Firstly the Squeezebox itself definitely cannot connect direct to a UPNP server, it needs to talk to the SqueezeCenter server to do its stuff. It can actually stream music direct from webpages and the like, but I needs to be told where to find them by the server.

However from a quick look in the forums it appears that SqueezeCenter itself can use a UPNP server as a source for music. But yes that would involve running SqueezeCenter on a box (Windows, Linux etc) to then point at the NAS.

There is an even better solution, but only if you have the right NAS. As I’m sure you’ll have heard many NASs are based on Linux and several of them are able to run a copy of SqueezeCenter themselves, thus avoiding the need for the extra box.

On the subject of the Roberts radio, as long as it can stream MP3s from a webpage then it too could get music from the SqueezeCenter server as it provides a page that streams out the current playlist.

On the issue of endless scrolling, you have a point. I am used to my empeg where you get to choose the structure of the playlist hierarchy yourself. So on my empeg there is a top level entry called “Artists” which contains all the artists that I have whole albums for. That means that all my compilation albums are neatly tucked away under “Various”.

Using the Squeezebox is a stark contrast in this respect. When I open up “Artist” on that the first page of 9 artists only contains 3 artists that I actually own more than one track of music from.

The Squeezebox Controller is also limited in this area by the lack of keypad. And no the search doesn’t really help that much, also due to the lack of keypad. It is just as quick to scroll down the list of artists as it is to enter the first 4 letters of the artists name in the search.

However they have tried to do the best they can with the scrolling. As you scroll faster the scrolling accelerates and the initial letter of the item at the top of the screen is displayed over the top of the list, so you can quickly see how far through the alphabet you are. Because of this you can scroll from say “A” to “S” in 3-4 seconds.

Because there is such a healthy community of developers around SlimDevices I believe there is already a plugin that will address some of these issues. The plugin in question let’s you define your own set of menus to browse by (where what appears in them is defined through SQL statements). I think that using it for example I could have an artists list that only showed artists with more than one track or a two level artists list where you picked the initial letter first.

I haven’t installed that plugin yet though.

I do love this thing though, I caught up on 5 hours of missed Radio 4 yesterday, simply by scrolling a bit and pressing “Add” occasionally

I have a NAS box which (under the hood) is running Twonky-vision and presents itself as a UPNP server.

Does the Squeezebox support connecting to UPNP servers … or would I need to stick a Linux box in the middle?

Oh, and another thing … I have a Roborts internet radio that connects to my NAS box and a large music collection … do you not find the scrolling up and down hundreds of artists a bore … or does the search feature compensate?

Kindest Regards

Calum

You can also sync them together, I was doing that earlier with the Receiver and SoftSqueeze on my laptop synced.

You can do thing like change the volume of individual players or turn them on and off.

You don’t see any feedback on the player’s screen by the way when you are controlling it (except updates to “Now Playing” of course), it is all done on the Controller.

Is the fact that it controls other squeezbox’s you may already have a documented feature? The combination of having both a screen on the remote and on the receiver would make it a must have item for me.

Cris.