Got a tip from our unofficial Wiitards of Skype multichat that accidentally solved a problem I’ve pondered about for years but never have really come around to solving: an online digital music library played on where it should – the proper hifi / home theatre setup in the living room.
There is a myriad of options. MediaCenter PC-s. Sonos. Airport Express and Apple TV. XBox360 streaming from a PC. And probably hundreds of niche solutions more. I just couldn’t choose and the issue didn’t hurt enough – I do have a few CDs I like.
So what did the trick for me:
- Turn on your Wii
- Open Internet Channel aka Opera (get it from Wii store channel for free, if you haven’t yet)
- Go to http://www.finetune.com/wii/
- Voilá!
For some reason you even don’t have to register to get basic streaming at once. I did though, and that seemed to open more exhaustive tag-based and artist searches.
The streaming audio quality over public internet is of course as it is, not really hifi grade. But decent enough for even quite loud background listening. Libraries seem quite exhaustive, from indie to recent pop to some old school hiphop.
Only caveat: burn-in risk. If I left it on for hours to see the song titles and album covers of what’s playing, I’m sure I would have the virtual shelf-full of stacked albums + the enormous Opera controls embossed into my plasma screen for good. Not an issue for CRT, LCD or projector users, of course.
Also, I have no clue about Finetune’s (future) business model.