4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Wirless music streaming with little holdup!
Date of Review: Jan 2, 2006
The Bottom Line: The best wireless music bridge available for the money. The Roku Soundbridge provides seemless navigation and function at about half the cost of the competition.
The Roku Soundbridge 1000 provides a seamless method for streaming AAC, MP3, and WMA music files from PC to stereo.
For those not familiar with this technology, the basic idea is to play music stored on a PC through either an ethernet cable or wireless ethernet adapter. Currently, one has few choices for this type of functionality: Roku Soundbridge, Squeezebox, and Tivo.
So why Roku and not the competition? Tivo was easily eliminated. While Tivo claims to stream music, perusal of the Tivo website reveals that Tivo only streams MP3 music. So users of AAC, WMA, or other audio codecs are out of luck. Down went Tivo. Squeezebox offers a number of products, usually for at least double the cost of the Soundbridge. Sqeezebox open source technology and user add ons make for an attractive option, it just came down to price. Plus, if you visit the Roku website, you can purchase refurbished units for even less!
Setup:
This was a pain. First you need to make certain that you have a wireless router that plays well with the Soundbridge. This is crucial. Failure to use an approved router is guaranteed failure for wireless use. Of course, you could use an ethernet cable, but then why not just move your computer and use a y-adapter cable for about 90 times less? (unless you have sixty feet of cat-5 cable and don't mind running it across floors and through walls. . . ). You need a wireless router that broadcasts on both b and g frequencies simultaneously. Older routers were b OR g. Roku also uses a compact flash port to power its wireless, indicating the potential for eventual upgrade to wireless g or beyond. Despite the possibility for upgrade, I have seen little to make me believe that this will occur (it seems that Roku's firmware doesn't play well with other compact flash wireless protocols, so unless Roku makes the adapter itself, upgrades are unlikely. And Roku would have to have sold a lot of these to make development of upgrade cards economically feasible). Not that upgrade is necessary, wireless b works great for music files.
Once I got a viable router, I found that I needed the update for it to work correctly. Round two of trouble. It took three days of experimentation with all sorts of settings to get the Soundbridge to update. The really odd part was that the Soundbridge connected after I had given up and reset everything to default. One last plugin before shipping it back to Roku. And voila, it connects, updates, and functions perfectly within five minutes. Go figure.
Functionality:
The Soundbrigde contains a number of search and browse features for finding songs by artist, album, etc. . . as well as entering search terms (ie: the name of the song). These make navigation a breeze. Though, were you to lose that remote you would have one useless silver tube on your stereo. I recommend purchasing a backup remote from Roku (they cost $20). You can also use play lists created by iTunes or slimserver.
One thing to note, Roku documentation indicates that one must use Windows media player to play WMA media. I have simply had iTunes convert the songs to AAC and played away. Though, I suspect that DRM protected WMA's might be a different story.
The downside to this whole thing is that iTunes, Slimserver, or Windowns Media Player must be up and running at all times to stream music. Nor does Roku have support for wireless hard drives (so that one could shut down the computer while the music played on). If you want wireless hard drive function think Sqeezebox (and add at least another $100).
Wireless Security:
The Soundbridge only allows WEP security, WPA passkeys are not currently supported.
Overview:
I love my Soundbridge. It does everything I need/want and it does it well, especially considering the price difference for competing systems.
Neither the Soundbridge or the Squeezebox are for the tech challenged. I have hooked up lots of wireless systems and built about a dozen computers over the years, and yet I wanted to kick the Soundbridge around the room. Users report either instant success or a guantlet of rage and frustration culminating, usually, in eventual success. Don't count on Roku to help you out. Sqeezebox does have better support via forums, but most of these require significant experience with wireless technology and an MA in acronym lingustics. No, technies will not just use plain English.
These systems are still in their infancy. Obvious drawbacks still exist: wireless B instead of G; no support for wireless hard drives; failure to ship units with firmware that functions with modern wireless equipment. This last is very difficult to understand since Roku's Soundbridge only seems to work with newer wireless routers, yet the firmware shipped with the Soundbridge doesn't play well with the very routers the Soundbrigde relies upon. . .
