Cambridge UK, hot bed of MP3 bits and peices

Bloody hell, it is all happening here (Cambridge, UK).

How about this?

.Peter

Seemed to be a hard site to navigate and get any useful info on it such as price and availability. And it doesn't go in the car like the empeg. You guys across the water seem to be ahead of us in this technology.

Laura

I live to launch.

Yerse.... the price is "expensive", and it's not available yet.

Look more closely, and it's a PC in a nice box, with a multichannel sound card - you can run multiple audio streams from it, but this requires you to run wires everywhere. There's a multiple port expander (similar box with ethernet plus lots of audio outs) to get more ports.

Compare this to our thin-client solution which we licenced to Dell/Diamond (ok, I'm coming clean now that it's shipping ;) ) - the Rio Receiver. This sits on ethernet or PNA2.0 and does all the MP3/WMA decoding locally. It's cheap (<$250), has an onboard amp should you want it, burr-brown DACs, graphic LCD, IR remote, etc and you can plonk them down anywhere round your house for a very small outlay.

Not launched in Europe yet though. Grrrr.

Hugo

So... how open(/hackable) is the Dell Digital Audio Receiver?
Does this mean a 170GBP Linux box?

Well, the kernel source is on the distribution CD...

It doesn't have much ram (only 4Mb), no external serial (there's an internal 3.3v logic-level serial on a header though)... but you could hack with it, yes.

Hugo

The site mentions that it is software upgradeable. How is this done without the serial cable?
Does it use standard protocols for streaming/downloading from the server PC? e.g. could I run some server software on my car player / Linux server?

Philb.

It boots from a kernel in flash/rom, and loads a new kernel over a NFS mount from the server software.

The music protocols are http based, but not "standard" no, as there are no suitable standards that can be supported by such a thin client really. A linux server may appear at some point, yes.

Hugo

over a NFS mount from the server software

...on a non-standard port. Easily figureable though.

Peter

Compare this to our thin-client solution which we licenced to Dell/Diamond (ok, I'm coming clean now that it's shipping ;) ) - the Rio Receiver.

Okay, now that Hugo's brought it up... (And in case you weren't completely clear, he's talking about this.)

How many of you already knew this was an Empeg product, and how?

I didn't know this, it was a complete surprise.
Somebody told me about it already.
I figured it out from hints dropped on this BBS.

___________
Tony Fabris

I think the Rio Receiver was mentioned on here before, but this was the first mention I had seen of the Dell badged unit:
Dell digital audio receiver

Philb.

Can you crack it open and stick a HDD in it? Then you could take it with you and it would work without a PC being up the whole time.

Developed in collaboration with S3
Dell is at the leading edge of this technology trend.

Sounds like DELL wants most of the credit for their version... too bad they make no mention of empeg!

Did you break your NDA here guys??? or is this a part of it to get a bunch of these on the market right away... after all, almost everyone on this board will have one in a couple of weeks right guys???

Hey empeg... good luck with everything! And try to get some of those big guys to give you some credit on their sites! Maybe then there won't be so much calling down of the empeg-car. After all if Diamond and DELL sell the empeg-house you can't be too bad right?




#170... I got SN: 080000101 12 gig Blue!

Bloody hell, it is all happening here (Cambridge, UK).

...and half of English crime stories, it would seem. I just read 'Unsuitable Job for a Woman' by P.D. James and 'For the Sake of Ellena' by E. George and both take place there. What are you guys doing at night? I have never read a decent murder mystery taking place in Oxford

And of course, I will have your 'Dell' over this stuff any time. I like to have control over my ripping and encoding...

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Hugo confessed: ok, I'm coming clean now that it's shipping ;)

This is obviously some strange use of the word "shipping" I'm not familiar with.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the problem, but I can't seem to find any way to order one.

I just want to be a customer.

BTW- Do both the Dell and the S3 boxes have ethernet? It would be most irritating to have to add an HPNA NIC for one device.

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39

...and half of English crime stories, it would seem. I just read 'Unsuitable Job for a Woman' by P.D. James and 'For the Sake of Ellena' by E. George and both take place there.

And, of course, 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'.

What are you guys doing at night?

Graduating in English, failing to get a proper job, and writing novels set in Cambridge in the hope of currying favour with literary critics who also graduated in English and failed to get a proper job?

I have never read a decent murder mystery taking place in Oxford

Inspector Morse?

Peter

The product is announced, the product is shipping (just).

The manual mentions empeg and the about box on the unit does too. Not very secret at all.

Hugo

No, there's definitely nowhere to attach a hard disk!

Hugo

Where's the "I work for empeg and I helped write the software for it" option?


Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Good stuff guys. I was hoping your name would be included... too bad I can't find it to purchase on DELL Canada's site as I am not about to order it from the US (Duty sucks when buying from US companies).

#170... I got SN: 080000101 12 gig Blue!

BTW- Do both the Dell and the S3 boxes have ethernet? It would be most irritating to have to add an HPNA NIC for one device.

Or better yet, if the box has both, could the HPNA adapter on the box work as a pass-through? For instance, a phone wire coming from the wall could go into the receiver's HPNA port, then an ethernet crossover cable from the receiver's 10baseT port could plug into a laptop in the living room?

See, my home-office is wired for ethernet, but the rest of the house isn't. If that thing could work as a pass-through, I could have ethernet in the living room without having to get an HPNA adapter for the laptop...

Okay, yes, this is a really crazy off-the-wall idea. I was just wondering if it would work...

___________
Tony Fabris

Sorry Tony but no. Only one network interface is configured at any time. Theoretically it could be done but not as standard.

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

Sorry Tony but no. Only one network interface is configured at any time. Theoretically it could be done but not as standard.



___________
Tony Fabris

...and it needs someone to respond to its "is there anyone out there?????" pleas...

--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

And, of course, 'Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'.

Hm, I thought it was 'The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul' that happened at the university. Do you really have hideous gargoyle-equiped abandoned hotels in Cambridge? 'Agency' is the one with Odin enjoying crisp Englesh linen, while 'Tea-time' is the one with Electric Monk and salt-cellar in Greek pottery, right?

Inspector Morse?

OK, I'll take it as recommendation...

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

'Agency' is the one with Odin enjoying crisp Englesh linen, while 'Tea-time' is the one with Electric Monk and salt-cellar in Greek pottery, right?

It's been a while but I think you've got them the wrong way round.

Borislav

See, my home-office is wired for ethernet, but the rest of the house isn't. If that thing could work as a pass-through, I could have ethernet in the living room without having to get an HPNA adapter for the laptop...

That's what 802.11 is for, Tony.

Actually, I'd really love to see someone hack an Airport to act like the Lucent ethernet adaptor.

I'd put one in the car so the empeg would be part of the network from the driveway, and one on the Rio Receiver because I'm too freakin' lazy to go back under the house to pull One More Run of Cat5.

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39

I checked: you are right. Senility is a nice malaise: one learns new things all the time

Cheers!

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green

Hm, I thought it was 'The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul' that happened at the university. Do you really have hideous gargoyle-equiped abandoned hotels in Cambridge? 'Agency' is the one with Odin enjoying crisp Englesh linen, while 'Tea-time' is the one with Electric Monk and salt-cellar in Greek pottery, right?

T'other way round, as borislav and others have already said. Lurching ever further off-topic, 'Agency' was largely a rewrite of a Doctor Who story, 'Shada', written by Douglas Adams, part-filmed but never completed due to a production workers' strike. Reg, in 'Shada', was a retired Time Lord...

Inspector Morse?

OK, I'll take it as recommendation...

To be honest, I've no idea what the books are like. It makes OK telly though.

Peter

Have you tried opening an Apple airport up? It is a PCMCIA Lucent WaveLAN adapter.

Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Have you tried opening an Apple airport up? It is a PCMCIA Lucent WaveLAN adapter.

I'm way ahead of you, Roger.

If you open up the Airport, you'll find that there's a Lucent PCMCIA card, and a small Elan-based controller. As it happens, that controller is running a version of the KarlBridge software. The board has serial (for the modem daughtercard) and ethernet interfaces, and a PCMCIA slot for the WaveLan card. The problem is that the software is the Access Point code, so it runs as the network "Master."

Access points won't talk to other access points over the air, the assumption is that there's a wired backbone that you're accessing.

The Ethernet Converter that I linked to earlier looks like the same controller, but running different software. It's designed to be a simple bridge for a single node, and runs the WaveLan card in client mode. It will roam among base stations, and generally act like any machine with a WaveLan card, but allows you to connect things like empegs that have neither PCI or PCMCIA slots.

If I read the marketing-speak correctly, there's also a telnet interface to the serial port, which would be very useful with an empeg.

The problem is that it's expensive. The best price I've seen is $272, and that's without the WaveLan card, so I'm looking at $450 to add 802.11 to the empeg.

If there's a way to abuse an AirPort for this purpose then I'll happily pop for one for the car.

Now, I know that Hugo has one, but he's letting the car be the backbone network. That would work if the MP3 library was on an AirPort connected client, which I could switch to the "car network", but the library is currently on the Linux server. (72GB RAID-0 )

Hmmm... I guess I could put an AirPort card in the G4 and run IPNetRouter...

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39

Have a look at this site. The PCMCIA card seems to be effectively a Lucent WaveLAN/Orinoco card, but cheaper. It looks identical bar the differently coloured antenna, uses the same chipset and drivers under linux, and has an external antenna socket.

The access point unit is available with the same functionality of the Airport, plus more, and appears to be about the same price from what I've been able to find out so far.

Patrick.

Opinions expressed in this email may contain up to 42% water by weight, and are mine. All mine.

That's more or less what Hugo did when our airports turned up. As you say, the software installed on the ickle PC inside the box doesn't allow the units to peer with eachother.

What Hugo did for the MX5 was to install one of the airports on the parcel shelf and run some UTP to the empeg unit.

We then took the WaveLan PCMCIA card out of the other airport and installed it in a laptop, which we can then run emplode on. The laptop's other PCMCIA network connection is connected to our office network, which allows us to drag and drop music from our network onto the empeg in the car.

Alternatively, you could probably get a PCI PCMCIA adapter card, and plug it directly into a Linux box, giving you full-blown routing capabilities.




Roger - not necessarily speaking for empeg

Actually, IPNR gives me full routing capability as well.

The IP portion of Open Transport (Apple's network architecture) is in fact Mentat Streams, so all the routing functionality is there.

IPNR is just the user interface that Apple forgot to write.

And when I go to OS X, the problem goes away...BSD routes just fine. ;)



-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39

Cool! The inexpensive cards are nice, but the gem on that site is the "USB Antenna."

I've been looking for a USB solution for boxes that don't have PCMCIA.

Thanks!

-Zandr
Mk.I #150
Mk.II #39