Recently, I had an opportunity to review in my home a Sonos Digital Music System and walked away pleasantly surprised... and wanting more.  Sonos offers a flagship digital music receiver (DMR) which supports playback of non-DRM'd WMA, MP3, and AAC (iTunes) music among others on any set of speakers or any AV reciever in your home.  Often compared as the "iPod" of Digital Audio Receivers, the idea is that you can set these up wired or wirelessly in your home and they create a "mesh" network- enabling you to play music from your PC, Network-Attached Storage, or streaming Internet for starters.  All of this can be controlled with a dandy remote control.  Here are my thoughts.

Out of Box Experience
The device arrived mid-last week in three boxes- two contained speakers, the third contained both Sonor recievers and the controller. Packaging was natural cardboard with a muted Sonos logo. When you're using a $1499 system, you might hope for a bit more fanfare.  However the muted tones help to reinforce the simplicity the product is designed around.

A simple step by step guide starts with connecting the speakers.  Each Sonos unit contains its own amp, however you can connect via RCA jacks (3- Left, Right, Subwoofer-Optional).  I was a bit surprised to not find a S/PDIF optical or even coaxial digital connection but hey, at least I can pipe it through my home theater. Giant speaker termination plugs (spring loaded for your convenience) are on the back.

Software Setup
Software setup was among the simplest I've ever seen.  A simple 4-step process takes you through building the system index and pretty quickly.  It's a shame the device doesn't use Windows Media Connect as an option as well.

Pairing the device with the network couldn't have been easier. Press two buttons on the device within two minutes.  Even if your receiver and PC are in different rooms (as mine are) you can get there within two minutes.  (Unless you have an enormously large house in which case you get no sympathy from me).  Press two buttons and you're done- paired configured et al.  No entering key codes or anything, no WEP or SSID codes- it all just works... provided one of the units is wired.

Speaking of wired- the Sonos has a 4-port ethernet switch on the back which can be used when wired to connect other home AV components (Xbox 360 or MCE PC anyone?).  The switch seems to be of good quality as well.

Controlling from the Desktop

Once you're set up, the software is simple and easy to use, though does have a decidedly "Real" feel to it. Sonos relies heavily on the concept of a single queue of music in everything you do.  The equivalent of an order-list in a jukebox, this may be useful for some, but can get a bit annoying until you get the handle of how to dump a currently playing queue for new music.

The system does a good job also of bringing in your playlists.  It appeared to have a problem with Smart Playlists (perhaps doesn't query WMP for the results) but static playlists work fine.  Internet radio station listings were meager and left me feeling we're looking into the wasteland of radio stations that didn't die after the whole licensing debacle a couple of years ago.  You can manually add your favorite MP3 and WMA-streamed stations, but my favorites are behind evil popups and proprietary stream players. Ick.

I didn't spend a lot of time on the desktop interface however I did notice another nice touch- automatic updates of the software were seamless. 

The Sonos Controller
Take a 5G iPod, now go back to the 3G, turn it sideways, make it bigger than it seems, and you have the Sonos controller.  What a design.  Sonos has been around for a long time, and may actually pre-date the iPod in their design.  The device does an excellent job of displaying details and as if some twist of irony, the jog/scroll wheel is exactly the same dimensions of the iPod.  It contains a touchpad and center push button.  Three "soft-keys" appear below the display for context-specific control.  I did find myself wanting a bit more with the display and UI however.  The response rate is a bit sluggish, no doubt due to 2-way wireless so I'll give it some slack.

In some sort of Pavlovian response, I did expect the UI to work like an iPod which surprised me.  I found myself wanting to use the jog to control audio volume (a feature I detest in the iPod because if I dont lock it, I whammy myself on the audio when I pick it up). So it is funny that I would expect the same here.

Again, you have queueing as the method for audio control.  One big design issue I have with the UI is the warning dialog you get with DRM'd music in a playlist or individual tracks.  It splashes a grey rounded box on your screen, moves to next non-DRM'd song but the DRM notification still shows leaving you wondering if you committed some offense from which the device has wrested control and you have been shamed into the 5 second penalty box. The system should be smart enough to remove DRMd files from the index during first setup- just notify the user you're doing this so they wonder why certain beloved songs don't show up.

Multi-Zone Audio

Multi-zone audio is an interesting idea.  The concept is you have two (or more) Sonos receivers in multiple rooms and want to play music rather, the same music in multiple rooms.  Synchronized. Sure, you can get a receiver that supports this, but Sonos does it wirelessly.  I have one in the Living room, another in the Family room.  The whole first floor becomes wrapped in music- something I significantly discounted as a valued feature until I experienced it.  I'm envisioning Christmas morning, my son coming down in his closed-toe PJs to Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" wrapping him like a blanket.  I also cheated a little and got three zones going - by plugging the Sonos into my home theater receiver (Denon AVR-3803) which supports multi-zone audio, I can pipe Sonos music outside on the patio via outdoor speakers, in the family room and throughout the living and dining rooms.  This would be great for next years' summer parties.

Line-In from other sources - a Real Geek Treat

A little-known feature I discovered is the ability to use the line-in source on the Sonos (again L-R RCA connectors) to pipe other music sources into the house.  This was a real benefit as I can pipe my Media Center in and I can listen to subscription music anywhere in the home. Another way I plan to use this is at our neighborhood Super Bowl party this year- live play by play will be piped around the house, much to my wife's chagrin. 

Each Sonos receiver supports an additional line-in so if you have other audio sources (ok LP and 8 track lovers, here you go) you can plug them in here as well. Of course, you can plug your Portable Music player in as well.  I could definitely see my father getting into this were the price point lower.

Final Thoughts

Sonos has built a fantastic product that could easily "own" the Digital Audio Receiver space with a few improvements.  It's in a class completely it's own vs. the Roku Soundbridge (which I also like quite a bit) but stumbles on basic playback for me personally due to the lack of support for subscription music from iTunes or PlaysforSure services (disclosure: I work for Microsoft). Technical support is fantastic and highly responsive- a Friday 7pm inquiry into why PlaysforSure wasn't supported was returned with a quick response by Saturday at 9am! (Net-net, technical issues I'm forwarding to the team who works on this). I'm not sure the price equals what's delivered in terms of the product experience, but I'm also not a hard-core audiophile.  But I would imagine Sonos will make some updates to their product line soon.

My biggest wish in terms of features would be for an add-in for MCE owners which would add another zone via the MCE PC for playback.  I have to imagine this is possible.

Pros

• Simple in setup, design and function
• Amp and DMR all in one, with ethernet switch to boot
• Multi-zone sync'd audio support
• Wireless, rechargeabe controller
• Line-in multi-zone distribution
• Supports Real Rhapsody service support

Cons

• Expensive
• No PlaysforSure DRM download or subcription support (or iTunes for that matter)
• Lack of S/PDIF output
• Controller could be updated with higher res screen, faster innards.
• No smart rebuilding of index like WM Connect 2.0 offers when new music is added
• DRM'd files show up but cannot be played
• No support for Sync'd audio add-in for MCE - this would be a big hit for me!

Have an opinion?  Share your thoughts on the Sonos below.

Thomas Hawk points us to Sean McLeod's very interesting Virtual Earth add-in for Media Center, complete with source code and how-to article.

While I also haven't geotagged my images (any suggestions on software appreciated), this seems like a worthwhile thing to do for the future.  I used to have friends whose parents would put thumb-tacks in a world map in the basement to show all the places they've been- it's the same concept, only much cooler.

According to the GetSiriusInfo blog:

Some anonymous online sources are quoted saying the S50 had been delayed possibly due to an action by the RIAA. I have been on the phone with Circuit City and Crutchfield this evening and they feel completely confident that the rumor has no merit. Crutchfields for instance, "a shipment is due on or around the 25th" and that shipment is SOLD OUT to preorders, they are now accepting orders for future shipments. CircuitCity.com Confirmed as well -will be SOLD OUT immediately from preorders! (CC could not comment on your local CC store) The S50 is the MUST HAVE gift this holiday season...I strongly suggest you pre-order as soon as possible if you want one...

The new date we are hearing is Nov 17th

I ordered my S50 yesterday from Crutchfield without issue. This could be overly hyped but while we're on the hype wagon, here's my prediction: Howard Stern will be at CES this year in the Sirius Booth.

Here's my reasoning: Stern is the single-largest driving force behind satellite radio and he believes in the product.  He's being paid hundreds of millions to make the jump, and he's very clear that he's going on Letterman, the Today Show and others just to promote his move to Sirius.  XM and Sirius have a long history of bringing out (mostly B-level) celebs at CES.  Despite what some may think of Stern, he is has a 100M listenership and would be a major draw for Sirius at the event if Stern was there.  Not to mention that Stern goes on the air on Sirius the Monday after CES ends.

FYI- you can trial Sirius for free via WMA streams on their site at www.sirius.com if you're curious what it's all about. (Windows Media Player required)

A few of us were talking about doing a Digital Media/MCE Geek Dinner sometime this December- we'll have some of the latest Gadgets to show (I'll bring my S50 and a few mobile phones).  A good time to see the latest Gadgets and chat with

So with that- Who is up for a December 8th Digital Media Geek Dinner- Crossroads Mall in Bellevue, WA?   Please RSVP here so I can get an accurate count.  All are welcome.

Ed Update: Unfortunately due to other recent commitments, I/we won't be able to host this on the 8th. The good news is that Peter Rojas and the Engadget crew are hosting a get-together in Seattle tonight so we're combining:

Tomorrow (Thursday), December 8th, 2005
7pm - 9pm

Neumo’s
925 E Pike St
Seattle, WA 98122

Sorry about the late notice.

In the upcoming 11/14 copy of Forbes Magazine, Bruce Upbin writes:

"I'm sick of the songs on my iPod, even my Glenn Gould and Johnny Cash albums. But it would be absurd to refill my 10-gigabyte iPod at the iTunes Music Store, as it would cost me $2,000, not to mention hours spent figuring out what's worth owning. Better idea:Pay $5 to $10 a month for a subscription service from Yahoo, Rhapsody or Napster that recommends music and loads up my player for far less, as long as I keep paying for the service.

Best idea:Give the iPod away and get Sirius Satellite Radio's slick new S50 for $360. For $13 a month I get sports, talk and news, plus 65 commercial-free music stations programmed by people way more knowledgeable about music than I am."

Crutchfield is offering the S50 for $279.99 with $50 mail-in rebate and free shipping in many cases.  I don't get anything from it, but it's a pretty good deal.  I've ordered one and will post more thoughts here when it arrives.  I hope it supports PlaysforSure so I can get subscription music AND satellite radio in one.

Since Microsoft's Live.com opened it's doors to the world last Tuesday as a beta, they've already shipped updates including improved Firefox support, and the # of Web Gadgets has grown to nearly 50 from a broad (and growing) range of ISVs and enthusiasts.

One thing that struck me is that more people should see the demos shown at the Live.com.  I watched them w/in MS's corpnet this weekend and had a big "aha" moment.  Lots of conversation about how Live.com is Web 2.0-enabled Microsoft.  It's a start (no pun intended for fans of Start.com). More importantly, I think what you see today is the equivalent of a whiteboard and a set of tools- dry erase markers, magnets, and some high tech wizardry to project what you want onto the whiteboard.  But you still have to start by putting what you want up on the board.  I think this is what is tripping some folks up.  IMO it isn't a pre-programmed experience.  It's worth 5 minutes setting up my homepage the way I want, and 20 minutes saved a day by getting just the info I'm interested in. 

Speaking of those newfangled Gadgets, a few of my favorites:

• Windows Live Favorites - all my favorites, syncd from MSN and IE.
• Expedia.com - It's a good start at a good looking gadget.
• Seattle Bus Tracker - I'm one of those jerks who drives his own car (hey, it's a Prius at least) but I have lots of friends who like this mashed-up gadget showing overlay of bus positions on Virtual Earth.
• GetFireFox Counter - This is the beauty of Live.com.  It's your content, from wherever. As the developer of this gadget says, "Can't we all just get along?".
• Stock Portfolio Tracker - Good for tracking your diversified portfolio, however I look forward to seeing this from a brand-name firm w/ analysis.
• Gadget Player - Embeds Windows Media Player right into your site.  Not I just need to wire this up to my voicemail and I have my voicemail system on my live homepage. (We get vmail via email at Microsoft).
• Pac-Man - All work and no play makes Sean a dull boy. The classic Pac-Man (Space Invaders, Tetris, Sudoku, and Simon) are all now available as of today.  See, adding Flash-based elements are easy too.

Installing Gadgets will get much easier.  Developing will continue to become more robust. Like ActiveX, Gadgets are a powerful feature for enthusiasts and developers today and have the potential to go mainstream in the future.

What Gadgets would you like to see for Windows Live? 

Via Thomas Hawk:

Matt Goyer's Microsoft Windows Media Center Blog - MCE 2005 According to Microsoft's Matt Goyer, TweakMCE ver 2.0 is out. Download it here. It works with rollup 2.

For sports nuts in the US, 9:30 am (Pacific) Saturday morning is your first chance to check out the new Virtual Coach app from Fox Sports powered by MSN during its first live run. Virtual Coach is a simple predict-the-play game controlled by a live operator; you play in real time as you watch a live football game.

Entries in the Next-Gen Windows PC Design Competition have been unveiled at www.startsomethingpc.com. 

The distinguished panel of judges met in the Seattle Area, deliberated for two days, sealed their decision until CES and now it's YOUR TURN. You have an opportunity to browse a number of the designs in multiple categories and pick your one favorite. It's going to be hard- there are a number of good ones and a few that blew me away.

To vote: Visit www.startsomethingpc.com, click the image at the top and start browsing by category. Each box has a series of entries:

To vote, Passport login is required (blah blah blah).

About the Competition
Earlier this year, a small group of members of the hardware design, interface design, and engineering teams at Microsoft started a conversation with the ID field at large- the idea was the envision the future of the Windows-based PC.  Directors of design at Nike, Ziba Design, Bose, Dell, Nissan, HP and others joined us for the ride as would over double the # of expected entrants. As a refresher, check out the concept video used to spur ID creativity around the competition (WMV-HD version downloadable here).

Winners for the Judge's Award, Chairman's Award (Bill Gates), and Public's Choice Award (yours) will be announced at the International CES 2006 event the first week of January 2006 in Las Vegas, NV.

I know this was a blast to do for the teams that pulled it together- I hope you do to.

DNS changes and others are coming to the site shortly. This may result in temporary or periodic interruptions to the site.  Hang with us though- more to come. I hope.

A lot of hype has been made around the $1.99 offering of a limited set of TV programs via iTunes 6.
This isn't a new or original idea. SciFi channel offered a few episodes of Battlestar Galactica online, and now CBS if offering weekly streams of it's fledgling show, "Threshold". The show is good (ok, it's manageable) but it's got Brent Spiner so how bad can it really be?

It's an interesting marketing ploy- would be even more interesting if they Podcasted it and offered as a WMV download for Smartphone, Media Center, Pocket PC, and er... other devices :)

Sometimes, software just works well. Such is the case with MyTV ToGo, an add-on for Windows XP Media Center Edition (and Windows XP) that will convert your recorded TV programs into formats ready for Windows Mobile Smartphone, Pocket PC, iPod Video, and PlayStation Portable.  I've been trying a number of applications over the past week to convert and this is the one that does it for me.  I purchased a license for the Video iPod version and with it came support for PSP.

The concept isn't new and frankly you can do the same thing with free software.  FFMPEG, a popular geek utility for file conversion is actually at the heart of MyTV.  But what it does well is conversion into MPEG-4 (4:3 TV content) with good cropping and reasonable amount of time.  Expect a 1 hr TV program to take about 45 minutes to convert, possibly less depending on your CPU.

Conversion (and transfer) are seamless... for the PSP.  That's not to say it's not without a few issues.  iTunes required a little cajoling to get the content to transfer but once it started, the rest is history.  Programs will show up in your My Videos folder as well as on your device under Movies.

Then there's quality- both were "acceptable". I used the "Better" setting for video and ended up with a 391MB .MOV  file for The Amazing Race for iPod (MPEG-4, 320x240, 846kbps, AAC, Stereo 48khz), and for the PSP, a 217MB .mp4 (MPEG-4, 320x240, 630.45kbps, AAC, Stereo 24khz) file. The PSP file appears to have a second audio stream encoded, but unsure based on what Quicktime Pro is or isn't telling me. I have a 1GB MemoryStick Duo card ($99.00) and being able to carry around only 3-4 programs isn't of big interest to me. A big shortcoming of the PSP IMO is the lack of a built-in HD for user storage.

A few other items that I'd like to see:

• Scheduled recordings - right now recordings are manual.  How about supporting scheduled recordings or setting it to automatically convert all new (non-repeat) programs?
• Background conversion - conversion right now can throttle for background operation, but what about when I'm not using my PC?  WMP auto-converts in the background so transfer is seamless.
• More control over settings.  I like the simplicity of the model, but let the user get under the hood with more advanced profile settings.
• Support for AVC codec for PSP.  It's more efficient but requires a license from Sony, something I gander they're not likely to do.
• Make it clear that the iPod Video software (which costs $29.95 and doesn't offer a demo) also includes support for PSP.

As for final thoughts, simple and does what it purports to do, which a lot of touted iPod Video and PSP Video software today- does not IMO.  As for Pocket PC and Smartphone,  I'll stick with MCE 2005 and Windows Media Player 10 which I believe do a better job overall.  Next up: Attempting to encode HD content which they claim to do.

Matt has a post here regarding the CRC64/DVDID that Windows Media Center uses to populate DVD cover art in the My DVD feature, as well as a link to a utility to grab this detail manually.  Interesting stuff.

Note: Fixed the link.  Something about Firefox on OSX causing problems (yes, I use everything :)).