Finally, digital music collections unbound
By Frank Bajak, Associated Press, 6/12/2003 14:30
NEW YORK (AP) When our CD player expired three years ago in a slow fugue of whirring and fitful tray-closing, I confidently declared: Never again would our family own a standalone compact disc player. We'd simply stream music from our computers to the living room stereo.
Broadband-connected PCs were already being seriously populated with music. I'd networked the house with Ethernet cable and hard drives were fast becoming the most logical place to store music.
My daughter was collecting vinyl LPs. A quaint hobby. I figured the CD was destined for an even shorter life span.
So I bought a Yamaha AV receiver, hooked it up to the television and VCR and predicted that we would all soon be piping music from our collective hard disks through a single set of speakers.
All we needed was the right appliance.
Now, after a few years of fits and starts, I've got four gizmos stacked atop my television, connected to that AV receiver, that put our network-based digital music collection where we can all enjoy it.
All four stream audio files from PCs and support personalized playlists. Some are more ambitious, offering up video and still images on the TV. They range in cost from $200 to $300.
Yet only one the audio-only AudioTron from Turtle Beach can I unequivocally recommend. And that's not just for its solidity, intelligence and style. With its buttons, push dial and uncluttered digital display, it looks like a stereo component. The others don't.
The most problematic unit was Hewlett-Packard's Digital Media Receiver. It wasn't even a dress rehearsal for its assigned role. The CD3O Network Media Player, by comparison, measured up in reliability but was unsatisfying for other reasons.
Most intriguing was Prismiq's MediaPlayer, a digital goodie basket. On top of streaming music, video and digital stills (you can tightly choreograph its slideshows, setting them to the music of your choice) it also offers top news, local weather, AOL Instant Messenger, Web surfing and a limited selection of Internet radio stations.
All of this you manage with a remote control whose mini-joystick cleverly glides a pointer across your TV screen. The Prismiq has an optional wireless keyboard for an extra $50 that makes navigation even easier.
You'd think, by the way, that the runaway popularity of wireless networking would be a major catalyst for such products. All the units support that option (though you'll pay about $100 more to outfit the AudioTron and Prismiq for Wi-Fi). On balance, though, I found my wired Ethernet network far more reliable.
The AudioTron was the only receiver offering, for an additional $50, HPNA networking, which uses your home phone circuits. It also was the only device with robust onboard music library management software a crucial asset.
While the other three receivers require you to install server software on a host PC to organize and stream your media files, the AudioTron's server is built-in. It's configured chiefly through a standard Web browser.
What satisfies about the AudioTron is how it polls every shared resource on your network including standalone network storage devices and catalogs all the music files.
It also did Internet radio right. The AudioTron reaches directly through my router and DSL modem to the Internet to grab my favorite station, RadioParadise.
What doomed the Hewlett-Packard entrant in this review, the ew5000, was its processing gulps, burps and balks.
I'd be listening to a playlist and attempt to jump forward a track or two and it would freeze. So I'd reboot. In wireless mode I'd lose the stream altogether, though the Wi-Fi access point was only 50 feet away and I had a strong wireless signal on a laptop in the same room.
None of the other machines were so immature.
The HP unit also had analog output only the rest offered digital as well. The other three also play WAV music files, which is CD quality. HP's receiver supports only the MP3 and Windows Media formats. It handles still images but, unlike the Prismiq, you can't choreograph slideshows.
The CD30 (OK, you were curious too. It stands for Content Delivery 3rd Generation Open) is an odd sort.
Unlike the HP and the Prismiq, it doesn't hook up to your TV so you can manage your music visually. Instead, it uses voice recognition to announce artist, album, track and playlist names in the airy synthesized tones of a female robot.
That would be fine if you have a small collection or if you're content to organize all your playlists while sitting at your PC. The other machines allow for some spontaneity in on-the-spot playlist creation.
Like the HP unit, the CD3O also doesn't offer Internet radio. Which makes them shoe-outs for my Father's Day wish list. The Prismiq and AudioTron, on the other hand, are serious contenders.
I loved the slideshow customization feature on the Prismiq, and my wife and I got some yuks reviewing home video I'd transferred to my PC months ago. The Prismiq handles both the MPEG-4 and DivX formats. But it still feels like a toy.
The AudioTron, whose first iteration shipped 2½ years ago, seems built to last. It is also designed so multiple receivers can coexist on a network, piping different music for different tastes.
The AudioTron's makers at Turtle Beach have been in digital audio hardware for more than a decade. They listen closely to their customers, and it shows
