Sonos, music everywhere in your home & Philips AV remote
“This is much much more cooler than I thought,” says Buzz Bruggeman.
What’s he talking about? The Sonos music system.
First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”
I have to admit this is pretty cool. It lets you put a controller in each room in your home.
And you control it over Wifi.
This rocks. We’re playing my iTunes stuff right now.
The second gadget that Buzz is holding here?
That’s the Philips RC9800i touch screen remote control.
It looks similar, but it replaces all my remote controls. This rocks too.
Tomorrow Chris Pirillo and Ponzi is coming over for brunch. It’ll be interesting to see what they think. (Chris always has the coolest stuff before I do, so if it impresses him it’ll impress everyone).
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April 8th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Re: First, a disclaimer. They sent me this so I could try it out. It’s one of the things that arrived before I said “no more free stuff.”
Both look great! And I’ll be happy to be your intermediary on “free stuff”. Guess I’d have to start a blog and get some hits first though, huh?
April 9th, 2006 at 1:17 am
Tom: heheh!
I will probably give away this stuff at Gnomedex. I’ll talk with Chris about this tomorrow.
April 9th, 2006 at 3:00 am
Hmm, $500 for the amp/receiver - about the same price as the low end Mac mini.
Or you could get a 100w stereo amp and an airtunes module for about $225.
Seriously, you can get the same effect for less money using apple kit for networking/streaming/storage and commodity speakers/amps.
April 9th, 2006 at 11:21 am
The Sonos does indeed rock, its a pretty good sounding amplifier as well - the best thing about it has to be the internet radio. Its the easiest way to arrange/listen to radio broadcasts from the internet.
The Sonos is also wireless, acts as a four port switch/hub and has a ton of other things going for it. Sure you could probably hobble together some that could give you something similar, but theres no way it would be as seemless and effortless as using the Sonos for distributed audio.
Ben Hobbs
http://www.h3-digital.com (H3-Digital are a Phuket, Thailand based smart home automation, home theatre and audio company.)
April 9th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Robert - If they make you send the Sonos system back or ask you to stump up $1199 for the introductory bundle give PlayerPal a go (only $19.95 http://www.playerpal.com ). It gives you WiFi remote control of your iTunes or WMP from any device with a browser, including a PDA or Sony PSP. If you have airport express devices too you can go multi-room.
Just to make you even happier it is written in C#. What more could you want! I’ll even give you an MS employee discount, of, lets say $2?
Check out how cool it looks on a PSP http://static.flickr.com/30/103553661_bd2ef6d411_b.jpg
Disclaimer: I write it :)
April 9th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
Ben, that rocks!
April 9th, 2006 at 11:37 pm
#3 you can’t really get the same effect with anything else that i’ve seen… you can cobble things together bet you give up a lot for the few hundred dollars you save. The controller is the real topper, nothing out like it, the multizone abilities and the ease of setup and use… if you’re time is worth anything the time to research, much less integrate, all the pieces you would need to try and replicate the Sonos system make it a bargain in the end.
Especially with the new ZP80 that i see they just posted on their site at $350 w/o the amp you can get in for 30% less $$.
April 10th, 2006 at 1:15 am
Use a touch screen remote for more than a couple of days and you’ll realise that they don’t work. There’s no tactile feedback, meaning you have to look at the remote before being able to do something.
The Philips device has some ‘hard buttons’ but digits etc. are still on the touch screen. This slows down the whole process of using the device and, based on my experience with earlier models, makes it frustrating.
April 11th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
It looks interesting, but in playing around with iTunes on my PC connected to the Mac Mini that hosts my main library, I realized that you can do some groovy things with an Airport:
https://timthefoolman.wordpress.com/2006/01/15/itunes-roaming-network-rocks
Regardless, the Sonos thing looks interesting, but I suspect people are going to want something more than a one-trick-pony.
Tim
April 11th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
The Sonos system really is incredible. You can’t really understand how good, or how different, it is unless you try it. It’s a lot like trying to describe an iPod to someone who had only ever used a Diamond Rio. AirTunes is not remotely comparable.
Sonos’ unique killer feature is the multi-room listening and synchronization. Its a very hard problem, and theirs works perfectly.
The only other system that offers multi-room syncing, to my knowledge, is Slim Devices (http://slimdevices.com). Slim Devices is cheaper and mostly open-source, but less polished and doesn’t have the great LCD/scrollwheel remote.
July 4th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
[...] In Robert’s July 2nd, 2006 post you say that you’ve “never really given Sonos a review before”. Yet in his April 8th, 2006 post , Robert stated the following: [...]