RE: Old Soundbridge - New Soundbridge

I'm a bit confused myself...one of the great features of HD1000 is being
able to play music on my PC without any requirement to have specific music
management/streaming software.  I'd be interested in adding a Soundbridge to
my setup (like in the kitchen where I can't hear the home theatre where the
HD1000 is), but only if it can play music served up by windows shares.   I
have no interest in installing iTunes...

Dave

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Gutbrod [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 4:17 AM
To: Roku Tech Mail List and Discussion Group
Subject: [Roku-tech] Old Soundbridge - New Soundbridge


I'm a little bit confused, what exactly has changed in Soundbridge's ability
to play songs from the iTunes library after that license agreement with
Apple

In the SoundBridge_SpecSheet.pdf from Jan 28th you advertise:

...
Supports wired Ethernet or Wi-Fi network cards.
Native iTunes (r)support.

In the update information from July 1st you say:

... enables us to use iTunes as a streaming music server for SoundBridge.
This means there will be no need to install additional software on your PC
or Mac in order to play your iTunes music library.

So before the license agreement with Apple to play iTunes songs you had to
have iTunes running plus an additional software ( Roku control panel ?). Now
you only need iTunes running somewhere on the LAN, correct?

But you can't search/select songs in iTunes to play on the Soundbridge like
you can with Airport Express, correct? So there is no improvement in
controlling the Soundbrigde from your computer. If you want to create a
playlist with different Albums/Artists that need some advanced searching and
you want to do these selections on your big Powerbook screen instead of the
tiny Soundbridge display, you must do this with a 2 step approach in iTunes
(i.e. creating a playlist first to load into Soundbridge afterwards) or use
the Roku control panel (if still supplied), correct?

>the product has changed somewhat from the published specs, which we 
>believe
represents a great improvement.

Yes it is an improvement to work with iTunes without any additional
software, but is it really such a GREAT improvement for daily use? You still
have to make sure, iTunes is running somewhere on the network, so it is not
much more effort to make sure another app is running. You could start/stop
both with an AppleScript f.e.

Probably I missed something, so can someone please enlighten me?

Peter Gutbrod



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