Does anyone have experience with Olive products? They just announced a high-end version of their music center

www.olive.us

damn, this concept looks more than interesting. i NEED to get more infos about it. many thanx for pointing that out, and ya, any user with experience of these products?

I think I'd prefer a Hush Silent PC running Windows XP Embedded + fb2k 0.9 on it. Such a system might even end up cheaper. Then you can combine it with a SlimDevices Squeezebox, etc. and it would be an awesome setup.

It looks really nice, but I'd rather go for a small and quiet computer(Mac Mini, Via Epia) with MPD. To control it I'd use either a web frontend or a nice client running on my computer

Do You have any information/links how to install WinXP Embedded on a x86 System?

Thanks in advance,
.halverhahn

hush, ok. mac mini, well. the mac still use a fan, silent, but still with a sound. guess u still will here it when u listen to music at very low volume.

Hmm honestly I have not done it yet, but I don't see where the problem is. We are talking about Windows XP Embedded not Windows CE. There are x86 computers running XP Embedded such as this one. All you need is the installation CDs.

Or even cheaper (limited to music though): A Buffalo LinkStation NAS (they even sell the box empty under the name "KuroBox") + SlimServer installed on it + a SqueezeBox...

Minimal price, minimal power consumption.

@ck1
This is your very first post over here. Smells like...

This sounds like a great concept, but not a great idea in the end, unless this thing has a 2nd 400GB drive for a RAID Level 1 configuration -- unless you like the idea of having to re-rip 400GB worth of CDs when the drive eventually fails.

-Chris

You're right, I thought WinEmbeded is the same as WinCE.

Thanks,
.halverhahn

I just don't get this concept at all.

It's just an extremely expensive small computer, minus all the flexibility. You could build a great little computer for hosting the audio for the price of this device. Most out-of-the-box computers will be too noisy for your average audiophile, of course, but with a couple hours of research or the assistance of a friend (if you don't know how to build a computer already, of course), you could build a passively cooled small form factor computer with a nice sound card. It could be controlled through another computer, through a small seperate monitor, or right through your TV - a wireless mouse/keyboard combo would give you an enourmous amount of flexibility.

Plus, you'd have all the options of things like RAID for data security, network to share out your music to other computers, or anything else you want to do with the computer.

What am I missing here? Okay, so it's pretty. But that's all I see as being superior to a less expensive and far more flexible small form factor computer.

I'd take the route that was mentioned above, personally, and buy a Network Access Storage device, a Squeezebox, and go with it. But that's because I already have a laptop to control the Squeezebox.

The olive range looks strangely like the Hifidelio brand???
Hifidelio
Olive

Perhaps the case is just the same???

The biggest difference between these type of players and PC based systems is quality, although PC based systems are getting better. Quality is one thing but value for money is another important thing.

I sell audio products in Sydney, Australia. I have just added a new distributor that carries Squeezebox and Hififelio, some stock (and my own) Squeezebox and a Hifidelio unit arrives tomorrow. Time to play and evaluate some new toys :-)

Even when I am not an administrator.... Could you tell me the reason (if any) of your post? I can't get to see a problem in his question (as you can see it has generated an interesting talk), and about the "very first post" is evident, just looking under the nickname. "Posts : 1".

Why would you want to install Windows XP Embedded on a Hush instead of a normal Windows XP?

Besides being rather expensive: They're pretty nice except being quite large and heavy. Also, the harddisk is rather loud when accessed (but maybe they use disks that are more silent nowadays).

There are forums it would have been deleted due it looks like direct advertising. After all it really doesn´t matter. Peace!

you might want to consider the YAMAHA CDRHD1500 CD & HARD DISK RECORDER i saw a review that said you can purchase it with a larger harddrive than the default 250GB, the only drawbacks are it only stores uncompressed music (no mp3 or flac support) and when you burn something you have stored on it it gets deleted.

Personally i think all of these types of devices are rather expensive for the features they have, a chiped xbox with XBMC as the dash has lots more features (plays most popular lossy and lossless formats including wavpack,flac and ape), can use replaygain, has ssrc built in to overcome the xboxs aparantly poor hardware resampling to 48khz, gapless or crossfading is also included as well as video playback and HDTV support (im leaving many features out here).

I don't know the Olive, but I have read some reviews of the Hifidelio, and assuming they're very much alike, I can add that the Hifidelio allows streaming to a backup disk. According to the review (a paper review, otherwise I'd link it ofcourse), the backup is however in a proprietary format, so that it is really only a backup.

This is still restricting your use of it, but at least better than no backups...