Thread: The *Ultimate* Mp3car player...

I think you are moving a little ahead of the times with this! True it is possible at this time but not very cheap and stable. The only idea that COULD work is the wireless internet (Ricochet). But that wouldn't solve any of your problems and create new ones.
1. You would still need hard drives for your "Desktop collection"
2. 128K really wouldn't be the best bandwidth to be working at (less than CD quality). Plus think of Ricochet as a cell phone... Even in the biggest cities there are holes in the coverage, and the signal strength varies. Well the same will apply for Ricochet. Weak signal = choppy music. No signal = no music.
3. "capacity to hold practically unlimited mp3 songs" Nothing like this out in the market today, and I doubt in the next decade.

In all it is a great idea, and sorry to shoot you down but I this it is too early for this to happen economicly right now. You could just use the wireless connection to connect to your desktop and the internet, but as far as streaming MP3 the bandwidth just doesn't cut it right now. But I could be wrong.

In testing, and talking to other users -

Ricochet is verry reliable, its just the fact that metricom is going broke that stops me from purchasing one out-right.

I can't see any available wireless connection being fast enough to stream MP3s to the car, but what about using some sort of syncronization software so that the car is constantly keeping itself in sync with the desktop? Sure you'd need hard drives in both places, but the cost of drives should be the least of your ceoncerns given the cost of wireless internet! The Napster idea would work at 128K, but if you lost signal momentarily then your transfer could abort. What about using remote software like VNC to control your home PC from the car and then the home PC is the one grabbing the music off Napster (I'm assuming you have a high bandwith connection on your home PC)? Once the transfer was successfully completed then the syncronization software would move the new song to the car. Far from instant, but it would be more reliable.
Mike.

I wouldnt rely on the ricochet to stream mp3s from your desktop. 128k I think it the theoretical max, so you probably would get like 100k or something like that. What I would do is set up a wireless 802.11b network at home and when you pull up to your house, log on to the network and sync up your files. I think 50gb of mp3's in your car is more than plenty. I mean really, how many songs can you listen to in your car in one sitting? I know it would be cool to have all those mp3's, but really. I think 802.11b is the way to go

i just set up one of these Orinoco 802.11, 11mbit/sec networks today at work. in fact, i am posting on it right now. its not all that hard to setup and the range is incredible(1700ft). something like this can work for the car pretty well. all you need is 2 wireless cards and set it in the software and ur set.

Originally posted by RaZor:
<STRONG>all you need is 2 wireless cards and set it in the software and ur set.</STRONG>

So you wouldnt need an access point? how do the 2 cards talk to each other? I thought they just transmitted not received

read my description of all that in the wireless post ( to lazy to look up link) yes they can talk w/o access point this is called Ad-hock mode, the access point allows direct connection to a wired lan, it also allows greater distance.

Some notes again

- I don't mean wireless when the car is garage; I mean wireless as I'm driving down the freeway. (altho something like 802.11 is great and I'm thinking of getting that TOO). Broadband(quasi) on the road is really revolutionary! Read on.

- By practically unlimited storage I mean that your desktop at home can have 100's of gigs. The car itself can have a 1 gig expendable hd($10 at shows) and just run the software. All your stuff is at the server in your home. Trust me 50 Gig I have in my car now is NOT enough. So far I have encoded half of my 15 year collection of 700+ CDs at 256K. Since I installed the LCD screen, I've started loading the 50G with music videos and my friends just want to ride in my car whenever they see me. My niece made me load up all the Nsync & Britney videos. I'm out of space.

- Even if you had terabytes in your car it's still not going to work. As I said the problem is with the maitenance and sync overhead. Most people don't know how grave this problem is because most deal with manageable data and they can just manually duplicate the work at home and at the car. When you have large data this overhead becomes a monster. With a central server at home all this overhead disappears. Imagine then, that you can install this simple client in your girlfriend's car so she can enjoy the collection just like you. She will make love in different ways now. Install one for your boss and get a raise.

-ok I won't write more cuz it's getting too long but the conclusion is that wireless on the road with streaming mp3 is the killer app(are you listening Toyota?). And do-it-yourselfers like us today can do this easily. I see no problem writing the client code etc myself. The only missing link is the cheap wireless deal. So far the only viable way I see is to multiplex 2 Ricochet and I think that might work. But that would be $160 a month which is the avg weekly wage of posters here so.. Anyways I'm like anxious anxious because it almost feels like I can almost do this now, almost...

Even if you multiplex connections and achieve 250Kbps (highly unlikely), it's still not going to work for streaming MP3 for realtime playback. The only way I can see this wokring is converting all those MP3s to a format more suited for streaming (ie. RealAudio) then streaming that to the car. The sound quality would suffer to the point where you could not jsutify the cost.
I have tried streaming MP3s from my fast calbe connection at home to the T1 connection at work, and it's still not quick enough for realtime streaming. I tested this using a Realaudio file and the streaming worked but the quality was much lower.