Network MP3 Player
http://www.cd3o.com
,
it's simply called the Network MP3 Player. It's a box about 6 by 8
inches and maybe half an inch thick, with four rubber feet on the
bottom, that connects to your stereo and your computer through your
internal network. Now, if you don't have an internal network, this is
a very good reason to build one, not to mention the firewall aspects,
because when you find out what this thing does, you're gonna flip! I
did, and still am!
Setup is quick and simple. Take the CD3O Network MP3 Player out of its packaging, which looks like a small shoe or slipper box, and plug the player box into your stereo and home network. Make sure you have an extra A.C. socket that can accommodae a rather large wall wart. The one supplied with the Network MP3 player is pretty big and takes up a good deal of both vertical and horizontal space in the outlet. You might want to think about using one of those so-called pigtails, a heavy-duty three-pronged short extension cord made expressly for getting wall warts off the wall and onto the floor.
System software requirements are Windows 2000 or XP (Home or Pro) with Windows Media Player V7.1 minimum, and your computer must have a sound card. The sound card is used in the process, according to the manual, but you don't hear anything play on the PC itself.
When you insert the system software installation CD into your CD drive, the autorun starts a graphic presentation with several options to which you can TAB and press ENTER to activate. These include reading the getting-started guide, reading the manual, checking the company web site for updated software or firmware upgrades to the player itself, various things. There is actually an option to start the system setup, but frankly I forget how many tab pushes it was to get to that option, it's easier to just press Alt-F4 on the startup screen and invoke the setup process manually. To do this, in the Run dialog, type D:\SETUP\SETUP, where D: is the letter for your CD drive. Substitute the correct letter if yours is not on D. Do not make the mistake of running the SETUP program found in the root directory of the CD, that's the one that the autorun runs when you insert the disc in the first place.
The InstallShield wizard comes up and you get to answer all the standard questions about which folder should contain the software, which program group should contain the shortcuts, all the usual stuff. You can press ENTER on all of these screens to take the defaults.
Next, the CD3O service starts and looks for a player on the network If it finds one, the configuration wizard starts and any and all players found are configured. Yes, you can have more than one of these puppies on your network, like one in the living room, one in the bedroom, etc. Answer a few questions about how the player is networked, give it a name, tell the system where to find some MP3's on your machine or neighboring machines on your in-house network, and you're ready to go. The player box, the thing connected to your stereo and home network, is rebooted and comes up with all the settings you just chose. LED's on the front give status of power, network connectivity, and server presence. However, you don't need any of these, because if everything is working the way it should, there's a test procedure you can perform which plays a canned message saying everything is working, and yes, it only plays if everything is really working.
A brief word about finding MP3's to play is in order here. The server software running on your W2K or XP machine uses Network Neighborhood to find files to play on other computers. You can navigate using standard Windows navigation procedures to find folders on the local drives of the server machine, but if you're like me and keep your stuff all over the place, you should remember that in order for the server to find these files, the drive(s) and/of folder(s) on the other system(s) must be shared, at least in read mode, and probably without a password if you're behind a firewall. No one from the outside can see these shares, so you're perfectly safe to operate this way. To share a drive or folder, right-click on it and select the share tab from the multi-page properties dialog, or select share from the File pull-down menu. You must also have file sharing turn on in the Network dialog of Windows Control Panel for *any* of the above to work.
Now, insert the batteries into the handheld remote control provided. Two AA batteries are included, and it's easy to determine their correct orientation because of the presence of springs in the battery compartment. Place the flat end of a battery against the end of the battery slot where you feel a spring, then ease the other end of the battery down and into position. Make sure it's in straight, else the other battery won't be able to be inserted. Reattach the back to make sure the batteries do not escape of their own accord, especially if the remote is ever accidentally dropped. The remote control is very blind-user-friendly because it has several differently-shaped and contoured buttons on it. For example, buttons for play, stop, pause, previous and next are shaped like the visual symbols used to represent them--a single-headed right-pointing arrow for play, square for stop, square with a vertical slot through the center of it for pause, and double-headed left and right arrows either side of the play button for previous and next. The Touch-Tone(tm)-style keypad is easily located, with the button to the left of 0 being called SET and the one to the right being called ENTER. There are two groups of four buttons that control other aspects of the unit, including volume, album skip, playlist management, etc., which are all the same shape, but they're probably the least used of the whole set. The buttons of first interest are seven gold-colored flat-topped round navigation buttons and a compass (four buttons in a circle that look like they might be for up, down, left and right according to their positions). They are, in fact, up, down, cancel and select. To the left of the stop button you'll find a round, nearly flat-topped and slightly recessed button that's marked CLEAR.
If you're all connected, powered up and tested, then we're ready to start really having fun!
I tend to save the biggest surprise for last, and here it is. The device uses synthetic speech to allow you to navigate your MP3 collection by genre, artist, album, or track! Navigation is simple top-down tree-structure, starting wherever you like. You can browse just about any path you wish--artists within genres, tracks within artists, tracks within genres, even artists within albums to see if there just so happen to be two albums with the same name by different artists in your collection. It's amazing what you can learn about your music this way! Find the genre, artist, album or track you want using up and down arrows, press the play button, and the music plays through your stereo.
You can build custom playlists, even search for things by name by spelling the name like you would by using a standard Touch-Tone(tm) keypad layout for the letters. You want to hear all the things you have by the Beatles, just press 2 3 2 8 5 3 7, or enough letters until the software finds a unique match. You'll be alerted when a match is found by the player playying a short electronic melody and reading you the first matched name. Then you can use the up and down arrow buttons to browse from there, forward or backward, basically, do whatever you like, and press select when you're ready to hear music.
There's even a DJ mode which will announce the artist and track name of each song before its played. Thankfully, this feature can be disabled by pressing a button expressly programmed to turn this function off or on.
A word about searchability of your collection is in order here. The ability to find things in your collection is only as good as your MP3 tagging procedures and standards are, because that's what is used to build the database of genres, artists, albums and track titles. If you find that you can't find certain things no matter how hard you try, you'll have to manually check the MP3 file(s) in question and possibly re-tag them, then re-scan the highest-level folder of the tree in which those files are located. The CD3O server has its own control panel in the system tray which permits this.
Now there's one thing I have to tell you which really made it for me with this product. A lot of remote MP3 players are just audio re-transmitters which connect to the output of a sound card and transmit the audio therefrom on some known frequency. This is *not* how this device works. The MP3 data is actually streamed from the server PC using Windows Media Player to the remote device, where it's then received just as if it were running Winamp or WMP, then piped into the stereo or amplified speakers or whatever you've hooked it to.
The difference in audio clarity between a straight audio re-transmitter and this device is not to be believed! And as if that weren't enough, the device comes in three different models. They all do essentially the same thing, but one's for wired networks only, one's for wired networks and 802.11B wireless ones, and the third unit is the same as the second but with a better antenna and radio circuitry to give it extended range. This is the one I chose, not because my little New York City cracker-box palace apartment is particularly large, which it isn't, but because I wanted to ensure the signal could travel through the rather thick walls and in and around the metal studs in those walls when I placed it in another room. So far, I've had no problem in this regard. I can take the receiver into the bedroom, plug it into the Bose on the dresser, and hear music I want, or read a book.
The unit is still in development, and the support people seem to be happy as clams to hear from their consumers. They're working on an Internet radio feature, bookmarking, and the ability to fast-forward and rewind an MP3 while it's playing. Since Windows Media Player is doing the streaming, this shouldn't be too difficult to implement.
So what's this little baby gonna set ya back? $100 for the
non-wireless model and $200 for the better of the two wireless ones.
I thought it was a very cool tool, my wife loves it even more than
browsing our collection on a TV screen as is done with the KISS player
(
http://www.kiss-technology.com
),
it's got a very small footprint, and
does a great job in the accessibility department.
Updated on ... December 01, 2006