David Shamah, The Jerusalem Post June 13, 2006
Can't somebody come up with an easy, attractive – and dare I say legal – way to tap into the wonderful world of MP3 music? By “tapping in” I mean taking it off the computer and bringing it into the living room, not just attaching a couple of speakers to a computer, or navigating discombobulated menus to produce complicated playlists, requiring you to copy files hither and yon onto MP3 players. There are speakers with great sound out there, but a computer means “work,” and when I want to listen to music at home, I don't want to be reminded of work - and when I'm away from work, the only “menu” I'm interested in is the dinner one.
Ah, but how to play them in the living room? With downloads, you could just burn a CD and play it on a living room stereo, or just attach your MP3 player to a set of speakers and play them that way. Of course, that's extra work for you – you have to copy the songs off the computer, set up playlists, yadda yadda. Sounds like too much work for me.
But you still need a PC to control the Airport, the speakers and the music – so you still don't get that full I'm-free-from-my-boring-job zoneout music experience. In my case, the computer that controls the AirPort Extreme speakers is in another room, so if a song comes on I don't like, I'm stuck listening to it until its over, or I have to go upstairs and change the station.
You'd think somebody would have invented a single unit networked device that could be plugged into an Ethernet socket and let you choose what you want to listen to without having to go through a PC. If they can load up MP3 players or iPods with “music managers” that can download songs – and ensure that you don't copy them more than X amount of times – they could set up a desktop “box” that looks a stereo, not a computer, and load it with a music manager that lets you select from a list of streams from on-line broadcasters.
I've been thinking about this for a long time, as a matter of fact – ever since I saw the first prototype about five years ago from a company whose name I can't recall (that obviously went bust). I saw an ad for it and then saw a demonstration – and was all ready to write them a check when they “disappeared” into the cybersphere.
I was all ready to lay my money down for one of these handsome looking units – until I realized that neither of them let you program your own stations. While there are good reasons for this, as the sites for both products explain, that leaves me with a question; what happens to my expensive radio if AE's Reciva service or the Penguin people get tired of maintaining their databases? And don't say it won't happen – remember my initial enthusiasm at this concept five years ago, when at the last moment, with hand on check-writing pen, I got the word that the company was defunct. Meanwhile, I guess I'll still be seeking that ultimate music escape experience, having to either download, with its inherent moral dilemmas, or listen to computer streams via PC, with its inherent reminder of employment slavery. Life is tough.