Turtle Beach AudioTron
continued...

Very recently, support for controlling it via the web was added. With it you see a screen looking like an audio player, and you can queue up songs etc. Since it's html, it won't be hard to figure out the proper post commands to give it for doing things. I've not delved into that yet myself, but one mailing list member is already writing perl routines for just that.

Aside from playing music, it's foreseeable that you could send different wav files to it and have somewhat of a smart distributed audio setup. Or perhaps pause it if the phone rings. Or call homeseer on your cordless phone to have it start playing a different song out to your deck... well that's a bit of work, but possible!

The most practical application for this may be a limited interface that you could run during a party, so people could request their own songs, without having to "touch your stuff" in the audio rack. In fact there are options to lock out the front panel controls too!

I'll say that this is the first "web appliance" (hate to jinx it with that overused term) that someone designed to actually appeal to real people. It's made to live well in the audio world, and the web interface is great for the computer side of things.

I suppose the real annoyance for me is the gapless, and "rebooting". Just a small power glitch will turn off the unit, requiring you to turn it back on from the front panel, and scanning all the songs... again! You can't even do that from the web interface, so automating that after a blackout isn't possible. And if the unit does lock up (rare even with betas, but it happens), you have to reach behind for that power switch... a pain if components are tight.

But I know that home automation enthusiasts like toys like this, no question. Being able to control it from the computer is high on the gee-whiz-o-meter, that's for sure! But the dreaded WAF! How do you convince your spouse that this is a good thing?

My wife said, "Why don't you just walk over and just put in a CD? I don't get it!". Hmmm, got a point there maybe. But, you could consider your CD's backups and actually stow them away somewhere. And I do have a lot of downloaded music that isn't on a CD.

But forget all that, you know you want one, and you're smart enough to find a way to justify it. Right now I hope they come out with a smaller cheaper table top unit so I could listen from my night stand! The Rio Receiver is more that form factor, but I don't like the idea of running a special server for that one as much.

If you want to pick one up, buy.com has it. Usings these links help support the site: AudioTron . And don't forget and hpna card. I have the netgear card , it works well and is the best price I could find.