Simple questions not answered in docs / websites

[dial]

After reading some forum posts, scouring a pile of websites, hunting for SVN servers with client (appliance) code, and even looking at the docs, I still don't know the answers to some very basic questions:

* ISTR from the one time I've seen an internet radio appliance used (a Revo Pico, I think -- Reciva-based), the UI for browsing stations involved navigating a shallow hierarchy of categories using a combined knob + button. Is the SB UI for selecting stations the same? Is it easy to search for stations by entering a text search term? Does the text search feature actually work well?
* "Plugins" run on the SBS host -- right?
* "Apps" run on the appliance, and don't depend on SBS -- right?
* Is there any common UI provided by all apps? May an app (also) provide a custom UI? Is there a mix of web and appliance UI involved here? Specifically, if I install, for example, the "AccuRadio" app, do a bunch of new stations show up in the Big Tree of Radio Stations that the appliance lets me choose from? Or do I have to learn a different user interface for each app?
* Would it be feasible, technically and legally, for another company or other organisation to set up in competition with mysqueezebox.com? Do Logitech make this easy or difficult? SBS and mysqueezebox.com provide non-identical functionality -- right?
* If I want access to a "fairly comprehensive" set of radio stations (say, similar to the list that Reciva offers), do I have to install a whole bunch of "apps"? Do I have to jump through lots of web registration hoops to do that? How does this compare to the situation with Reciva-based radio appliances? How much of a pain have you found this to be?
* Ogg Vorbis and WMA support does not require SBS -- right?
* AAC support requires SBS -- right?
* Is flash supported? Is SBS required for this?
* Is RealAudio supported? Is SBS required for this?
* Roughly what proportion of internet radio stations require AAC, RealAudio or flash?

To be honest, this is mostly out of curiosity by now: I suspect that the fact that the "Sales FAQ" link I found was broken was the last straw for me. Well, that and the fact that the main thing I was looking for to distinguish this from Reciva-based radios was hardware that won't turn into a brick if the company goes out of business or behaves badly / incompetently -- but it seems it doesn't do much better on that score than the Reciva-based radios.

ISTM that companies that sell appliances -- especially those based on open-source -- have missed out on a trick by not publishing a short primer for geeks. Geeks do some of your word-of-mouth marketing for you, people, and we really, honestly, don't want to read reams of confused mass-market marketing spam in order to find out pretty much **** all. Write the answers to the questions above in a text file (it'll occupy oh, maybe a whole side of A4 paper when printed out), title it something suitably scary, and put it on your website. Even just commit at top level of SBS SVN if you can't bear to put it anywhere else.

Thanks

[dial]

> * Would it be feasible, technically and legally, for another company or other organisation to set up in competition with mysqueezebox.com? Do Logitech make this easy or difficult? SBS and mysqueezebox.com provide non-identical functionality -- right?

What I'm driving at here is that one couldn't use SBS to replace mysqueezebox.com -- correct?

Does SBS connect to mysqueezebox.com?

[snarlydwarf]

* ISTR from the one time I've seen an internet radio appliance used (a Revo Pico, I think -- Reciva-based), the UI for browsing stations involved navigating a shallow hierarchy of categories using a combined knob + button. Is the SB UI for selecting stations the same? Is it easy to search for stations by entering a text search term? Does the text search feature actually work well?

For 'radio station' stuff, MySB uses RadioTime. Check them out at RadioTime.Com ... basically it's a "directory" (like Yahoo was back in the olden days) of radio stations, browsable different ways (by city, by format, by show). Search works reasonably well: not like you can search for an artist, but you can search for a show name or call letters. Although I usually browse to get things.

* "Plugins" run on the SBS host -- right?
* "Apps" run on the appliance, and don't depend on SBS -- right?

Yes and No. Apps run on MySB.com and may also be on SBS.

* Would it be feasible, technically and legally, for another company or other organisation to set up in competition with mysqueezebox.com? Do Logitech make this easy or difficult? SBS and mysqueezebox.com provide non-identical functionality -- right?

MySB.com is pretty much "a multiuser version of SBS with some proprietary extensions" (usually because of licensing reasons... Some vendors may not want to give out their API without a non-disclosure, so hosting it at MySB gets around that... you can't get the source to MySB so you can't see their API...).

You can certainly tell a SB of any variety "please connect to this other server" and have your own access controls if you want... I believe a couple people have done just that, running a private music server for muzak-like background sounds in businesses.

* If I want access to a "fairly comprehensive" set of radio stations (say, similar to the list that Reciva offers), do I have to install a whole bunch of "apps"? Do I have to jump through lots of web registration hoops to do that? How does this compare to the situation with Reciva-based radio appliances? How much of a pain have you found this to be?

Check out RadioTime.com ... they do a very nice job of keeping up to date: if you have stations they don't know about, they do take submissions.

* Ogg Vorbis and WMA support does not require SBS -- right?
* AAC support requires SBS -- right?
* Is flash supported? Is SBS required for this?
* Is RealAudio supported? Is SBS required for this?

Yes.
Yes.
No. No.
yes. Yes (with the right plugins, I believe)

* Roughly what proportion of internet radio stations require AAC, RealAudio or flash?

The vast majority are mp3 or wma.

To be honest, this is mostly out of curiosity by now: I suspect that the fact that the "Sales FAQ" link I found was broken was the last straw for me. Well, that and the fact that the main thing I was looking for to distinguish this from Reciva-based radios was hardware that won't turn into a brick if the company goes out of business or behaves badly / incompetently -- but it seems it doesn't do much better on that score than the Reciva-based radios.

I don't know why you believe that. If Logitech got swalled by a black hole tomorrow, the only thing I would notice missing would be last.fm, and there's an SBS plugin for that. The wife would notice Pandora missing, but that's one of those "must sign an NDA to see our API" things so it requires MySB.

Ie, if you run your own server, which isn't all that difficult, most of it would work exactly the same.

The odds of a multihundredbillion dollar company vanishing overnight is pretty slim, though.

ISTM that companies that sell appliances -- especially those based on open-source -- have missed out on a trick by not publishing a short primer for geeks. Geeks do some of your word-of-mouth marketing for you, people, and we really, honestly, don't want to read reams of confused mass-market marketing spam in order to find out pretty much **** all. Write the answers to the questions above in a text file (it'll occupy oh, maybe a whole side of A4 paper when printed out), title it something suitably scary, and put it on your website. Even just commit at top level of SBS SVN if you can't bear to put it anywhere else.

I'd suggest you buy a Radio and try it.

If you want to be cheap, use an SB emulator like SoftSqueeze or SqueezePlay (though they are both -emulators- and not -exactly- the same as a hardware player, they are good enough to get the gist of things) and even try SBS on a machine.

I spent months hovering over the 'buy this' button before I broke down and clicked it and have never regretted it, despite suddenly needing to spend a fortune on CD's to satisfy my addictions... (When Visa calls you because a new card has 'a lot' of purchases on it... all for CD's... and wants to know if they are authorized, then, well, maybe it's time to slow down buying, and yes, that happened...)

[toby10]

> ........
Does SBS connect to mysqueezebox.com?

Yes, SBS uses MySB in the background. That's why you must setup all Apps and Music Service logins on MySB, to be used by either SBS or connecting your player directly to MySB.

SBS does everything MySB will do, and more, and with greater flexibility and customizations.

[toby10]

........ * Would it be feasible, technically and legally, for another company or other organisation to set up in competition with mysqueezebox.com? Do Logitech make this easy or difficult? .....

Not likely, certainly not officially.
But I'm sure they would be willing to hear ideas on your service to be included as an App (accessed through MySB of course).

[snarlydwarf]

> * Would it be feasible, technically and legally, for another company or other organisation to set up in competition with mysqueezebox.com? Do Logitech make this easy or difficult? SBS and mysqueezebox.com provide non-identical functionality -- right?

What I'm driving at here is that one couldn't use SBS to replace mysqueezebox.com -- correct?

Does SBS connect to mysqueezebox.com?

SBS connects to MySB for 'some things' like Pandora and Rhapsody and such. It connects there at the moment for RadioTime, too, I think, but it hasn't always been that way, and it certainly doesn't -need- to be that way. It's just a bit easier to centralize things I think.

SBS is "mostly" about serving local music. MySB is mostly about serving non-local music. There is a ton of crossover, though, where some things can be served from SBS -and- MySB. For some of them, it's only to make things consistent in the "local music is SBS, non-local is MySB" scheme of things (ie, if it's non-local, maybe you turned off your server and still want to access your radiotime/live365/LiveMusicArchive/Lastfm/etc stations, so they're centralized on MySB).

[toby10]

...... * If I want access to a "fairly comprehensive" set of radio stations (say, similar to the list that Reciva offers), do I have to install a whole bunch of "apps"? Do I have to jump through lots of web registration hoops to do that? How does this compare to the situation with Reciva-based radio appliances? How much of a pain have you found this to be?........

Create a free www.MySqueezeBox.com account and see for yourself.

The problem is how do you cram in 20 different Music Services, Apps, Podcast Services, RSS feeds, etc... into JUST the hardware player? Then make all of these customizable/configurable and provide full management of such services all solely on the hardware player? That's where a connection to a server comes in, in this case SBS and/or MySB.

[dial]

Thanks for your helpful answers.

I don't know why you believe that.

Perhaps the lack of clear documentation had something to do with it?

The odds of a multihundredbillion dollar company vanishing overnight is pretty slim, though.

Is that so.

I'd suggest you buy a Radio and try it.

I just did. But it was a Reciva radio.

If you want to be cheap, use an SB emulator like SoftSqueeze or SqueezePlay (though they are both -emulators- and not -exactly- the same as a hardware player, they are good enough to get the gist of things) and even try SBS on a machine.

Tried that. It hung immediately on startup on my plain old Ubuntu karmic machine.

[snarlydwarf]

I just did. But it was a Reciva radio.

Oh, well, so the point of your post was not at all to get pre-purchase comments from other users, but rather to waste my time responding to your questions?

Next time, it would be nice if you posted "please don't use ten minutes of your life responding to me, because I'm not interested and have already made my decision." It's sort of rude to ask questions of fellow humans and then blow them off after wasting their time.

Tried that. It hung immediately on startup on my plain old Ubuntu karmic machine.

You have to build SqueezePlay yourself for Linux. Softsqueeze is java so should work fine on any compliant jre.

But a geek would know that.

[dial]

Create a free www.MySqueezeBox.com account and see for yourself.

That involves answering the question "how much time will task X take, so that I may decide whether to do X" by doing X, which might not turn out well.

The problem is how do you cram in 20 different Music Services, Apps, Podcast Services, RSS feeds, etc... into JUST the hardware player? Then make all of these customizable/configurable and provide full management of such services all solely on the hardware player? That's where a connection to a server comes in, in this case SBS and/or MySB.

That's a response to an objection you made up yourself.

I object to the fact that it's made artificially difficult to change the server, not to the fact that a server is used.