Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

Great device, really Simplicity !

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

This is the first time I've seen a very simple device. Once you turn it on and you've gone through the very logical steps of joining your wireless network you can use it straight away. There's no installation of PC-SW needed (like I saw for the Squeezebox) and there's no need to enter your email / create an account. Seems Philips really keeps up to its promise and makes devices very easy and simple to use. The display is indicated with 3", however when you take a ruler and check it is 4.1". Seems somewhere a typo happened ...
The Rhapsody free trial is also a great idea - it allows you to test first, and later decide to join this Service ...
The Internet radio is great. Looks like a vTuner face. It plays every station which I selected and there was no giggling sound or stuttering. Good done !
Finally, I love the idea of having a volume control in the device (even on line-out). So I can use one remote to control !
The display looks great, considering the money spend on this device ...

...

more

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 42 days ago at

A nice device that does the job for me

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

I have been looking around for a device that I can playback my mp3 music from my PC on my home audio wirelessly. After reading the comments on the various products, I have finally picked the NP1100 from Philips for its having a larger screen, pretty nice design, offering free Internet radio, and newer in the market at an attractive price. I'm especially attracted by the Internet Radio feature as I can listen to radio stations from abroad.

I have in my home a wifi router from D-Link, encrypted with WPA and pretty much everything else is default setting. My notebook PC is also connected to this router. Though there are a number of users reported the difficulty in making this unit work nicely in the home network, I thought I can give it a try and expect some challenges along the way.

So here is my experience. I took the player out from the box and connected the Red/White cables to my home audio aux input. I connected the power and go through the set up process. I entered the language preference,

...

the date format, the time format, set the date, set the time, and then I choose the Wireless option to set up connection with my home wifi router.

The device quickly detected my wifi router, as well as my neighbors' routers. I picked my router, entered my WPA key using the remote control (which is similar to typing sms on mobile phone, but I must say that if it has intelligent input like auto-completion of word, it would be very nice), and click through a few options which are default settings. The whole thing took me a couple of minutes and it is pretty straight forward.

Next I tried to play the music from my PC. Since I already have the Windows Media Player version 11 running on my Windows XP, I just follow the instruction on the user manual to set up the Media Player. It took in my case about 15 seconds for the network player to see my PC music. It plays my PC music quite well on my home audio. Most of my MP3 music are ripped at 192 kbps. There is no distortion and so far I have not experienced any hiccup on the music playback.

Next I tried the Internet Radio. I was surprised that I was asked to do software upgrade. I accepted the upgrade and the device restarted itself. So it is quite nice that I can get software upgrade automatically. I give it try again to listen to the Internet Radio and it worked this time. The menu is a bit cumbersome and a lot of choices, which I guess it is good and also bad - the choice is many but it took me a while to find out how to go to desired station. After using this device for a while, I found that the number of radio stations offered is huge and I especially liked the fact that those are free and I can really listen to radio from abroad - French stations, Japanese stations etc.

For the Rhapsody, it is also quite nice. So far I haven't decided if I'd subscribe to the service (as I'm still enjoying the 30 days free trial) but the selection of music is indeed a lot. Most often now I just pick an editor pick and play the music.

Is the device perfect. Sorry, Philips, it is not. The display at close distance is definitely not nice, but after using it for a while the large display at a distance does help. I placed this network player on top of my home audio and I can see quite clearly the screen from a distance, which is about 7 ft away from my sofa. I can go through my collection of MP3 music on my PC or go through the large selection of Internet Radio stations quite easily from the player. But I think Philips should really improve on the scrolling speed as it would be better that I can see the whole song name without waiting for the song to scroll across the screen, slowly.

Things to improve - surely I really like to see the scrolling and display quality be improved for day to day use. Having said so, overall, I found this little device do the job nicely. It is easier to setup than what I have expected. The sound quality is really nice. And it does play my MP3 music from my notebook PC on my home audio without needing to worry about wiring. I'm happy that I can listen my music without needing to either play them out from my study room's PC speakers, or transfer them to my mp3 players in order to listen to them.

more

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 44 days ago at

Decent, but not amazed..

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

I have to say that the idea of streaming your music from your computer is a great idea. Once you have it set up it works quite well as I run the music from my computer into another room from my stereo and the music is crystal clear. I'm not very computer savvy but the set up was fairly easy. Like another reviewer said it was a little ridiculous trying to enter your password through the remote and I was ready to give up. Luckily I hung in there and it works so no complaints now that the difficult part is done. I'm not so sure I'll be buying it for anyone's birthday anytime soon, however, as everyone I know uses ITUNES and this product only works with Rhapsody.

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 51 days ago at

Didn't Work on My System, but...

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

A friend received the same item for a gift and recommended it highly. Even though the screen is black and white, it's classy and the streaming music allows you to listen and surf at the same time.

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 63 days ago at

Entry Level Streaming Music Player with some Serious Shortcomings

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

The Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player is a promising product which tries to deliver on a really great concept. The idea of streaming music over a computer network, from the Internet and from a home PC or NAS music collection is far from new. This form of digital music delivery has been offered by devices like the Logitech Squeezebox, the Roku SoundBridge and the Sonos ZonePlayer. In fact, Philips has produced other Streamium wireless music systems as well but the NP1100/37 promises many abilities of the higher priced systems from Philips and their competitors, while carrying a price tag that is much more affordable for the average consumer. Although I am an extreme gadget geek I have not been willing to spend several hundred dollars so that I could stream my family's digital music collection throughout the house. After all, we have several computers in the house (all networked) and everyone in my family has their own MP3 music player. When I found the Philips NP1100/37

...

Streamium player, which was priced well under two hundred dollars, I was ready to move into the wireless streaming age of digital music.

The unit is packaged very well, and comes with all of the basic essentials the typical user will need to begin streaming digital music in their home. The box contains the Streamium NP1100/37 digital music player, a basic remote control (batteries included), a power supply/cable (wall wart type), a set of RCA audio patch cables, a quick start manual and a CD (containing Windows Media Player 11, tutorials and an in-depth operation manual). After installing the batteries in the remote control I decided to watch the tutorials on the included CD. The videos were easy to understand and explained the basics of connecting the unit and streaming music from the Internet. However, owners will definitely need to consult the complete operation manual (on the CD) in order to determine how to access all of the features of the Streamium NP1100/37. Connecting the streaming music player to my home stereo receiver was effortless and I was finally ready to power up the unit for the first time.

The NP1100 powered up in "Demo Mode," but a push of the settings button, on the remote control, quickly brought me to the settings menu so I could set the date, time, and configure the wireless network settings. Each new user will quickly find that keying in all of the required alphanumeric information, via the remote control, will certainly prove to be a tedious and somewhat frustrating task. Entering in a 128-bit WEP security code (for my wireless router) was very time consuming. For those that have MAC address filtering enabled on their wireless routers, you can find the MAC address of your NP1100 on a sticker, located on the rear of the music player. Once I had all of the Wi-Fi settings in place, the Philips music player immediately connected to my wireless router and reported that it was connecting to the Internet. It soon notified me that a firmware update was available and asked if I wanted to download it. Of course I told it to proceed and within 10 minutes the new firmware was installed and the NP1100 rebooted itself. By installing the upgrade all of my previous settings had been replaced by factory settings, so I had to start over from scratch again. However, I must admit that the new firmware definitely added a couple of additional settings and seemed to improve the responsiveness of the device overall. Once I re-entered all of the needed settings I was up and running and ready to begin testing the music streaming features of this product.

I was easily able to stream music via the Internet Radio feature. Everything worked as advertised and I couldn't wait to begin trying the Rhapsody music streaming service and to access my family's MP3 music collection from our home network. The Philips Streamium NP1100 comes with a free 30 day trial of Rhapsody, so each user can try before they buy. However, I am already a Rhapsody subscriber so I was able to enter my membership information, via the remote control, and connect directly to my Rhapsody Unlimited account. I was able to access my Rhapsody music library and all of my playlists but I soon found that I was not able to select my songs directly. Once you access a playlist the Philips device shows all of the music tracks in the order they are listed on Rhapsody. There is no way to sort by artist, genre or by song title. If you want the tracks listed differently, you would have to reorganize your tracks in your Rhapsody playlist. There is a 10 to 15 second delay, once you select a music track, before the Streamium begins playing the song. This is because the NP1100 has to buffer a certain amount of data into its memory before it can begin playing each song. This can be fairly frustrating if you jump around from track to track. I have managed to get used to the delays though and overall I am fairly pleased with the ability I have to access my Rhapsody playlists. Finding new songs (not already in your library or playlists) on Rhapsody becomes a very frustrating task. You must enter in artist names, song names or album names via the remote control. For those that enjoy sending text messages with a cell phone may not find this task to be much of a challenge, but for those of us not into that kind of time wasting it becomes a real source of anger. If Philips had provided the ability to connect a keyboard then this task wouldn't be so cumbersome. But having to enter every character in from the remote control (standard alphanumeric like a typical telephone keypad) is just plain silly. I have learned to use my computer to search for songs in Rhapsody. If I want to listen to new songs on the NP1100 I make sure to add the songs to my playlist in Rhapsody, from my computer, ahead of time. Not really the most convenient way to access and listen to music.

Setting up the device to access my NAS home network drive was equally tricky. My D-Link NAS already had UPnP enabled, so the Philips NP1100 was able to find it on my home network right away. However, I had to access the NAS settings from my computer's web browser) to identify what primary folder my family's music collection was in. The Philips player could then see my music collection but it was mixing all of the songs together, showing them in alphabetical order. For some reason it would not see the individual subfolders for each of my family members. This meant that my daughter's R&B music and my wife's Country music was mixed in with my Big Band and Classical music. I spent several hours fidgeting with my NAS settings and the Philips NP1100 before I finally got the network music player to see the individual folders. I am now able to access all music by artist, genre, album and song name. Since every family member has their own music folder, we can each access our own folder and then play the songs in alphabetical order or shuffle them. Of course we can scroll through the list and select the exact song (or artist) that we want to listen to as well. What started out as a huge obstacle eventually produced an easy way to access our entire family music collection.

The pros of this system are obvious. The Philips Streamium NP110/37 is a low cost network streaming music player; allowing you to access Internet Radio, the Rhapsody music service and even your own personal music collection stored on a computer or NAS drive on your home network. The system can be connected via Ethernet cable or by Wi-Fi. As other reviewers have also noted, getting this device to work on your wireless network can be a bit of a challenge, but I was able to get my NP1100 player to access my Wi-Fi router without any serious problems. Connecting to your personal music collection will require a computer, with Windows Media Player 11 installed, or a NAS drive that has an UPnP media server feature enabled. Accessing the Internet Radio stations is fairly painless and setting up a new or accessing an existing Rhapsody account (a 30 day free trial is included with the Philips NP1100/37 system) is pretty straightforward. Accessing your personal music collection can be a little challenging for anyone that is not very computer literate but it is definitely doable.

The cons of this system are pretty strong. My biggest complaint is regarding the need to use the simplistic remote control to enter alphanumeric characters, in order to setup the system, enter account and network settings, and to search for songs and artists. This is extremely time consuming and Philips should have either included a remote control with a QWERTY keypad or at least should have included a USB or PS2 port, allowing the connection of a keyboard for data entry. Also, even though the music output of this player is quite good, it really needs a user adjustable equalizer. Some of the tracks lack lows and/or highs and could use a boost in these areas. The 3" black and while display is adequate in size but the scrolling of text on the display is painfully slow, with no way to adjust the scrolling speed. This may be something that Philips can fix with a future firmware upgrade. That would be a HUGE improvement in my opinion. This player also suffers from a time lag during remote commands. When scrolling through song listings, the display sometimes seems to lock up for a few seconds every now and then. The time it takes to buffer online music is also somewhat excessive. I also think Philips should have considered giving this unit a Li-Ion rechargeable battery, allowing the device to be easily transferred to different rooms of the house.

Overall I find the Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player to be a solid device with a few strong shortcomings. For the price I think it provides a pretty good method of accessing music via the Internet and from a home computer network. However, it seems as though Philips cut a few too many corners when developing this product and should consider some firmware upgrades and a revised remote control to fix the worst of these issues. I have been pulling my hair out about whether to give this device a 3 or 4 star rating but have decided that 3 stars is the highest I can go. Even though I now have my unit setup and working quite well for my needs, I feel that the frustration and complexity of setup should be reflected in my overall score of this device. As mentioned above, for anyone not familiar with computers and computer networking may find this device very difficult to setup correctly. I therefore nick the score by one star for the setup complexity. I also nick it a star for the shortcomings of the feature set, as well as the lack of a better method of data input (poorly designed remote control and lack of input for keyboard). I give this device a solid three stars and recommend it for anyone that is familiar with basic computer networking and is willing to accept a unit that doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the high end (and higher priced) streaming music players on the market. The Philips NP110/37 is a very nice entry level music streaming device and I'm sure my family will continue to enjoy it for years to come.

more

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 79 days ago at

Great Tool

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

Just the concept of this thing is great. I can keep all my mp3 files on my machine, but still use them throughout the house. That and take advantage of Rhapsody. In our house we have three different mp3 players and they're not compatible with each other, so getting a player to plug into the stereo has never really been an option before now.

Installation was extremely simple. Turning on the device it immediately was able to find my wireless network and connect up. I had to set up sharing on my computer, which is just a couple of mouse clicks. That was it. From there I was able to point to the computer and listen to mp3's played on the stereo (and the TV and the kid's boom box... I had fun trying out different sources). Only a little more setup was required to hook the device into Rhapsody and I could start listening to play lists from there.

When the device was getting songs from Rhapsody, there was occasionally a lag, but nothing much more than I would experience on the computer. I did

...

more

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 80 days ago at

needs improvements

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

I can't get the wireless to work either. If it does connect the connection doesn't last. I know it isn't my wireless since my laptop gets 100% connection strength. I don't like that it can not deal with Itunes, my son has an ipod so itunes is basically foreign to this device. My son is the one that wanted this so he could listen to his itunes on the larger system. I feel it should have an Ipod docking also. I don't like Rhapsody, why would a company make a larger radio of this type that can't access more than one service?
I am disappointed in this especially since the wireless that it touts does not seem to work well, not for me any way.

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 80 days ago at

Standalone Rhapsody client!

0

Helpful

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

There are very few devices that can search and stream the entire Rhapsody music library (thousands upon thousands of CDs) without needing to use a PC as an intermediary. The Logitech Squeezebox and Sonos Digital Music system, both at a higher price than this one. Works fine so far.

8 review(s) | 0 comment(s) |

1 price(s) | 88 days ago at

Philips NP1100/37 Streamium Network Music Player with 3.0" B&W Display

Reviews

Comments

Similar Products

Sponsors