Streaming at home

Recently I bought a Philips SL400i, wireless multimedia link. The spec’s promise me the ability to listen to mp3, mp4pro, pcm and wav audio and divx, xvid and mpeg video. And it works, it works nicely

Setting up the machine was dead ease. You plug the scart plug in the back of your TV, audio into the reciever and connect the box to the internet, and off you go.

You can use it in combination with upnp Media Managers like Nero MediaHome, Philips Media Manager, SMC EZ Media Server and Microsoft Windows Media Connect. You can listen to your own mp3 files or watch your videos and pictures which are stored on a PC. But you can also connect it directly to the Internet and use streaming hosts like Yahoo, Live365 and others. It comes with a personal page (http://my.philips.com) on which you can store your preferences likes radio- & video stations, pictures and java applications.

A nice thing on the machine is that it has a display on which you can see what you are selecting. Otherwise you need to turn on your TV every time you want to change the source. Another nice thing about the machine is that it’s software can be upgraded via the Internet connection. That’s what happened to mine the moment I switched it on.
The bad thing is the limited format support. Real Player is not supported plus some other Media Player formats. Maybe it will be in the future.
Another bad thing is the quality of the upnp Media Manager software. Most of the software is to slow, hasn’t enough options and it can’t be run as a service under Windows 2003. Which I find important. For instance I would like to see to option to play radio streams and to transcode formats. Nero can transform formats but cannot play radio stations, SMC is fast but cannot transcode and Microsoft supports most of the formats, etc.
Maybe someday someone will combine all the good thing into one package.