The Sony SMP-N200 (or SMP-N100) is the only streaming player you need; eschew the Roku!

After much searching, buying, and evaluating, I'm convinced that the Sony SMP-N200 (or maybe the older SMP-N100 if you can find it) is probably the best streaming device you can buy. Well, it's at least the best value streaming device you can buy (under US$80). It does everything that a Roku device does plus a little more and is substantially cheaper when you compare apples to apples. The only thing you really lose is the ability to watch trailers in the Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand application. However, trailers are available in basically every other movie app plus a Flixster application with plenty of trailers.

For US$66.99 on Amazon (and US$69.99 on Best Buy) at the time of this post, you get:

• HDMI output for full 1080p video and 5.1 channel audio
• Optical audio output (if your receiver doesn't do HDMI audio)
• Analog audio output (via RCA connectors)
• Composite video output
• Component video output
• Wired ethernet support
• Wireless 802.11b/g/n support built-in
• USB port (videos, pictures, music)
• DLNA client (and maybe server for that USB?)
• HDMI wake-up (i.e., device turns on and off automatically based on HDMI signal; moreover, this behavior is configurable if you don't like it)
• Very thin and simple remote control powered by a watch battery

  People say this remote is an improvement over the one that came with the old SMP-N100 model, but I disagree. For one, the "Home" button is too close to the down arrow. More importantly, the old remote control was quasi-universal in that you could program it to your TV and it would control your TV's volume, power, and video input. So I basically only need one remote with the SMP-N100 to do everything.

• Android phone and tablet remote control apps
• iOS remote control app
• ...probably more that I overlooked because I personally didn't care

With all of that hardware support, the device is great for a wide variety of home theater systems (e.g., with old TV's or old receivers). You can contrast this with the more expensive Roku that has an HDMI output and a composite output. Those people with older receivers and/or older TV's are not going to enjoy all of the advanced features of modern streaming content on a Roku. This is not as much the case with the Sony players.

And the applications that come on board the Sony SMP-N200 include:

• Hulu Plus (and free Hulu via PlayOn over DLNA, but see CAVEAT below)
• Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand (although the app doesn't play trailers)
• Vudu (albeit without "Vudu Apps" but with full "Vudu Movies" support, including trailers and promotional credit)

  FYI, the current US$5.99 promotion for signing up a device works even if you've already signed up other devices; so you can keep adding promotion credit to your account... even if you end up returning the device

• Netflix
• YouTube
• CinemaNow (which looks to be a similar selection as Blockbuster On-Demand) – Note that the application is included but currently it tells you that it's "coming soon" when you start it up
• Pandora
• Slacker
• Sony Entertainment Network's Video Unlimited (yet another on-demand streaming service)
• Sony Entertainment Network's Music Unlimited
• Flixster
• DLNA sources (e.g., PlayOn and everything it supports, including free Hulu; CAVEAT: I own a Sony SMP-N100, and I haven't had trouble using PlayOn the few times I've tried. When I tested an Sony SMP-N200, PlayOn worked at least for the few minutes I tested (if I recall correctly), but I've heard that people are having issues with PlayOn now.)
• ...plus a lot more that I just don't care much about (e.g., streaming from Berliner Philharmoniker)

For some reason, Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand was not advertised anywhere on the box or on the Sony website like it used to be. However, the application still exists on the device. Despite it being the same application that is used to access Sony's own "Video Unlimited" service that supports movie trailers, the Amazon app has no trailer support. That's frustrating and makes me think that Sony has been given financial incentive to de-emphasize Amazon over its other providers. One of those providers includes Vudu, which is provided by the full-featured Vudu application you get on every other streaming device (minus the "Vudu apps" support you might see on a Blu-ray player). Regardless, if you're OK with getting your trailers elsewhere, this is a fine selection of applications. UPDATE: As of a recent software update on my Sony SMP-N100 (and so also likely on the Sony SMP-N200), trailers are available now in the Amazon VoD app. So it is much nicer now to browse for movies within the single app.

And if that's piqued your interest, you should also take a look at the previous model, the Sony SMP-N100. It is nearly identical to the SMP-N100 except that it lacks support for a few providers, of which the only one you should care about is Vudu. It still has Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Instant/Video-on-Demand (no trailers though), DLNA (which means PlayOn too), Crackle, YouTube (but no movie rental support), Pandora, and much more. However, it sells for at least US$20 less (so US$49.99 on Amazon (same price at Best Buy) at the time of this post) because the new version exists.

So if you're looking for a nice streaming player for a good value, I think most people will point you at the Roku. However, the Sony players (both the SMP-N200 and SMP-N100) are cheaper and do more. The interface is not as clean and cozy as Roku though. Moreover, it might be annoying to you that you cannot play Amazon video trailers. However, trailers are available through lots of other services, and there's a lot of value to having them all on one device (as opposed to having, say, Vudu on your Blu-ray player and Amazon VOD on your Roku).

Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Player? My choice is probably Google Music Beta

Between Spotify, Google Music Beta, and Amazon Cloud Drive/Player, I have had the most fun with Google Music Beta.

So Spotify is weird and uncomfortable. It’s cool that I can get easy access to lots of music that I don’t actually own, and it’s easy to make playlists. However, it is ugly to be able to both shuffle your whole library and put songs in multiple playlists without risking over-representing them in your shuffle. Over-representation is generally a major problem if you create artist playlists because one artist might have a whole bunch more songs in the Spotify database than others. It would be nice to “shuffle artists” where you’re guaranteed a balanced selection of artists (e.g., in every set of 30 songs)… What’s worse on Spotify is that playlists are static. You might be able to create an artist playlist, but you have to watch out for new songs to add to that playlist. Be careful though – songs get duplicated in a playlist if you drag them over. Having said all of that, I certainly have had fun discovering new music with Spotify. The interface is ugly though, and it sucks to have to pay $10/month just to have Linux access (yes, I know I can use Spotify through wine for free now (and $5/month later when the free accounts become limited), but I hate dealing with the headache of local MP3’s and the wine codec). Moreover, if I want Android access, I’m stuck with $10/month too. Boo.

Google Music Beta had an easy upload process. It took a while, but not that long. It was strange that it bogged down my entire Internet connection (while Amazon’s uploader didn’t affect my downstream at all), which makes me wonder what else Google is doing. However, I could select all of my songs on my Linux machine (no fancy Windows uploader needed) and they all got uploaded. Unfortunately, I cannot download them (unless I make them available offline on my phone and then figure out where and how Google stores them, which may not be tractable). Also, I cannot figure out how to buy new music (certainly a feature for the future, right?). However, Google randomly adds free music to my library, and that’s cool. What’s coolest is the Instant Playlist feature (which is similar to features in iTunes and other players/services) that builds a good-sized playlist from a single song. I’ve enjoyed its picks – even when the song I seeded lists with came from a local artist that it couldn’t have known much of anything about. Best of all, Google Music Beta gives me all of this for free (up to 20,000 songs) on all of my systems (including Android). I never need to worry about keeping a Windows machine.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive/Player is cool that it gives you 5GB for free and then $1/year/GB up to 1TB after that (starting at $20/year for 20GB). For the moment, if you pay for any storage, you get music storage for free. Any Amazon MP3 purchases can be placed directly in your library. Any song in your library can be downloaded. So Amazon’s Cloud Drive is a nice archival and music management solution. Almost all of the cool features of the player work on all systems. The only downside is that the MP3 Uploader (which re-organizes your music into Artist/Album/Song and will allow you to select a batch of thousands of songs to upload at once) is only available in Windows (and Mac?). On a Linux machine, you can use the web uploader from Amazon’s Cloud Drive, but you can only upload contents of one folder at a time (with no subfolders) and you have to organize everything manually. No one has figured out how to automate this through a script as far as I can tell. The Windows uploader does a pretty good job sitting in the background, and it’s safe to interrupt it in the middle of an upload (however, it may take a while building your upload list when you re-start it). The Amazon Cloud Player is fine. You can build playlists of your music, which is fine. You can shuffle. You can’t discover new music, but you can easily grow your library at 50 to 99 cents a song.

[ Oh, and all three will scrobble to Last.FM. It’s supported natively in Spotify (with no support for “Love”), and it’s supported with 3rd-party Greasemonkey scripts (for Firefox and Chrome (and Safari?)) for Google Music and Amazon MP3 Player. ]

Get Your Head Around my Blue Morning

Recent NPR Song of the Day tracks for you:

• "Get Your Head Around It" by Headlights
• "Blue Morning" by Kate Maki

You can stream them from NPR's site (which is linked from each song). I've sent Pandora an e-mail suggesting that they add the songs to their database. On that note, I always get a personal response from one of the people at Pandora whenever I send them a song suggestion. I think that's pretty cool.

Scrobbling Pandora Songs to Last.fm!

UPDATE: I just found OpenPandora, which is like a PandoraJam for Windows (i.e., it is a desktop Pandora application that scrobbles to Last.fm). So, our list of cool Pandora+Last.fm apps and mashups is now...

• PandoraJam - OS X Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes lots of other cool features, like recording Pandora streams to a format that can be used by iTunes and the iPod.


• OpenPandora - Windows Desktop application that plays Pandora and scrobbles to Last.fm. It also includes other cool features, like integration with the Wiimote and some software applications.


• PandoraFM - Web mashup that combines Pandora and Last.fm. This mashup does more than just scrobble to Last.fm; it really combines nearly everything of Pandora with nearly everything of Last.fm. For example, you can access tags and music information from Last.fm.

I'm not sure which is my "favorite." I'm just happy that these are available. I have a feeling there are more too.

I love Pandora. I also love Last.fm. I feel bad when I listen to Pandora because my songs don't get scrobbled to Last.fm. It's like all of that good listening time is just being wasted. However, I feel like I get exposed to more NEW music through Pandora because I primarily use Last.fm to listen to my own station.

Today, I accidentally found PandoraJam, which solves this problem! It is a desktop application (like PandoraBoy) that streams from Pandora and, at the end of each Pandora song, scrobbles to Last.fm! This gives me the best of both worlds! It has other features too. For example, you can record Pandora audio so you can take it with you later on your iPod. However, the scrobbling feature (which is the only entirely free feature) is the one that really impresses me.

However, this isn't a perfect solution. For one, it doesn't help me when I'm on a Windows machine. Second, it doesn't let me do cool Last.fm things like "Love" tracks. So, I went searching, and I found PandoraFM. This is a WEB mashup that combines Last.fm and Pandora. In fact, it even scrobbles at half the length of the song after a configurable number of seconds (default is 90), which is more like what you'd expect. So it's great! Solves all my problems.

So, if you use both Last.fm and Pandora, you need to check out PandoraFM.

Seeqpod: Playable Search

Also try SkreemR (http://skreemr.com/), another playable music search (with some other cool features). The Tech-Reicipes Blog has a good description of the coolest features.

Try out SeeqPod (http://www.seeqpod.com).

It's a new search engine that searches the web for playable MP3 songs and then lets you play them right on the web page.

It's a great way to find free MP3 music, and it's arguably legal! :)