Wireless music receivers

[SoWat]

I'm looking for the ability to stream my CD collection, once I've ripped it all to MP3, from my PC to my Hi-Fi.

I've looked at a couple of products, particularly the Netgear MP101 11Mbps Wireless Digital Music Player, but haven't really decided what I want.

My collection is around 1800 CDs, which will eventually be ripped to MP3 (I'm about 25% of the way through this task).

I need a player that doesn't require the TV to be on (unless there are definite benefits to be had), that can recognise a large number of albums, and possibly has a digital optical out.

Has anybody else tried this, have any hints, tips or recommendations?

I already have a wireless network up and running at home.

Cheers

 

[Vae]

My father's recently got the Netgear MP101 and it seems to work pretty well. The remote works pretty well and the player lists the music by artist, album, track and genre relying on the ID3 tags for the info. You can search each of these by typing in a search string (phone pad entry for the letters e.g. 1=abc). I wish it did an auto jump to (e.g. press 4 once and it jumps to d) rather than a search but it doesn't.

It doesn't require the TV for anything - it's like a seperate Hifi seperate. Not sure about digital optical out.

There didn't appear to be a limit to the number of tracks you can upload to it (I reckon my fathers uploaded 3-400 albums) but what it does is I think you have to get it to recatalog the entire music collection again if you want the unit to identify changes you've made to the collection on the PC which can take a while depending on the size of the collection.

You can setup playlists on the PC which then are shown on the unit. I even think it can use winamp playlists as there were a few playlists showing up on the unit which I'm sure my father never set up but I reckon correspond to playlists left on his computer in individual directories from previously.

It has on occasion lost its wireless connection to the PC and the unit has needed a reboot to rediscover it. On one occasion it also lost the WEP password. I'm not sure if these are isolated incidents or indicative of all.

My feelings on having played with it briefly last time I visited is that is a great idea and works reasonably well but I think it could do with a bit more refinement (e.g. in the interface) which I'm sure we'll see as more similar devices appear in the near future.

 

[SoWat]

It's obvious that the technology isn't mature enough yet, but the Netgear is cheap enough to just try out (plus it has a free speaker offer at the moment).

I've read about the problems you've mentioned, though some seem to be fixed by a firmware upgrade, but it does seem to be the one to get.

My main concern is 'losing' my collection index and having to reindex... that doesn't sound like fun at all; maybe I could 'divide' them up... we'll see.

Thanks for the info.

 

[PLightstar]

I going to get the creative wireless one its not available yet in the UK but its just a matter of time. u can view it on their US website.

 

[SoWat]

I saw that yesterday on Scan's 'Today Only' page.

It should be in their normal product listing now.

 

[`mongoose]

I got a creative wireless one the other day.

I prefer it to the other models on the market, altho I don't like the fact that it comes with audio to minijack cable. I plugged it into my old amp and luckily had a spare connecter lying around.

From what I can see it comes with optical connectors too.

It runs similarly to the Netgear jobby in that you hook it up to your pc, tell it which connection to use and bang in the wep key for it and off you go.

The Creative labs software is a bit meaty but it works well and I am generally very pleased with it

It's very small (about the size of a double dvd case at most) with no aerials or antenae sticking out. So far it's been fantastic.

Aria and pc world have them in stock although aria have by far the best pricing on it atm.

M