Now that's what I call Coolvenient™

I just purchased a new RoKu SoundBridge M1000 from BestBuy this weekend. Nice product, cool look, and I was totally fed up with my Apple Airport Express gizmo for streaming audio from my PC to my home audio system.

You see, I used to use TiVo with the Home Media Option (HMO). That was before I moved. I had cable TV in my old house, and at the new place, only satellite is available. So I still have TiVo, but the DirecTV HR10-250 something rather which doesn't support HMO. (HMO was the best, easiest way to play music and view pictures from my PC through my TV and home stereo, way back when.)

Anyway, I bought an Apple Airport Express, and endless struggles ensued. Returned the first one, and unfortunately kept the second. It never worked out of the box correctly, and after much effort, finally got the darn thing to connect to my home's wireless LAN. After all that trouble, it wouldn't play a song without skipping. Major frustration. This despite all the tricks I found on the Web to overcome the issues, including altering the Windows priority level for the iTunes task.

Enter the SoundBridge. Set up sharing in iTunes, turned on the SoundBridge, and whalla...music to my ears, quite literally. But the coolvenient part...

I hadn't read the manuals yet, so during coffee this morning, I took a peak an an addendum that came in the box. Said something about support for Media Player 10 from Microsoft. Hmmm. Not that Media Player rocks or anything. Says if I want to run the new Media Player 10, I need to upgrade the SoundBridge firmware.

Well, now upgrading equipment firmware is usually a pain. Gotta hose it up to a PC, download the firmware from a Web site, get the device and PC to communicate, upload the firmware to the device, yada yada yada. But wait, the document says I can do it from the remote???

Sure enough. Navigate to the System Configuration menu, select "check for new software update" and the the darn thing connected to the Mother Ship, found it's new firmware, downloaded it from the FTP site, installed itself, and rebooted, all along providing useful messages of what was occuring in real time...

Wow. I can't wait for the future now that I've tasted it. Imagine being able to have all your high-tech gadgets throughout the home notify you of new features and upgrades that can be implemented with the click of a button?

A remarkable event, and I'm in the high-tech electronics business. Now that's what I call "Coolvenient"™.

-BH