The new toy has arrived – Roku SoundBridge M1000. This nifty little gadget does exactly what I had been looking for. It streams digital music from my PC over the WiFi network to a pair of stereo speakers or the home audio system. It can also stream digital radio stations without having to turn on the PC. Finally, an attractive solution to play digital music in any room.
The Good: Feature rich, nice looking, intuitive, does exactly what it’s supposed to do without any fuss.
The Bad: Only supports 802.11b. I had my router configured to do only ‘g’ – took me a while to figure out why the WiFi connection wasn’t working. Does not support the new WPA standard. I had to switch back to WEP.
The squeezebox is the competing product that doesn’t have any of the above drawbacks but comes with a $299 price tag that’s a $100 more than what I paid for the Roku.
