Just got my Streamium:)

I'm in a buzz program and that's a pretty cool thing since I get the opportunity to play around with some pretty nice things and buzz about it. More information on this buzz program can be found here.


So here is my buzz on this streamium (philips streamium network music player NP2500). Basically I like to see my media integrted in the house. Just 1 central location to strore all my pictures, music and video including recorded TV and then be able to play this everywhere in the house. This is why I'm having a mediacenter with a homeserver for backups.


When I got the opportunity to buzz this product I smiled when signing up since this fits perfectly in my vision on the digital lifestyle.

After opening the box my first impression was "Whoooo this looks great and fits in any (living)room". Obviously I did not read any manual but just started installing. Put the installation CD in my mediacenter (since this is the central media storage) and the whole installation of the server part was an easy job. It installls Twonky Media and the server side is ready (ok, I just found out the regular UPnP could have done the trick as well)

Then turning on the device and follow the on screen instructions. Everybody can do this again even without a manual (but with their security codefor their wireless network and it might be a bit more complicated if your wireless setup is not a pretty strightforward one).

So time to listen to music from the media store and internet Radio and this sounded great but here there was a set back. Browsing took ages. ok I admit I have a lot of music but this to me was pretty disappointing and when browsing a large library (or massive list of internet radio stations) the system is a bit unresponsive.

Let's hope this is because the player will do do background stuff in the beginning (built a list or something like that) and speed will be better if this is completed. I also shall try it agin if I put it wired to the network.

Another thing is that this is a seperate device and there is a tendency to built this into receivers (Denon, Yamaha etc). On the other hand, in the bedroom I now just have this with a set of JBL speakers (so it matches the design of the streamium since this absolutely great)

In general my first impression is pretty positive but have to play with it a bit more. I think I will keep this post updated by giving replies to my own post


Update:

ok, played around with it a bit and really love it. Figured out that the standard UPnP works better in my network than the twonky media server so streaming from the mediacenter goes really nice.

So far a great device for a room where a small mediaplayer with some simple speakers (I have the JBL creature II in black which is a perfect match)

Sound is very good

The only con is still the speed of browing the music collection. Still will try to wire it up with the built in ethernet connection and see if that goes better than wireless