Squeezebox: a network music player
After getting my Infrant Ready NAS NV+, I promptly transferred all of my digital media to it (e.g. music, home video, etc). Having the NAS also gave me enough energy to finish ripping our entire music collection. After that was all done, I wanted to actually listen to the music that I just painstakingly collected. The Ready NAS has a built in slimserver which is some software which catalogues your music and allows for playback.
What is it?
The devices which connect to the slimserver are called squeezeboxes. There are software versions of the squeezebox and a hardware version. The software version is great for listening to my music at work. After I opened a port in my firewall, I was able to point iTunes or Winamp to the slimserver running at home and listen to all of my music at work! Pretty nice. After about a week of this, I wanted this at home also...
Enter the squeezebox. The hardware version is a really cool device. It has a nice big display and it feels nice in your hands. It doesn't feel cheap (and it's not @ $299 USD) and has a nice weight to it. It can connect to the slimserver wirelessly or over an ethernet cable (see the attached picture). I chose the wireless route because I already use a wireless router, it makes the device very portable, and I don't have to mess with my walls. It took me all of about 5 minutes to hook the device up to the network (and the slimserver).
I was putting the device in my kitchen as a replacement for an under-cabinet cd/radio player. Since this wasn't my living room, I had no receiver in which to plug this device. So I purchased an amplifier and hooked the squeezebox and some speakers into it. This is about the worst thing that I could say about the device. It would be near plug-n-play if it could drive some speakers (bigger than headphones) all by itself (but that would change its form factor and coolness rating). I put the amplifier and speakers on top of our cabinets, so the only thing you see is the nice looking squeezebox on the counter.
The user interface on the device is similar to what you get on something like an iPod. You can browse and search by artist, genre, title, etc. With the push of a button I can play all Children's Music on shuffle without ever having to pick up a CD. If you have children, you know how long CDs last in their hands... I wish the device had some buttons on it which would allow for menu navigation and selection (think iPod). As it stands, you have to use a remote (or a pc) to control the device. Over a long enough timeline, kids + remote == lost or broken. The fact that you can fully control the device via any pc on the same network is really cool though..
Conclusion
I would have bought three of these if they were $150 USD instead of $250 (regularly $299 but they had a spring sale) but so far I've only bought one. Apparently multiple devices can synch up and all play the same song or operate independently. This makes the squeezebox a cost effective way to push music throughout the house without having to trash the walls. I'll definitely be purchasing at least one more (when we finish our basement).