Freecom Internet radio - €47 PC World

I've been watching the streamer market for years, nearly got a roku several times (but steamers are over priced). I saw this device a couple months back and as soon as I saw this bargain I raced out and picked one up this afternoon. I think it was the last one in Naas - my nearest PC World.

This is a great little device. Quick research could not reveal if it was a DLNA (uPNP) renderer as well as being capable of connecting to a DLNA (uPnP) server nor could I determine if it would work with Windows 7 "Play to" (DLNA control point function).

Well I can reveal that is does all of those things, wooho. This thing is really easy to set up - took about 2 minutes (I already have a multiple uPnP servers on my network). The interface is simple (which you can regard as a good or bad thing). I immediately selected "update firmware" from the musicpal's own menu and a couple of minutes I was running firmware 1.58 released January 2009 (it came with version 1.30 from 2007). - So firmware is actively developing (it's linux and has a strong hacking community).

I can select music from windows 7 and select "play to" musicpal and it just works. I can select music from my (DLNA) n-series Nokia Phone (some of the time) and do the same thing. Pretty cool.

On the downside - it seems DNLA (uPnP) support gets flaky after a while - or that could be windows 7 (which is flaky in this area). After a bit of use the "play to" feature doesn't work. In addition to this, I can't play files from a third device on to the musicpal (a common DLNA renderer problem it seems) - i.e. if the uPnP server is the same machine as the uPnP control point it works ok - other then that it's troublesome (still testing).

On the downside - the speaker on this thing is not great - it's fine for the kitchen where I have mine but don't expect great things - however you can plug it in to external amp via line out OR headphone socket - eg active speakers. Also the interface is limited - there is only so much you can do with two push knobs and two buttons. But i think it does a good job - I like it. Some BBC stations do work (eg. world service) - many BBC stations are "UK only" but that's entirely due to restrictions placed on the BBC end blocking non UK IP addresses.

Other positives - it looks great it's actually quite small and mine now lives on the kitchen windowsill. You can easily see how this was 130 euro (even more on dabs/komplett) - this is a great bargain price - i'd buy another one for other rooms! This thing does alarm clock, calendar, news, weather and anything else delivered via rss. You don't need to bother with any of that bleeding edge DLNA stuff i talk about - always works fine when you use the local interface on the music-pal. Also Irish channels are listed and work fine

Thanks to the OP - I'm loving it.