Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater roku anybody?

Lorenzo,

You would have to purchase a wireless access point (wAP) to use the wireless feature. If you can feasibly use CAT5/5e to wire it directly I would suggest you do so. These things can be pretty herky when the wireless gets interference (@2.6GHz it is on the same band as wireless phones and other gadgets). Some people have either no choice or no problem using wireless. I ended up installing a second WAP on the HT side of the house anyway because my laptop kept dropping connections.

I was told that you could go peer-to-peer with the unit (the Squeezebox, that is) by just installing a wireless card in the pc. Now I'm confused.

I went through the Roku/Squeezebox debate a few days ago and I went with Squeezebox for a few reasons...
1. I feel it looks better then the Roku
2. The display is bigger, easier to read from the couch.
3. The wireless model also will function as a bridge, this will allow me to plug my xbox 360 into the ethernet port on the box.
4. Slimserver open source software. Many cool 3rd party plugins ie; the display can show weather, news,sport scores, caller ID, time of day, games, etc. The list is long and cool
5. Squeeze network, extensive internet radio support. Can play even with computer turned off.

The unit arrives tommorow I'll let everyone know my thoughts.

The squeezebox was waiting for me when I got home and here are my thoughts.

1. Initial setup had a minor hiccup. I'm using it wirelessly and entered my SSID and WPA2 info. I still couldn't connect. Disabled WPA on my AP and still couldn't connect. Turns out I needed to enable my SSID beacon on my AP. Even though I manually entered the SSID the device wouldn't connect. After I had a connection I was able to again disable my SSID beacon without any issues.

Another point here I'm not sure what dBI antennas are in the unit but it's working flawlessy in the my basement and my AP is on the 2nd floor. So 2 floors and many walls between the AP and the Squeezebox

2. The unit looks very sharp, if you have an HK receiver it would look like it's little brother. Also relatively small, I would estimate about the size of a VCR tape.

3. The unit sounds fantastic but that is going to be a matter of how you ripped your music. I've recently begun the fun task of re-ripping everything at 256kpbs and those sound perfect. It has a burr-brown DAC. I'm connecting to my Pioneer via digital optical.

4. Bells and whistles galore. It has out of box support for hundreds of internet radio stations. The squeezebox network can be used w/o your computer being on. A large collection of live recordings from hundreds of artists. Alarm clock, nature sounds, news, sports headlines.

5. The unit is fully ip addressable. I'm able to open a browser put in the IP address over port 9000 and manage playlists, update artists, install plugins, etc. Very nice option since I be in my basement managing the slimsever on my desktop on the 2nd floor.

6. Seamless integration with my current iTunes music and playlists. The slimsever interface is a breeze to setup and can support mulitiple units all playing different songs or the same. I will be getting another box and will use it in my garage/yard for yardwork, garage tinkering, etc.

Overall I'm VERY happy with the unit. I highly recommend it.