Home solutions for iPod pricey, complex
updated 01:20 pm EST, Tue November 1, 2005
Home iPod solutions
Like the car-stereo makers before them, the companies that develop high-end audio gear are starting to jump on the iPod bandwagon. Their have long allowed you to listen to music in any room of a house and remotely control tunes using screens or keypads -- "now they're coming out with gadgets that let you pop your iPod into a dock when you walk in the front door and listen to your favorite music throughout the house," reports Business Week. These solutions are not cheap, and they're "far from perfect." The iPod adapters run $600 to $800. To make the adapters work, you need to plug them into systems that include amplifiers, speakers, touch-pad remotes, and distributed audio servers that let you play whatever music you want in whatever room you happen to be in. "Only one of the three systems I tested met that benchmark -- Crestron's $700 CEN-iPod. And it did so only because it was hooked up to a 15-inch touch-screen monitor, also made by Crestron, that costs $12,000."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Nov 2003
Just use a computer...
Much simpler soultion if u have networked Macs throughout the house or a wifi enabled PocketPC or Palm.
Airport Express
Bluetooth Cellphone or WIFI enabled PocketPC or Palm
Salling Clicker
Salling clicker now allows WIFI access and BT roaming to other macs. Just take the output of iTunes on an "iTunes Server" Mac. Then use Salling clicker to control the output of iTunes to an airport express. Feed the Airport Express into whatever whole house audio system you want.
I do this now and love it. The phone even shows iTunes Cover art and everything. You can also combine this with Front Row and output to a HDTV to see iTunes on the big screen.
Cheers, John.