Ernie the Attorney has been going on again about his AirPort Express, and the other day Scheherazade was talking about her wireless MP3 music solution, which made me start looking into what’s available.
I do love iTunes and I run it on both my PC and Mac, so I did think about the AirPort Express. I was really disappointed that it doesn’t have any kind of remote control, though. I know, my place isn’t that big, and I have a laptop with wireless, but you know, I don’t *always* want to have to fire up or walk to a computer to listen to music. Sometimes, I want to plop down on the couch, and turn on the stereo with a remote, and change the song on a whim, all with a remote. The AirPort Express’s lack of remote is a *huge* oversight in my book.
Anyway, here’s what I’m looking for: a way to stream MP3s from my PC where they are all stored directly to my stereo. It must be wireless, it must have some sort of remote control, and ideally, it would cost under $150, but I’m willing to go up to $200 to make life easy.
I started doing some research and I’ve found these offerings:
I’ll be looking into all of these in more detail, but in the meantime, if you know of one I’ve missed, please let me know.
I recently posted a note on AirPort Express
http://tingilinde.typepad.com/starstuff/2004/08/airtunes_after_.html
In my case I have well over 20,000 tracks of music (all legit 99% from my CD collection) and our iBooks serve as an intelligent way to search the music and deal with my 100+ playlists (psychologists will tell you that most people can only keep 5- 8 things in their mind. Beyond that means you need some sort of interface to help you and a remote is insufficient for me)
If you want a remote for AirTunes/AirPort express there is the Salling Clicker http://homepage.mac.com/jonassalling/Shareware/Clicker/ … assuming you have a bluetooth enabled phone and bluetooth on a Mac. I use this for controlling slide shows and it works like a charm.