Music Streaming Tech Advice Please!

[andrewducker]

If I wanted a box I could stick in my kitchen that would stream music from any DLNA-compliant server, what would the best option be?

Must be all-in-one (nothing that needs added speakers), and have a reasonably simple interface.

My searches are showing up all sorts of things that plug into TVs, but no collection of things that are entirely stand alone. You'd think that "Stream your music to the kitchen" would be a selling point...

Note: I'm not looking for "Spend a large wodge of cash on Sonos" here. I'd like something standards compliant that will hook into my existing standards-compliant infrastructure.

Comments

[andrewducker]

Looks like this kind of thing is about as good as it gets:
http://www.whathifi.com/review/roberts-stream-83i

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Did you not buy one of the O2 jogglers when they were £50 last year? That's what we use to stream our music in the kitchen from our NAS

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Logitech squeezebox radio then?

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Lots of options - Squeezebox, Roku, much of the Pure DAB radio range. While we have a Sonos setup, I'd note that the new Sonos 3 is a lot cheaper than you'd normally think.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Oh and google will help - try being a little less literal 'zone 2' or 'second room' will bring results rather than kitchen.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

There's always a speaker dock for a phone and stream through a mobile? That's what I use in the bathroom/bedroom. Get proper analysis done - your requirements are rather vague - your friend hasn't specified their current tech, they may already have everything they require, I have speaker docks in every room in my house so just need to connect via an app. There's more than one way to crack a nut - especially on a budget!

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

Slightly different suggestion:

Streaming stuff seems expensive. It might be just as cheap to buy another mp3 player and a dock. You will have one more device to sync of course every time you get new music.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

I do so love my Sonos system.

I've just bought MLW a Pure Evoke to go in the bathroom as Sonos don't do anything with a battery. It was not exactly cheap.

We'll spark it up in the next day or two. I'll let you know how we get on with it.

[broin.livejournal.com]

As it's important to avoid answering your question and instead witter on about my own audio solution, I'm quite enjoying a Creative D100 - batteries last for ages and it's Bluetoothy. I tend to stream music from Grooveshark on my phone rather than across my network - I don't have a big library. In the future, I'll velcro a tablet to the fridge and stream from there instead.

Reasonable audio quality for a small kitchen - doesn't raise the roof, but loud enough.