sold such a device for a couple of years now. I played with an early version of the Philips Streamium, a $299 bookshelf stereo system that besides AM/FM radio, plays MP3 CDs, will connect to a PC and play the CDs stored there, and also offers a limited selection of Internet radio stations.

When I reviewed the device, I was looking at it as an Internet radio receiver--something akin to the ill-fated but much-loved Kerbango--and was unhappy that it didn't have RealAudio or Windows Media codecs built-in. This significantly limits the number of radio stations available to you. (Apple's iTunes has the same problem.)

As an MP3 player, the Streamium has a lot to recommend it. My memory is that for a $299 stereo system, it sounded pretty good and the MP3 features worked as advertised. But I believe that, not too long from now, the Streamium's features will be common in all sorts of audio and video systems, perhaps with Windows Media and maybe even Real added to increase the amount of content available.

Creative also sells an interesting DAR that includes 802.11b/g connectivity for playing your PC music library over your stereo system. The Creative Sound Blaster Wireless Music system uses a remote control with an LCD display to navigate through your music library.

At $200, it is less expensive and is in some ways more flexible than the Prismiq. The Creative does not require a TV as a display mechanism, but the Prismiq supports more media types. If all I cared about was music, I'd buy the Sound Blaster instead of the Prismiq. One reason for this is that I could use it to feed one of my Bose Wave radios, which doesn't live anywhere near a TV set.

ALL OF the products I've discussed so far are ZDNet Editor's Choice winners. There's a fourth DAR--the $250 Motorola Simplefi--that I've never seen or touched and don't know anybody who has. After reading the review, I think this is probably just as well.

As for the future, my hunch is that Microsoft's eHome group, the people behind the Media Center PC design, will be offering a way to stream content from their machines to home stereos and televisions before my next birthday (June 3, mark your calendar). HP is likely to play a role in this, though I expect to see Dell and Gateway there as well.

Like I said, in a couple of years DAR functionality will likely be so common that I won't be writing columns like this. But in the meantime, the functionality has increased and the price has decreased enough that if you're serious about MP3s and maintaining a music library on a PC, you now have some excellent ways to share that music over your network with the rest of the house.

What do you think? Do you have a bunch of MP3s marooned on your PC? Do you have any way of sharing them around the house? How do you do it? TalkBack to me below! 

  Next Story 

Special sponsor stores

Social Networking

advertisement
Click Here