Yesterday we told you about a cool little project to build your very own Wireless Audio Streamer for under $100 bucks. So once you build your streamer, what do you listen to? You might want to check out this handy "wiki" at Wired.com that shows you how to stream your music online.
The tutorial starts out:
You've spent a lot of time and money collecting digital music. And by now, you have a pretty sweet library of MP3s and AACs to show for the effort.
But let's say you want to take that library to go? Before you start carrying around a huge hard drive, you might want to try streaming your tunes online instead. All it takes to start streaming your music over the internet is a playlist, a server with some storage space, and a software player that can open and play an internet stream.
The steps are:
Step 1: Host it somewhere
Step 2: Create a playlist
2.1 Extended M3U
2.2 XSPF
2.3 PLS
3 Download Software to Do It For You
4 Don't Feed the Lawyers
If you're not sure where to start when you want to stream your own music, this article is a good place to begin.
Need a wireless audio streamer for the house but you don't want to shell out $200 or $300 dollars. Maybe you have the money but you're looking for a cool weekend project?
Popular Science's website has a cool "how-to" that shows you how to assemble an audio media streamer starting with an old PC that you have lying around the house.
Some of the things you'll need to get started:
Salvaged PC (must have serial RS232 port, two USB ports, and one stereo line out jack; or, build your own, like our $72 PC
Streamzap PC remote control (Amazon.com; $30.24)
TRENDnet 54Mbps wireless G USB adapter (Amazon.com; $15.99)
This project made be a tad advanced for some, but it definitely looks like a project that might be fun to try. We here at NetworkingAudioVideo will give it a shot and let you know how it turns out.
We'll start by telling what makes the MG-450HD such a powerhouse. The device is a media streamer that connects to you home theater in ways that most devices can't. Besides wireless and wireless connections you also have the ability to connect to multiple drives like to the hard drive of a networked computer, an attached USB device, or an optional SATA internal hard drive. Without the optional drives you can stream HD video, photos and audio from any PC on your wireless or wired network to your TV. Once you add one of the optional drives you can then store media locally.
How do you get your digital music? Here at the NAV headquarters we prefer to stream music over the internet. Sometimes that involves a streaming device like the Grace Digital Radio or the Sonos Wireless Music System and other times we stream right over a PC. One thing we noticed lately is that we rarely listen to CDs anymore and it appears we may not be alone. According to CNET.com, there was poll recently at Stereophile that asks: How do you listen to digital music? The results:
The poll says 34 percent still use CD players as their primary digital source. Yikes, I would have guessed much higher, more like 70 percent. Thirty-six percent use a computer-based server, and 10 percent use dedicated servers such as Sonos or Squeezebox. Another 4 percent use iPods! I felt a little better that 11 percent use a SACD or DVD-Audio player. Another 3 percent voted "other."
We'd like to see this poll taken again in about 12 months as we bet the 10 percent for dedicated servers at least doubles and the CD uses gets cut in half. The sad thing is that CDs are definitely appear to riding off into the sunset like LPs once did (although LPs have made somewhat of a comeback).
Do you still listen to CDs? Leave us a comment and let us know how you get your digital music.
Streaming radio has to be one of our favorite things here at the NetworkingAudioVideo headquarters. When you add a portable device that allows you to stream radio anywhere in the house or office, what more could you want? Since there's quite a few intenet radio devices on the market, where do you start? Well Newsfactor.com has a nice article that looks at these four radios:
You'll have to read the article to get the rundown on each device but we will tell you the reviewer's favorite device was the Phoenix because of it rechargeable batteries even though the sound quality way below par. Be sure to check out the complete review.
It's no secret that we're Pandora Radio fans here at the NetworkingAudioVideo headquarters and in the few weeks we'll have a review of the ITC-IR1000B Wi-Fi Internet Radio. The ITC-IR1000B was sent to us by friends at Grace Digital and lets you stream Pandora Radio anywhere in the house.
In the meantime, we listen to a lot of Pandora Radio on our computer. The only issue we have with Pandora is since it plays in a web browser window, were always accidently closing the browser and losing our music. We then have to open the browser again to start our music. Now that may not seem like a big deal but we're a bit lazy here at the headquartes and we don't want to restart our music every fiteen minutes just because we're click-happy.
So imagine our surprise when we found the OpenPandora Project. Basically OpenPandora is free Windows software that lets you play your music without having a browser open. The nice thing about the player is that the great look and function of the Pandora website resides in the player giving a familiar feel. Another nice feature is while the player is minimized in the system tray you can hover over the OpenPandora icon and see the name of the song and artist. We can't tell you how many times before OpenPandora we had to keep maximizing our browser to see the name of a song. In addition there are a lot of other great features that you can check out when you download the software.
So if you listen to Pandora Radio on your Windows PC be sure to downlaod this simple but powerful piece of software.
TVersity Finally Launches Version 1.0 of Media Streaming Service
TVersity has finally come out of beta after several years and has launched as Release Candidate 1. If your're not familiar with TVersity, it's free software that allows you to stream media from your PC to multiple devices. While there are quite a few pieces of media streaming software out there, TVersity is a Truly loaded product. According to the TVersity website:
Play Internet audio, image and video streams and RSS/RDF/ATOM/OPML
feeds and podcasts on your TV, Stereo and other connected devices
The media server streams media from the Internet and delivers it to
connected devices via HTTP, the only protocol supported by those devices
The only truly universal media server (including support for the
Apple iPhone, Sony PSP, the Sony PS3, the Xbox 360, the Nintendo Wii, The
Nokia 770/N800 and many more devices)
Use the same server for home and mobile networked devices (with multimedia
capabilities) whether they support UPnP AV / DLNA or just have a web browser
or an RSS/Podcast Reader
Enter your own Internet URLs or select from the bundled Audio and
Video Guides
The media server is bundled with hundreds of TV stations from all over the
world and thousands of radio stations
Play your ENTIRE media collection on your connected
devices
Finally almost any content that plays in Windows Media Player can be
played on any of the supported devices disregarding their codec limitations
Automatic Real-time Seamless Transcoding
Let the Media Server automatically detect when a given media needs to be
transcoded for playback on your media player
Very fast browsing of your media library with unprecedented speed
for huge libraries (up to 100,000 items and more)
You can see the full (and very long) list of features here. At the great price of free, you got no reason to not give the software a try.
Installing a Harddrive on the Networked Media Tank from Popcorn Hour
When we here at NetworkingAudioVideo rolled out our review of Networked Media Tank from Popcorn Hour we didn't really talk about the ability to add a harddrive to the device.
Well, our sister site TVSnob.com has found a video on how to install a harddrive on the Networked media Tank. The nice thing is the 10 minute video also shows how to set up the device as a BitTorrent client. Be sure to check the video above out.
The Digital Home of 2013 - We Don't Even want to Think About the Electric Bill!
Are you curious about the home of the future? If you are, you'll want to check out a lengthy article about the Digital Home of 2013 at TheStandard.com. The article starts out:
It's 2013, and you've just come home from work. As you pull into the driveway, you reach into your pocket and swipe the screen of your smartphone with your thumb. Your garage door opens and the lights in your house turn on. The TV queues up the shows you missed while you were working late. Your favorite songs are following you from the living room to the kitchen. Then you stop. The phone blinks and warbles at you. The fridge says you forgot the milk.
It's the HD/wireless/automated/streaming/sych'd/ready-to-entertain house of the future, and you're living in it.
In the following pages, you'll be treated to a glimpse of the toys and technologies that will grace your home in the not-so-distant future. If you are like most people, you probably have already sampled some of them, but others -- such as automated home control and personal applications of cloud computing -- haven't made it into people's homes ... yet.
The articles is broken down into the following categories.
Introduction: What your future really looks like: The Digital Home of 2013
1. The Digital Home of 2013: High-speed telecommunications
2. The Digital Home of 2013: It's an HD world
3. The Digital Home of 2013: Gaming gets real
4. The Digital Home of 2013: Reach out and touch something
5. The Digital Home of 2013: Automated home control
6. The Digital Home of 2013: Green goes mainstream
7. The Digital Home of 2013: Welcome to the cloud
8. The Digital Home of 2013: The rise of streaming media
9. The Digital Home of 2013: Online distribution of TV, movies
10. The Digital Home of 2013: Collaborating across town, and across the world
Sidebar: The castoff home technologies of 2013?
We told you it was a lengthy article but it's well worth the read.
SoundCast OutCast Wireless Speaker System - Rocking a Pool Near You!
"Wow, those are some cool jams crankin' out of your Air Purifier". At least that we imagine what folks will say when they see the SoundCast OutCast Wireless Speaker System. The Outcast is a mobile speaker system that connects up with your iPod. I4U has a small review of the Outcast that starts:
The SoundCast OutCast speaker system includes two pieces, the OutCast speaker and the iCast transmitter. The iCast transmitter connects to your iPod and sends the music streaming wirelessly to the large outdoor speaker. The speaker is powered by an internal NiMH battery pack and the speaker has an AC port that can recharge the battery and run the speaker at the same time.
The speaker is large and has a downward firing 8-inch woofer and four 3-inch high frequency drivers in an omni-directional array that assures no matter what side of the SoundCast OutCast you are on you get good sound. The speaker is powered by a 100W digital amp and is built out of water resistant plastic. The battery life is good for a claimed 10 hours of playback. The transmitter and speaker communicate on a 2.4GHz frequency band and automatically jumps channels until a clear channel is found.
As far as quality, the review states:
The SoundCast OutCast is large and rather ugly. I have seen air purifiers that look better than it does, but it delivers the goods when it comes to sound quality. The large 8-inch sub makes for deep bass that sounds great with minimal distortion. The omni-directional array speakers make for great mid and high sounds at any position around the system. I found that it sounds best when not placed against a wall on one side or in a corner.
Besides the look, the biggest issue I4U had was the $699 price tag. We're working on getting a review unit so we'll let you know what we think about the look and the price point. So if you need a strong speaker system by the pool this summer, the Outcast may be the answer.
Looking for an easy to use software to stream your PC to your TV? As long as you have a UPnP-enabled device, you might want to try out Google Media Server. According to Google:
Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV. It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3). At the touch of a button, you can then:
Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC
View Picasa Web Albums
Play your favorite YouTube videos
We'll give Google Media Server a shot and let you know what we think. If you're currently using it, drop us a comment and let us know what you think.
Listen to Your Pandora Stations Anywhere in Your Home
Here at NetworkingAudioVideo we're big Pandora Radio fans. If you're not familiar with Pandora, it's a free streaming music service that catagorizes and plays music based on the Music Genome Project. According to Pandora:
Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome.
Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like.
.
So image our excitement when we heard there's a new wireless device from Grace Digital Audio to stream our favorite music from Pandora. According to PRWEB:
San Diego, CA (PRWEB) June 24, 2008 -- Grace digital Inc., a leading manufacturer of audio and telephony consumer electronics, announces the integration of Pandora's personalized radio service onto their Grace Digital ITC-IR1000B Wi-Fi Internet radio.
Grace Digital brings to market the first Pandora enabled sub $200 wireless Internet radio to provide personalized radio to the over 65 million active Internet radio listeners. The ITC-IR10000B allows you to play your favorite Internet radio station in any room of your house wirelessly - directly from your broadband router. The set up is simple. Plug your ITC-IR1000B stand alone Internet radio into any power outlet in your home, log on to your wireless broadband connection, and start listening to over 11,000 Internet radio stations with no monthly service charge.
$200 might be a little pricey but we like the retro radio design. We'll try to get a hold of the Pandora Radio and let you know what we think.
ZeeVee ZvBox Video - The Little Powerhouse in Action
Just a few days after we let you know the ZVBox from ZeeVee was available for preorder from Amazon, we ran across a couple of really cool ZvBox videos shot by eHomeUpgrade at the Connections 2008 Tradeshow. Overall, the ZeeVee representatives on the video do a good job of explaining the ZvBox. Also be sure to check out the sweet remote for the ZVBox on the first video.
Part 1
Part 2
The videos are just under 10 minutes total but well worth the sneak peek of the ZvBox.
Wow! What a Nice Chumby...I Mean Streaming Internet Device!
The other day I went to a friend of mine's office and he started showing off his Chumby to me. Now as I.........okay that didn't exactly sound right so maybe I better start over. The other day I went to a friend of mine's office and he showed me his Chumby Internet Device. I'd have to say it was pretty impressive and quite unique. We know the Chumby has been out since late last year but this is the first time we actually found someone using it. Basically the Chumby is a wireless internert device that's a tad smaller than your typical alarm clock that streams content to "widgets" on the device.
The device is capable of streaming radio, news, weather and a lot more. I didn't get to spend much time with the device so I'm not quite sure how I'd use it but I'd assume it would set next to my computer and serve as a background tool while using my main computer. The Chumby might also be a great beside table device to keep an eye on your late night Ebay auctions. We'll work on getting a review unit to give you more of a detailed look but we wanted to let you know the Chumby is a pretty cool device.
Here's a few more details from Chumby.com:
What's a chumby?
The Chumby is a compact device that displays useful and entertaining information from the web: news, photos, music, weather, celebrity gossip, webcams, sports scores - using your wireless internet connection. Always on, it shows - nonstop - what's online that matters to you.
How does it work?
Just plug it in, connect to your wireless network, and use your computer to choose a playlist of "widgets" (the bite-sized applications that run on a chumby - check them out on the Browse Widgets page). And if, say, you want to see news, the surf report, and traffic in the morning, and animations, web cams and eBay auctions at night, you can group widgets in "channels." Watch constantly updated info, or use interactive widgets that take advantage of its touchscreen or motion sensor. You can even share widgets and send ecards to other people's chumbys.
With over 600 widgets across 30 different categories such as weather, social networks, photos, sports, news, entertainment, videos and much more, you'll find lots of stuff you'll love.
The Chumby is bit pricey at just under $200 but with a touchscreen and motion sensor, this just might be a cool little device to have around the house or office.
How To: Streaming Your Music Online 
Continue reading: 
Newsletter
Subscribe - RSS
