Sonos Music System

[jameson_uk]

Just seen this
http://www.pluggedin.tv/item--Sonos-...NOS-CONTROLLER

wow, looks good unfortunately though not quite what I need

You need to have a base station hard wired into your network so this would mean I would need two boxes for a start and having one next to the PC would be a bit pointless as I can play music on that if I want. (now thinking I could do this with a bridge )

Then the base units have built in amps where as I would rather have one that that acts as just a source and plus into my receiver.

Pitty the remote will not work with other systems.

Anyway at that price, it is very much a very nice, maybe one day thing

[Alex Simon]

Hi jameson_uk
Sorry for not seeing this earlier. We've been readying ourselves for the UK Sonos launch.

You've basically just hit on about the only 2 downsides to this system.
Yes, you need a physical connection to the first ZonePlayer.
And yes, currently, all ZonePlayers include amplifiers.

For people with a decent sounding PC setup and a hifi in the living room, this isn't obviously ideal.

The other limitation is that it wont currently play music with DRM. It's just yet another reason to avoid DRM in my opinion.

However Sonos is the easiest system we've used to date. It has high WAF and the remote is simply lovely. It's just about the easiest way of getting music around the rest of the house that we've come accross.

For techies like us, we're currently considering stocking the SlimDevices Sqeezebox2 that's just launched. It seems a great player although Sonos' strapline of "No HEX keys. No WEP keys. No SSID" could hardly apply
Sqeezebox1's DAC got poor reviews but they reckon they've sorted it this time. We've yet to hear one.

Have you seen the Sqeezebox? There's a new Roku that might be worth a look too.

[jameson_uk]

Originally Posted by Alex Simon

For people with a decent sounding PC setup and a hifi in the living room, this isn't obviously ideal
...
Have you seen the Sqeezebox? There's a new Roku that might be worth a look too.

Yeah I guess I am very envious of that remote

I have a HTPC PC connected to my AV-setup so what I would actually like is that remote to work for the PC. The nearest I have seen is one of those Viewsonic Airpanel jobs but these don't come cheep

[Alex Simon]

No definitely not cheap. Quite cumbersome too. The main problem for me with tablet PCs is that they never seem to do exactly what you want yet. You always think it's going to be outdated 2 weeks later by a model that seems more polished or focussed.
I think their time will come and they'll be affordable <£200 eventually, but it's a little way off yet.
There are plenty of people doing their own based on last years discounted tablet PC but the amount of pain and effort is still to high for us to be comfortable selling them.