I was sitting on the sofa one night. There was nothing particular I wanted to watch so i decided to put on some music. Rather than using my micro system I decided to use my mp3 player as it has other music which I've downloaded on it and the micro system pre dates mp3, CDRW and the whole DRM issue.
While I was listening to my music it occurred to me that I was using a huge amount of storage for the CDs I had on display. Everything on the shelves, and in the unit beside me, and the music I'd bought online all fit onto my mp3 player, which was only the size of half a deck of cards. There has to be new stereos with built in hard drives which can free up all this storage. If an mp3 player with 16Gb, FM radio and colour screen costs less than £100 18 months ago then there should be some nice systems on the market.
Only there's not.
Why? Apple have killed the stereo market. They have developed the iPod dock which allows an ipod to connect to a stereo and have its music played through the system, in a managed way. Of course I can connect my mp3 to the stereo via the line in but I have to pump the volume up and it drains the battery.
So is there anything other than Apple? Its seems that there is little choice. There is a cheap system but it has a locked in hard disk - I would have to rip all my discs again and there is no way to transfer tracks on or off the disk. There is the Brennan machines (very nice and tempting) but they lack a radio, not that i listed to the radio that much, but if I was replacing the AM/FM, CD, cassette player it had to be with more than just a CD player. Sony had just what i wanted but none were in stock n the entire western Scottish region (plus at over £800 it wasn't happening).
Since I had already ripped the music why didn't I just stream from my pc? The main reason is that the pc is about as far from green as you can go. Since my mp3 gives 18 hours playback from a single charge can I justify the CO2 generating pc being on just to push music out to another device?
USB support was my one hope. Many new stereos have a usb port where you can connect a thumb drive and have it play the music. I would take a drive with a sample of music and test the local systems. By now a few months have passed and there is less choice than ever in the shops. Most machines i looked would play the music as loaded onto the thumb drive's folder system. One system did however scan the drive and offer tracks according to artist, genre and album. So I went for it, the Phillips Streamium station. As it was ex display I got it cheaper but without a box or manual. I got it home and set it all up and have been quite pleased - until I downloaded the manual and found out that its the centre I really want as it has a hard disk I can push tracks onto. A quick look shows this is a £600 plus expense, if it was available which is seems not to be. Ebay is a friend and I managed to actually get the centre cheaper than I got the station.
Once it arrived I set it all up but it seems to work best if you can network it to a pc as the control software is all pc based. Off we went for a wireless router for the house and with remarkable little difficulty I had a new network set up. The Pc and the centre are wired to the router, while the station upstairs in my bedroom and my netbook are both wirelessly connected. The xbox is now also wired into the net for its uploads. I can listed to music from the stereo which is stored on its hard drive. I can wirelessly transmit that to the station upstairs to listed to the same music or an internet radio station.
The only thing I can't seem to get is FM reception but who listens to radio...
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