Customer Reviews

Philips WACS7500/37 Streamium Wireless 80 GB Hard Disk 80 Watt RMS Music System

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

here is the Philips link : http://www.consumer.philips.com/consumer/en/us/consumer/cc/_categoryid_WIRELESS_MUSIC_SYSTEMS_SU_US_CONSUMER/

I bought the WAC7500/12 as it is called in Europe for about a 1,000 EUR or about $1280, so the $800+ price is good.

Philips is a hardware company. This is a software product. I was never impressed with Philips software in the past witness the HDD 120 - no software upgrade for years and living with a crude interface and many little bugs. To top it, the WAC7500 software was written in China, or so it seems. The Chinese are great gadgeteers but in software they are still in the times of the Ming Dynasty. And it shows. The system is full of little bugs, which could be annoying. It is no accident that the iPOD is a winner, Apple is a software company.

The management interface accessed via a browser is crude, sort of half done as one would expect it from Philips after a while. Their website is trash, haphazard attention is paid to updates, sometimes just don't work. Lately though they paying attention to it. I had little problems with Inet radio but it seem to work.

The hardware itself is first class. I was going to build some like the WAC7500 had I not found it already made. Speakers are great, remotes (there are two of them) are Ok. The remote with a display is weird, it lacks some of the features of the one without display.

The main unit called Center Station, can and should be managed from a PC. In order to connect to the PC you need to turn off all, I mean all, security firewalls even certain VPN software security policies.

Features are great. But it really needs a software update in the whole number category (x.0 I mean) where they fix feature cross compatibility - these are basic design issues. See the link for more detail on features.

For CD database they use Gracenote. I like freedb.org. In general they should open the box for compatibility, else they aren't going to sell many. This is really a techie toy. Neatly fits into the mp3, iPOD, Inet radio, WI-HIFI, software based music world. So if you're not ready to fool around with a little technology don't buy it. Else it is a great toy though a bit expensive.

peritter@hotmailcom

I bought my Philips WACS7500 one year ago. Had some issues with the internet connection in my 'all cement house' and just recently Philips came out with a firmware upgrade. Now we have no issues with anything. Internet radio, fantastic, all stations connect wonderfully in my 'all cement house' and I like it very much. I think the documentation was absolutely clear, albeit spelling mistakes. I found it easy to connect and listen and download music from my PC!!!

I was waiting for a great sound system. But this device is "the best of the best". Crystal sound, amazing features, internet radio, wireless, cd covers on screen..oh! I almost forgot...it plays cds and has fm tuner. Now if you are looking for a sound system that makes you feel exclusive dont look around anymore. It is!. Philips works for us and this is a perfect sample, it combines sound, technology, design and quality, all in one, for a good price.

I bought the WACS7500 because the compact shape of the unit and the remote station were a good fit with my personal environment. I'm not an audio expert; I have no issues with the quality of the speakers. The unit sounds great loud and has decent bass for its size.

My problem with the WACS7500 (and probably with other Streamium products) is the lack of accurate documentation on how to use and set up the product and how to use the Club Philips website to manage and activate certain features, such as Internet radio and feature updates. I had to muddle through the set-up process with the help of an online Streamium user forum.

In summary, I don't recommend this product unless you are comfortable with ambiguous and incomplete product instructions. Otherwise, it is a nice wireless streaming music machine.

First things first, I love my Streamium Center and Station. They were a remarkable find, and draw the attention of guests to my house every time, from techies and audiophiles alike. One or both of them have been on for hours almost every day for the last two years and they have become an invaluable cornerstone of my home entertainment experience.

Before I get into too much detail, it's important to point out my background. I'm an 11 year veteran of the IT industry. I work as an IT Manager for a local University and administer computer networks, servers, routers and firewalls. I love computers and find great job in tinkering with esoteric bits of "fiddly" technology.

When I moved into my house, I wanted to purchase something that would allow me to access my music collection from all over the house. I wasn't sure what I would end up with, but I wasn't too keen on drilling holes and running Ethernet cables all over the place. My main goal was getting music into my first floor living room or my bedroom, not necessarily both, but that's exactly what I got, plus a whole lot more than I ever expected - and that's a great thing.

The Streamium Center and Station have given me not just that, but a whole lot more. Not only do I get to bring the music collection I've so painstakingly amassed over the years anywhere I go in my house, I get a handful of extra features like the addition of Internet Radio stations and streaming online content as well, all from a single unified, central repository eliminating the need to duplicate or synchronize my music through multiple instances or devices.

The center has its own internal hard drive, designed to be populated with your music collection. You may use it to rip CDs directly to this hard drive in some fairly high quality, high bitrate MP3 files, but these are extras which I don't personally find all that useful in my environment, but I could see it being eminently useful under the right circumstances. Most of the time, however, I rely on the Stremium integration with Universal Plug & Play servers on my network to deliver my music content. Both the Center and Station see the UPnP device on my home wireless network and can stream on demand from the hundreds of Gigabytes which make up my collection.

While I was worried at first since the wireless connection strength on both units indicates they're both at the extreme end of the range of my wireless router. I thought that, coupled with the somewhat limited bandwidth of WiFi in general would have a negative impact on my listening experience, however after nearly two years, these worries are completely unfounded as my music plays perfectly fine without any distortion or hiccups.

One of the most surprising things for me has been the sheer sound quality that the Center produces. I'm not an extreme audiophile, but I'm picky enough to notice, and there was no part of me which assumed, with all of the features packed into this unit, I'd get a remarkably great level of sound quality, yet, it routinely draws comments from many guest at just how rich, deep, and vibrant the sound quality is coming out of such an unassuming unit. The "Station" is less throaty, but serves its purpose beautifully in my bedroom where I don't necessarily expect an audiophile level of quality, but is continually enjoyable nonetheless.

I've owned my units for just over two years now and I wouldn't trade them for anything. At the time I purchased them, I literally could not find any similar product anywhere that would do exactly what these two do. There aren't very many opportunities like that for a consumer electronics manufacturer, so I really wish Philips would sit up and take notice.
So, what's not to like? Well, there are a few things. The biggest complaint is that it's "fiddly." What do I mean by this? Well, I'm a dyed in the wool computer geek, technophile. My day job is a systems administrator, so I'm immersed in computer and network technology all day. Even with a strong affinity with the underlying technology which drives these units, I have experienced a level of frustration worth expounding on. I like to describe these units as decidedly "fiddly" relative to most consumer electronics I've worked with.

This not to say they don't work, but getting them setup on my secured home network wasn't impossible, but it was a bit of a chore. Getting them to talk to my Network Attached Storage array via the network was a bit of a challenge, but decidedly do-able, just not completely a walk in the park. Getting onto the Streamium management web site via Philips.com and configuring my Internet Radio Stations was completely do-able, but it was just a little bit more "fiddly" than I felt it needed to be - for a consumer electronic device. What about the rare times when both units just need to be hard power-cycled by unplugging them both from mains power and powered back up again for no other reason than they just stopped doing...anything. It's just a few mintues and really not that big a deal, but it's not behavior most folks would expect out of consumer electronics.

While we're on the subject of Internet Radio integration and to better demonstrate what I mean, let me explain. Internet Radio content is accessed by pointing a media player to a URL. Instead of simply plugging in a known radio station's URL into the Streamium, and letting it access and play the station, it's much more complicated. You access a Philips web site from your computer, tell that web site what URL you'd like to listen to, then your Streamium talks to the Philips server which either proxies the content or forwards the list of URLs(I haven't bothered to find out which). The short story is that if the Philips servers are down, you're not listening to any Internet Radio. Now, I don't exactly think Philips is going belly up any time soon, but it's an added layer of complexity that seems completely unnecessary. It works 99% of the time, and that's great, but it seems needlessly complicated when the alternative is to just let the user type in a URL which the radio would access directly as needed.

Now to be fair, comparing these units to a typical piece of consumer electronics is a little apples to oranges. I see these things as challenges to overcome and feel vindicated and jubilant to have a piece of techno wizardry which gives me so many options and features. I think it's really cool that I can telnet into my home entertainment center, I really do! However, most folks would not, and that's where I think the Streamium Center and Station find their biggest failure as consumer offerings.

For example, my parents were mightily impressed after listening to various internet radio stations during a visit to my house. They asked me what the systems cost and where they might get one. Unfortunately, I had to strongly advise them not to even consider purchasing these as they would view those challenges and techno-fiddling to simply outweigh the usefulness of such devices.

This is the beauty and the pitfall of these units. They're really amazing marvels of techno genius. They represent more capability and features crammed into an attractive shell than I've ever seen r. Oh, and there are two of them in one box? And you can add more Stations as you need them! Oh, and they actually perform marvelously! If they were just more accessible to the average consumer, I think Philips could turn their "Streamium" line to a widely recognized name instead of a marvelous piece of technical curiosity.
As it stands, I kind of feel like these are the creation of someone at Philips' crazy uncle who was given a meager budget, and an unlimited bin full of parts from other projects and told to go play in his underground workshop until he came up with something viable. The result is possibly one of the best pieces of innovative home entertainment electronics that you've almost certainly never heard of.

It makes me really ponder what this product line could be if they elevated it out whatever mad-scientist corner of their development and engineering wing back at the mothership, and gave it some proper attention by a dedicated team of engineers and designers with an equal investment in marketing. As it stands the Stremium line appears, from this perspective, to be a product with an identity crisis. I don't want a dumbed down product, I don't want to lose my ability to telnet into the boxes, and if the target audience were people like me, they'd be doing great. But the tale of consumer electronics is one of accessibility, and that's one thing sorely lacking here. If the design team at Philips who have this device could better straddle the line between techno wizardry and accessibility, they'd have a sure market winner on their hands. Just don't dumb it down too far or you'll alienate people like me.
I will close by reiterating, I really love my Stremium units. I have not found or seen anything that does what these do. They sound great and look stylish doing it.

If none of the pitfalls I discussed earlier sound too off-putting, then you'll likely love these too. But if you're not willing or able to tolerate some tinkering, and just want something to unbox then set & forget, then you will likely be better served by another product. I, for one, would buy these again tomorrow if my current units ever failed me. Here's hoping Philips can make the Streamium family into something which can be more widely appreciated. I think they've definitely created something special so far. -AJM

I purchased the Philips Streamium system on a whim, and boy am I glad I did so. This is one amazing product. The sound quality is superb. I would purchase one all over again. Don't hesitate!

This is a hi-tech sound machine.
It sounds great and it has some good features.
I had notice only two inconvenients: the hard disc is very sensitive, so you must always shutdown the equipment so it doesn't break down; the other problem is the not user-friendly interfase to transfer music and to connect the remote slave.

Once you handle this topics, the equipment works realy great.

Enjoy it.

The WACS7500 is a "love it or hate it" system. I happen to love it and bought a second one recently.

In a nutshell, if you're a technophile and know how to set up wireless networks, you're likely to be very happy with the system. On the other hand, if you struggle with computers and look for a system that you can take out of the box and switch on, you'll probably hate the WACS7500.

Setting up the system requires connecting it to the Internet (ideally an existing wireless network), updating the system's firmware, registering it on a Philips website for reception of Internet radio, and getting the two units talk to each other. It took me a while to get all of this sorted out - in somes cases I needed the assistance of a Philips forum for Streamium products [...].

In terms of sound quality, the system obviously can't compete with a high-end stereo system but having said that, I was impressed by the sound quality and am very happy with it.

The ripping of CDs is fairly slow but it is very easy - there's only one button to press (twice) and the disc is ripped, including album and title information (through its Internet connection, the system automatically queries the latest Gracenote database and downloads the correct information).

The Internet radio works great - I listen to stations in Europe and New Zealand every day - and I now have my whole CD collection stored on it and find navigating through my collection very easy.

In summary, I am very happy with the WACS7500. If you are reasonably up to speed with computers and prepared to spend some time setting it up properly, I am positive that you'll enjoy it too. In any case, at the current price it's a steal!

After hours of frustration I still cannot connect this device to my PC to create playlists, etc. Impossible to do so through the remote. What possible use is a product like this if you can only play cd by cd?

I am reasonably computer literate, and instructions that direct you to choose an option that DOES NOT EXIST are insane. Select System Mgmt - do they mean SETTINGS? There is no Menu > System Mgmt. None!

Philips help center equally useless. My daughter's boyfriend tried for about 45 minutes too; and then volunteered to buy me an ipod and docking station as he ran screaming from the house.

Buyer beware. The user interface on this system is about the worst I have seen of any product, including early Korean VCRs in the 80's. Appalling.

I got this device, but not the pair of devices, about a year ago. Overall it's nice for bedroom-filling sound in a very attractive package, but...

There is the unit that comes with the hard drive and allow you to rip music or load music to it, as well as play wireless music from your UPnP enabled computer/ server. There is also the unit that comes w/o the hard drive. I got the one w/o the hard drive somewhere else, even though the guy who sold it to me "thought" it was the one with the hard drive. He was confused and so was I... just reading the description for this item, I think Amazon is selling both devices for this price, which is reasonable.

I also should state that I got the smaller Philips NP1100/37 to add to the house music experience. The NP1100 does not come with speakers - just a wireless device that has a readable screen from several feet away, although a small and slightly clumsy remote to use. What I do like about the 1100 that I want to mention is that it connected to the internet when I installed it and downloaded the latest firmware almost effortlessly and with little help from me. Great feature! The WACS I have had nearly a year has never done that and it's not enabled to do that, even though it's the pricier model. In fact, I didn't know there is a firmware update for it until I went to find out myself. The firmware update process for the bigger unit requires a PC to be involved and extra software on the PC and it takes longer. The web browser also crashes during the update, so it took me a few tries before I got it right and figured out the whole process on my own.

So now that I have the firmware update I can write a better review, although not much better. Although the design of the device is very nice and the sound is excellent for it's size, the screen on the WACS is way too small to read from more than a few feet away. I have to be right on top of it to see the music I want or the playlists. Additionally, my device will not display ID3 tagging information not matter what I do. Song title - but not the ID3 tagging information. The newer 1100 I bought does - this one doesn't. This is immensely disappointing considering how much I paid for it.

Another thing to pick on is it's wireless abilities. I have two wireless access points in the house - it's a big house and with wireless it makes sense for coverage. When I move the device around the house it's going to get a stronger signal from one or the other, so I go into the menu to change to the other SSID. When I switch SSIDs and then try to move the device back to the other room, it's 'forgotten' the password to the first wireless AP. Have to enter it again. Pain in the neck to have to do that, you know?

Looks and design and sounds are great for this thing, but what's under the hood needs vast improvements to justify the price for this thing. I don't own the one with the 80GB hard drive, but 80gbs? Gimme a break. Cheaper and better to get 120gb or even 200. Enthusiasts are the ones looking for devices like this, and they're not going to be content with a measly 80gbs.