Thursday, June 23, 2005

Roku SoundBridge

Last month at Microsoft's VC Summit, the company generously handed out Roku Soundbridge devices to attendees. Thank you Mr. Ballmer:)

The device serves as a "bridge" between digital music on the PC and the stereo. Roku's device includes a compact-flash wireless NIC that enables the PC to stream music from iTunes or Windows Media Player to the stereo.

While at first the Roku device had trouble communicating with my Netgear wireless router, after working through a few issues, I am loving the convenience of playing my iTunes library and playlists on the stereo.

The product is a great link between two worlds and allows me to leverage two sets of investments - while I am sure that my stereo will soon go the way of all flesh, I recommend using the Soundbridge in the interim.

One problem with the Roku device is that AAPL's file format prevents the playing of music purchased at iStore - anyone have ideas on how to fix this issue?

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous7:42 AM

    Will, the only way that I have found around it it to burn CD's with your AAPL songs, then rip them back into yourlibrary using MusicMatch or some other jukebox software besides iTunes.

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