"No excess on the outside" for Sony's $1,000 iPod Dock

Andreas

#1 – 6:40 AM July 1, 2009

Isn't it more of a take on the Squeezebox Boom concept with an iPod dock attached? It's still a chunk of money for network player, but with that remote, the USB connectivity and backwards compatibility with the CD-collection it doesn't seem that bad to me. At least not if it produces decent sound as well.

dculberson

#2 – 6:41 AM July 1, 2009

That is a nice remote, but that price! Holy crap! I love the DLNA compatibility. More devices need to support that.

I wonder if there's any way to sync DLNA devices so they're playing the exact same thing with the same timing? My new house is a very open layout so any speakers playing music are audible everywhere. Having two devices playing different music or being out of sync wouldn't work. I guess I should just have multiple speakers off the same unit.

schmod

#3 – 8:08 AM July 1, 2009

DLNA is a scam. Compatibility is extremely poor, and devices that claim to support it have enough quirks as to be unusable.

My samsung TV supports DLNA, but can only stream audio at certain bitrates. Video playback supports a surprisingly wide range of codecs, but has absolutely no support for scaling (all video files *must* be 1080p, or won't work at all).

Also, there's no fast-forward or rewind functionality.

Apparently this is more or less the norm for DLNA devices.

dculberson

#4 – 8:44 AM July 1, 2009

Schmod, my PS3 has been generally excellent in DLNA support. Maybe Samsung doesn't do a good job in their implementation? It's just a set of network protocols, and unfortunately does leave a lot of the codec and formatting variables up to the manufacturers.

What are you using as your DLNA server? I'm using Mediatomb under Ubuntu right now but actually had better results with Windows Media Player, as sick as that sounds.

The lack of video scaling on your Samsung is disgusting. That is solely the fault of Samsung, as I know for a fact that the PS3 does scaling. I think it should be a requirement for DLNA certification, but obviously it isn't. The PS3 also supports fast-forward and rewind, though it gets a bit hairy if you're doing it with large video files over a wireless connection. (Gets choppy and has a tendency to freeze or drop out of playback.)

NickTheDick

#5 – 12:57 PM July 1, 2009

This is entirely backwards. Buy a receiver and two decent speakers. Use the leftover money to build a media PC and use your Touch/iPhone to control it all remotely.

Bonus: You won't look like a pretentious douchebag in the end.

Luke

#6 – 1:46 PM July 1, 2009

Does it come with an iPod?

Bud

#7 – 5:12 PM July 1, 2009

All that I ask of any iPod speaker dock manufacture is this.

Can You Please Make Two Separate Speakers?

Remember Stereo? When Speakers needed separation from each other to create a proper stereo 'image' of the music being played?

The sad part is, many people grew up with a 'stereo' never realizing that the reason that there were two speakers was that there were two different signals and that they sounded better spread apart from each other. I have seen a lot of people 'stack' their speakers on top of each other.

I truly do not think there is even an ipod dock that provides for an exention speaker. Most have speakers placed closer together than your ears, certainly not enough separation for the distance most are listened to.

Rickyneck

#8 – 9:30 PM July 1, 2009

This is so extra, why not have your comp hooked up to the speakers, then use your iPhone/iPod touch as the remote? that's what I do, and it works anywhere within wifi range, which should cover your whole house.