Google Q - Disaster?

[HectorHughMunro]

https://play.google.com/store/device...ils?id=nexus_q

This really doesn't look good at all. I hope that anticipation of this isn't what has led to the delay/cancellation of any Squeezebox Touch Mk2. Certainly more 'beta' than the Apple TV.

[AmDismal]

It will be rubbish, for ages, and later it will be great. Android was pretty ropy when it came out, and now it is way better than iOS.

It's an open source device, I guess (in the areas that matter), so it will be interesting to see if it gets a critical mass behind it to develop it well.

Looks shit, though

[Gyroscope]

TBH I don't understand WTF it is. "Social streaming media player"? Get to fcuk.

And as Adam says, that's a face only a mother could love.

The only interesting thing is that it has an HDMI input. Actually, is it an output? Probably.

[HectorHughMunro]

I was massively disappointed. Squeezebox development seems to have ground to a halt and I was hopng that this would be an alternative to take us forwards.

[AmDismal]

Logitech have been terrible for the Squeezebox. I reckon it performed pretty poorly for them too, they really never made it into the kind of mass-market device they would have wanted.

[HectorHughMunro]

Yep, the problem with Squeezebox now is that the native interface looks very dated indeed. It's only really Ipeng that has kept it up to speed. We're due the next generation of streaming but I can't see where that is going to come from.

[HoopsOnToast]

I am actually quite tempted by a Nexus 7. £159 for 8gb seems very good value. I found the 8" 4:3 screen on the Archos G9 80 Tablet just right, pity about the poor build and laggy performance so this @ 7" seems very good!
For general browsing and email it looks spot on!

[amcluesent]

I reckon a grad-student could port Squeezeplay onto the Q. I see some folks are predicting Google will need to move the price point to 100 bucks to shift many

[HectorHughMunro]

I don't think the price is a massive problem if it actually did a bit more. There is some hardware value above the Apple TV because of the inclusion of the amp. The problem is that the Apple TV, which in itself is years away from being the finished article, does much more.

Google should have done significantly more with the software before it was released.

[browellm]

The real problem is that Logitech discovered there isn't a huge demand for audio only streaming software, and by extension, hardware.

"The market" demands devices that do audio, video and photos. Unfortunately, they are universally terrible at the audio side, and the hifi companies with their very limited budgets and no background in software development have to buy crappy off the shelf DLNA solutions which are usually very poor because the software is written to support such a wide variety of hardware.

We are very lucky in that LMS is open source, and the current versions are nice and stable. So if they decide to bin it, it will continue in one form or another.