Linksys Wireless-B Music System WMLS11B

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Product Details

Product Manual [2.16mb PDF]

• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B0002229JQ
• Item model number: WMLS11B
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (90 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: April 12, 2004

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The Linksys Wireless-B Music System lets you bring the digital music stored on your computer to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a wireless connection, the Music System finally frees your digital music collection from those little computer speakers to play in full glory through your stereo system.

The Wireless-B Music System sits by your home stereo and connects to it using standard consumer electronics cables. Then it connects to your home network by Wireless-B (802.11b) wireless networking, or if you prefer, it can be connected via standard 10/100 Ethernet cabling. Using the included remote control and the built-in LCD menus, you can browse your MP3 or WMA formatted music collection on your home PCs by title, artist, album, genre, or playlist. Or, access the Rhapsody Digital Music service (free trial included) to listen to over 450,000 songs on demand, create custom playlists and radio stations, and burn mixed CDs on your PC. You can also tune into thousands of Internet radio stations from over 100 different countries around the world.

Choose the music you want, and let the Wireless-B Music System play it through your living room stereo. Or, with its small but powerful detachable speakers, it can also act as your portable digital music "boombox". Carry the Music System around the house and have access to your entire music collection, and your favorite Internet radio stations, anywhere within range of your wireless network -- the kitchen, den, even out on the patio by the pool.

Let the Linksys Wireless-B Music System bring digital music out into the living room for the whole family to enjoy.

Product Description

The Linksys Wireless-B Music System lets you bring the digital music stored on your computer to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a wireless connection, the Music System finally frees your digital music collection from those little computer speakers to play in full glory through your stereo system.|||The Wireless-B Music System sits by your home stereo and connects to it using standard consumer electronics cables. Then it connects to your home network by Wireless-B (802.11b) wireless networking, or if you prefer, it can be connected via standard 10/100 Ethernet cabling. Using the included remote control and the built-in LCD menus, you can browse your MP3 or WMA formatted music collection on your home PCs by title, artist, album, genre, or playlist.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

111 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Great idea, poor execution. Wait for next iteration., July 17, 2004

By	E. Tapanes (Dumont, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

MY BACKGROUND:
I have always been an ardent musicphile and have subsequently grown a respectable collection of music. With a little less than 1000 CDs, physically finding the music you feel like listening to was always a chore (although there is much to be said for spending some quality time rediscovering that CD that you forgot you had). SO, I jumped on the MP3 bandwagon a couple of years ago, ripping my entire collection (up yours RIAA) onto my server. Having them on my server has made it easy to listen to whatever I like pretty much anywhere in the house where there's a computer (both son's rooms, living room, my office). I converted to iTunes recently when it became available for the PC (much nicer to synch the iPod with than <spit> MusicMatch <spit>). BTW, I'm a software engineer and gadget freak, which explains why my house is wired with CAT6 cabling and why even my 3 year old son's computer is running at Gigabit speeds on our home network. :-)

Okay, enough babbling, onto the review:
WHY I BOUGHT IT-
I'd been toying with the idea of picking up one of the portable media players ever since they came out a year or so ago. I couldn't justify spending the cash on the designs that were out there until I found the Linksys WMLS11B. It is very aesthetically pleasing, but more importantly, it has a very nice (and large for the form factor) LCD screen and looks basically like a boombox that can play all your MP3s. Whenever I can (when the weather and family allow) I try to work from my deck or screened-in porch. I'm somewhat tired of having the iPod earbuds sticking in my ears and plugging a pair of powered computer speakers into the iPod is a hassle.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS-
For $180 ($250+ MSRP) I expected something a bit more substantial. It's not badly constructed, but seems too 'plasticky' and lightweight for the cost. Anyway, after about ten minutes, I had it configured and working on my wireless network (Linksys 802.11g). Incidentally, you need to set it up with an ethernet connection to set it up initially, but I could not get it to connect to any of my computers directly and had to finally just plug it into a router. The very first impression was that I had messed something up with the wiring because I had to have the volume all the way up to hear the music. After goofing around with everything, I decided that it was set up correctly, but just lacked the power to play adequately in anything else except an absolutely quiet room (with the sound level at MEDIUM, you can barely hear noise coming from the speakers).

PROS -
-Nice to look at
-Sound quality is pretty good once you hook up some nicer powered speakers
-Easy to set up
-Fairly compact
-Fair selection of internet radio stations

CONS -
-The included speakers leave a lot to be desired
-Must use MusicMatch (it sucks!!) or Rhapsody (a RealOne company, which if you didn't know, is run by Satan)
-For some reason, I can't get it to play more than ten songs from a playlist.
-The interface is HORRIBLE! Very non-intuitive and I spend more time scrolling through my collection than actually listenting to music. Most frustrating is that after you scroll down for a couple of MINUTES and find 'Modest Mouse', if you change your mind and decide you want to listen to 'Menomena' instead, the interface tosses you back to the top-most menu, meaning that you have to select 'BROWSE' then select 'ARTIST/ALBUM' then scroll down for several more minutes to get back to the M's...<ARGHHHHHHH!!!>. Even a submenu that allowed you to scroll through the alphabet and select, say, 'M' and then browse all the M's would be VERY nice. If the playlist function worked properly, then you could invest some time and set up your favorite songs and/or artists, but for spontaneously searching through your catalog... uhh, you won't.
-For some reason, I occasionally lose signal with my network and it can't find the server (even though I have my laptop receiving 54Mbps with excellent signal strength right next to it). Not a frequent occurence, just puzzling.
-Being 802.11b based, it only supports WEP and not WPA.:-(
-No carry handle
-The remote is pretty good, but doesn't work unless pointed directly at the unit and from within a very shallow angle from center.
-No headphone jack on the front
-Too many cables sticking out of the back. Cable management is so easy, yet apparently an alien concept to most manufacturers.

CONCLUSIONS:
It's just frustrating to have something soooo close to being good, but having some poor design muck it up. I really wish they'd assign it a more iPod-like interface (where you can use the back button to go to your previous menu level and selection). I also wish they'd find some way to tap into iTunes as a server or roll their own (okay, I can dream). I believe that if Linksys were to revamp the interface firmware and take care of some of the problems with the 'music server', it would be worthwhile. Unfortunately, I've dealt with Linksys for too long to even hope that they'd bother to update this version. They will instead release a newer, improved version which will make this model the MP3 Edsel.
I'm going to return this to the store today as I have a 10 day 'remorse period' that expires on Monday.
Nice try Linksys, better luck next time. :-(

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Cool concept -- poor execution, October 17, 2004

By	Martin Omander (Mountain View, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I was very excited when I saw this in the store. What better way to play my thousands of MP3s in the living room? I really, really wanted to like this product. But, while the concept of this product is neat, the execution is terrible. I won't repeat what the other reviewers wrote about the difficulty of managing more than a few dozen MP3s with the awkward user interface; suffice to say I agree with them. But that annoyance would have been minor if playlists worked well. The 10 song limit of playlists is also quite annoying (especially since it's undocumented), but not a showstopper as far as I am concerned.

What really drives me crazy is the poor quality. When I got the unit a week ago playlists worked fine. Then, yesterday, the unit would only play the first song in any playlist and then stop. Finally, today, the unit stopped playing playlists altogether, instead just displaying "Connecting..." and doing nothing when I select a playlist. I haven't changed anything about the unit, my wireless network or my PC. While the unit still plays MP3s that I manually select from the list of all songs, who knows when that will stop working. I have had bad luck with Linksys products before, so I should have known better than to buy another one.

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Pretty Good First Internet Radio Appliance, May 22, 2004

By	B. Gerber (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Radio reception is horrible in our condo. So, I've been searching for some sort of appliance that could play internet radio programs. Up until about a week ago, none apparently existed. A few days ago, I discovered the LinkSys Wireless Internet Radio at Amazon.

There is a unit that, for want of a better name is an Internet radio tuner and two detachable powered speakers. The tuner can be hooked up to a stereo using standard RCA plugs or an optical connection. The tuner connects wirelessly (11Mbps) to the Internet through a standard wireless Access Point. It uses the same Internet connection you normally use.

You can access Internet programs using the unit's front panel LCD and buttons or you can use the unit's remote control. There are 1200 stations and the list is updated regularly. You can set up a list of 20 favorite stations. I've got such stations as KPFA and WBAI (Pacifica San Francisco and New York), KUSC, KCSN and a bunch of college stations set up.

The tuner also uses a new technology called Universal Plug-and-Play Server. This makes it possible for on-line services to provide access to program material on the Internet and for you to play it on your Internet radio appliance. I am using the Rhapsody service. It's music oriented with 60 pre-set music stations (I'm listening to the Baroque station right now) and you can even create your own by setting up a list of artists. Tracks are served up randomly. The service claims to have hundreds of thousands of albums.

There are only two current drawbacks.

First, the unit currently natively plays only streaming MP3 Internet radio stations. That's still a lot, but it doesn't allow for stations that use proprietary formats like Real Player or Microsoft Media Player. Universal Plug-and-Play Server services can get around that by converting streams to MP3. Since Real Player operates Rhapsody, I hope they soon convert at least Real Player streams to MP3.

The second drawback is that the unit isn't portable. Even though you can wireless receive the Internet signals that carry input anywhere in your home, you have to plug the unit into a 120 volt receptable. This could be fixed easily on the tuner by turning off the always-on front panel LCD and running both the tuner and speakers off of batteries. Internally recharged batteries would be ideal.