Rating: 
Summary: Awesome (after a little work)
Review: Elegant technology. It has transformed the way we live, in much the same way as Tivo. Out entire music library is at our fingertips, including custom play lists. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Sound quality is excellent - I was afraid the limitations of MP3 would become apparent, but they are not.One minor annoyance - if you turn off the PC hosting the SlimServer software, the Squeezebox gets upset. You occasionally need to hard reboot (i.e. unplug) the Squeezebox to get it to find the server again.
Rating:
Summary: Wouldn't Be Without It
Review: Elegant technology. It has transformed the way we live, in much the same way as Tivo. Out entire music library is at our fingertips, including custom play lists. The interface is intuitive and easy to use. Sound quality is excellent - I was afraid the limitations of MP3 would become apparent, but they are not. One minor annoyance - if you turn off the PC hosting the SlimServer software, the Squeezebox gets upset. You occasionally need to hard reboot (i.e. unplug) the Squeezebox to get it to find the server again.
Rating: 
Summary: Great device for the computer savvy
Review: Fantastic device. I can listen to whatever I want without having to fumble with CDs, play directly from my computer, or connect a portable device. I just sit back on my couch, surf my collection, create playlists, or listen to one of hundreds of internet radio stations.
Screen text too small to read from a distance? No problem. One click on the remote allows you to cycle through four different text sizes. The original device had a simple text-only display, which meant that larger fonts looked terrible. I upgraded to the new display which is capable of displaying any image. Large fonts look great now.
The only problem with this device is that it is not geared for the average consumer, even though it is designed to sit in the same cabinet as your DVD player and stereo. The software setup, while relatively easy to do, is not a one time operation. You need to constantly update it because it has been quite buggy. At least updates are frequent, and the latest one appears to be really solid.
Still, the server software sometimes gets in a hosed state, requiring restarts. Firmware updates are frequent as well, which always freak me out. I have not had a problem, but I'm afraid that at some point the firmware update will screw up and the device will be broken.
Every press on the remote control sends a message to the server, which can sometimes be delayed. Ordinarily this is quite fast, but if the server hasn't been used in awhile, most of the process may have swapped to disk. As a result, remote control operations can be really slow for the first minute, but there isn't any feedback. You think at first that the remote is broken or needs batteries.
Still, this is a great music player. I will never use a CD again, except to copy once onto my computer. I would only recommend it to someone who feels comfortable enough with computers for setting up and troubleshooting networks, understanding what a "firmware update" means, and knows what a server is. If these things have to be explained to you, you might have some frustration setting this up on your own.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing device, much better than AirPort express for music!!
Review: I bought an AirPort Express. i love Apple products and always have the latest desktop Mac. In this case though the AP Express was a flop and after a lot of effort I couldn't get it to work without drop outs. So... I bought a SqueezeBox. WOW! It took me longer to open the box than it took to set the thing up and it worked perfectly from the first song (Paul Simon's Diamond on the Souls of Her Shoes). Gotta go now, LOTS of tunes to play all over the house!
Rating:
Summary: Best Way to "Free Your Music"
Review: I have almost 5000 MP3's on my hard drive and listen to ShoutCast stations regularly. I've been looking for a remote controlled device that I could hook to my home theatre system and have immediate access to my collection as well as Internet radio. I've looked at devices from SMC, Creative, Linksys, HP, Pinnacle, TurtleBeach and Netgear. Most of these require me to turn on the TV to select a song or browse my music folder. Others have a small display that you can't read from across the room. Some even require a subscription fee ($) to access Internet radio. When I read about the SlimDevices Squeezebox it looked like THE ONE that met all my requirements. It plays just about any audio format imaginable (including FLAC and uncompressed for you audiophiles out there). It has an SPDIF and optical outputs so I can use my receiver's high-end DAC. It has a "double size" button on the remote that allows me to read the display from 30 feet away. Multiple players can be synchronized for "whole-house" music. The server software works on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. In general, I'm very impressed with the feature set. It's definitely worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Best Way to "Free Your Music"
Review: I have almost 5000 MP3's on my hard drive and listen to ShoutCast stations regularly. I've been looking for a remote controlled device that I could hook to my home theatre system and have immediate access to my collection as well as Internet radio. I've looked at devices from SMC, Creative, Linksys, HP, Pinnacle, TurtleBeach and Netgear. Most of these require me to turn on the TV to select a song or browse my music folder. Others have a small display that you can't read from across the room. Some even require a subscription fee ($) to access Internet radio. When I read about the SlimDevices Squeezebox it looked like THE ONE that met all my requirements. It plays just about any audio format imaginable (including FLAC and uncompressed for you audiophiles out there). It has an SPDIF and optical outputs so I can use my receiver's high-end DAC. It has a "double size" button on the remote that allows me to read the display from 30 feet away. Multiple players can be synchronized for "whole-house" music. The server software works on Mac OS, Windows, and Linux. In general, I'm very impressed with the feature set. It's definitely worth it!
Rating:
Summary: Toss your CD player
Review: I purchased a Squeezebox when it was originally released in November 2003. Today, the market is flooded with "media bridges" but the Squeezebox is still far superior to its competitors. It has a very intuitive interface that is family and guest friendly. It supports practically all music formats and will achieve real CD quality when using a lossless format like FLAC. The active user and developer community ensures that 2 or 3 years down the road you won't be stuck with an expensive paperweight. I'm really enjoying the freedom from CDs and will never go back. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Toss your CD player
Review: I purchased a Squeezebox when it was originally released in November 2003. Today, the market is flooded with "media bridges" but the Squeezebox is still far superior to its competitors. It has a very intuitive interface that is family and guest friendly. It supports practically all music formats and will achieve real CD quality when using a lossless format like FLAC. The active user and developer community ensures that 2 or 3 years down the road you won't be stuck with an expensive paperweight. I'm really enjoying the freedom from CDs and will never go back. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Toss your CD player
Review: I purchased a Squeezebox when it was originally released in November 2003. Today, the market is flooded with "media bridges" but the Squeezebox is still far superior to its competitors. It has a very intuitive interface that is family and guest friendly. It supports practically all music formats and will achieve real CD quality when using a lossless format like FLAC. The active user and developer community ensures that 2 or 3 years down the road you won't be stuck with an expensive paperweight. I'm really enjoying the freedom from CDs and will never go back. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic, easy-to-use wireless music device
Review: I was a relative latecomer to the MP3/AAC/Ogg/Your-Codec-Here revolution. Despite a rather large and increasingly hard to access CD and LP collection, I stood by my tried-and-true CD player. There didn't seem to be any reason to rip everything: then it got stuck in my computer, playing through crummy speakers, with pretty bad quality... why bother? Well, two things changed that. The iPod -- which let me take lots of music with me at high bitrate encodings and this product -- the Squeezebox. You've all probably seen some of these devices, but you've never seen anything as simple and elegant as the Squeezebox. It's brilliantly and simply designed, and truly "frees your music" from the confines of the computer. And it doesn't compromise: it has analog AND digital outputs (both coaxial and optical). It's got a beautiful screen, and a nicely designed interface that does not require you to turn on a TV to listen to your music. The "server side" -- the bit that sits on your computer -- runs on lots of platforms (including Mac OS X, my platform of choice), and does its work unobtrusively. You can "server" to any number of Squeezeboxes from a single server, and they can each play different music or -- and this is cool -- you can "synchronize" them for a whole-house audio system. You're not limited to just the display on the unit, either: there's a fully skinnable web interface, and there's even a skin specially designed for mobile devices like Palms or Pocket PCs. All in all, it's made my collection "fresh" simply by freeing it both from the confines of its impossible-to-locate CDs AND from the computer. It really doesn't get much better than this. Kudos to Slim Devices!
| 
