Oct. 13
Slim Devices and Ruckus Wireless announced a partnership on Thursday aimed at making MP3s a little friendlier to home entertainment.
The agreement, announced at the DigitalLife electronics trade show in New York City, will allow Ruckus' multimedia Wi-Fi router to work directly with Slim Devices' Squeezebox to play consumers music from their PC all over the home.
"We found Slim Devices and the Squeezebox and found that our system works ideally with their system," said David Callisch, marketing director for Ruckus Wireless. "So we did some testing and we did some alteration to our router so that we prioritized their traffic from other traffic."
Purchased together, the Ruckus router can prioritize the MP3 signal so that other devices running in the home such as a microwave or a cordless telephone will not disturb the digital music signal.
"You don't want to be listening to a song and then it stutters because your son is downloading a file," Callisch said.
The system runs with 802.11b/g Wi-Fi.
Each Squeezebox in the home can receive a different signal from the others that are running in the home so that each room can have its own songs playing.
"You put a Squeezebox in every room and access the music over the Wi-Fi network so now you can be in your own room playing AC/DC at the same time I'm in my room accessing Beethoven," Callisch said.
Callisch hopes that this makes for a better solution than one iPod per room, although it not really cheaper since the Squeezebox is priced at $249 roughly the same price as an iPod.
The real advantage, it would seem, is not really price then, but centrality of music. The Squeezebox does not hold its own music, it takes it from one central location and streams it over Wi-Fi signals that already exist in the home.
"Consumers love and want Wi-Fi for all their digital content but have no way to deal with the vagaries of Wi-Fi," said Rick Thompson, senior analyst at Heavy Reading, in a statement released on Thursday by Slim Devices and Ruckus.
"Moving any kind of streaming multimedia over Wi-Fi is plagued with problems. Slim Devices and Ruckus have really focused on helping consumers solve these problems."
The Ruckus router delivers Internet, voice, and video in addition to music.
Callisch said that the company is well known overseas where IPTV is more popular.
"Our company makes a Wi-FI system for the home and it's designed for any kind of streaming application in the home, particularly IPTV," he said. "Obviously IP-based video isn't so prevalent in the U.
S. but what is prevalent is MP3s.
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