Roku SoundBridge M2000 Network-capable digital music player

Rating:
Summary: Justifies a LAN and gets a handle on thousands of songs
Review: Every now and then you buy something and say, "This is what I've been waiting for, and now it exits." This is just that kind of product. This review is based on connection to a hard-wired, Cat6 Gigabit Ethernet home LAN.

I chose the M2000 after reading a favorable review, and because I was worried about reading the information across the living room and wanted easy access to the 7000 plus cuts of music on my computer via my home theater.

The display is large and incredibly bright -- even in a brightly lit room in daylight. I had to cut it back to almost its dimmest setting to keep it from overwhelming the room in near-dark conditions, but it gives me legible access without my glasses to all the key information on a music file. The visualizations are okay.

The Soundbridge plugged right into my LAN, and updated its firmware throught the LAN's connection to the Internet (very important). Physical setup was a breeze, including an optical output to my home entertainment system in addition to normal RCA plugs. I downloaded Windows Media Center, which found my Windows Media Center 9 library without a hitch and I was in business. After a week's use, it is wonderful. There are a couple of concerns, though. It turns out that some of my songs recorded WMA format through MusicMatch Jukebox don't seem to be in a compatible format, so I will eventually have to re-record all these. On the other hand, the majority of my music that does play sounds so great that I am going back to re-record all my music in WMA Lossless or FLAC to get the absolute best sound out of them. I have had no problems playing music downloaded (purchased) from MusicMatch, but of course Itunes are a problem.

For you audiofiles, the decoding of the music seems quite flat, so you only have to equalize for your playback room. There are no dropouts or "noise" during the streaming process.

Some of the controls on the remote are a little non-intuitive, but you soon get the hang of browsing through your music by playlist, artist, album, etc., and you can do a search. There does seem to be an upper limit to the number of songs that can be in a playlist, but I am not sure what it is. The optical and digital wire outputs are essential for great sound, and the only thing I missed is that a headphone jack would have been a real plus, although you might be able to wire one through the RCA stereo plugs.

Overall, I can highly recommend this attractive and well-constructed component as a wonderful addition to any serious music system. I can't comment on how well it works with wireless networks, but I can say over ethernet it is great. I expect to get another one for the bedroom soon.

If your friends like music, they will be overwhelmed.

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic design and implementation
Review: In todays "rush to market" world (for consumer electronics) it's all too easy to find a product that looks great on paper but has all sorts of issues in the real world!! For example, I purchased a LinkSys WMA11B because I wanted to listen to all my PC-based music over my entertainment center. What a disaster. Poor quality, frequent "chirps" and a truly awful user interface (want to get to Steely Dan in a largish collection of tracks? -get used to pressing Page Down many, many times). I hated this product and returned it thinking that this category (media players) hadn't yet matured.

I was wrong!!! The Roku Soundbridge is PRECISELY what I needed (by the way, right up front I should say that I have absolutely no affiliation with Roku - I am just a very happy customer!!). Setup over wireless was tremendously easy - after installing Windows Media Connect on my PC (other servers like iTunes are supported too) I was up and running in about 5 minutes and selecting from my collection of around 2,000 tracks. The quality is excellent (it supports Digital Audio output). Perhaps my ear isn't as well tuned as your regular "audiophile" but I can't tell the difference between this wirelessly collected content and playing from a CD. That's good enough for me.

By far the best element for me (aside from the quality) is the user interface. This is just the sort of thing that many people don't really research before they buy - but which has a distinct impact on satisfaction once the product starts being used each day. Roku have put a LOT of time into getting the UI to be very efficient. Skipping to Steely Dan is now as simple as browsing by artist and keeping my finger on the right arrow (which "jumps" letters) until I get to S. It's quick and easy (frankly, it's easier to use than to explain!!).

Here's the bit I like. Roku don't seem to have the idea that they will ship some hardware and then immedietely start working on the next hardware release (leaving previous customers high and dry if they don't want to upgrade). Instead, they seem to be really focused on ongoing iterations of the software. In the three weeks since I have had my unit Roku have released three beta builds (if I recall) and shipped version 2.1 of their software. This adds major new functionality (see http://www.rokulabs.com for details). So, my original purchase just got more valuable. I LOVE this approach and believe there is more to come. That's nice...

Oh, and the Roko forums are very well supported directly by Roku engineers.

A couple of nits are that the unit currently supports only 801.11b (although this is dependent on the CompactFlash wireless card so hopefully this can be addressed without having to release a new product) and we don't yet have streaming of WMA radio stations - although that's hopefully on its way.

OK, so I am raving about this thing. That's because it was very easy to set up, I use it every day and so far it's performed flawlessly. It also looks tremendously stylish in my entertainment center.

I expect to buy one or two more of these over time (for different parts of my home).