Philips NP2500/37 WiFi Internet Radio Network Music Player with Rhapsody (Black)
From Philips Consumer Electronics
Wirelessly access 10,000+ Internet stations FREE, your music library, and Music On-Demand with a free trial from Rhapsody. Streamium is your Home Jukebox. You can access Internet music from your home country or hometown, by musical genre (rock, pop, news, sports, 80's, etc.). Your digital music is easily accessed by Streamium so you are always connected to music you already own (in addition you can leverage music from multiple PCs/Macs). Finally, you can get music-on-demand with Rhapsody (free trial included). Search thousands of titles and artists for music of your choice or play "name-that-tune" with your friends and family (by preferred genre). This network music player allows you to "free your music" from MP3 players and your computer. With easy setup you can hook-up to your home theater or home audio system so you can experience seamless entertainment with quality you are used to hearing. FullSound is a great feature built-in that brings back high-quality CD sound from your digitally compressed MP3 files. Enjoy album art from your favorite artists (from your PC/Mac, or from Rhapsody) and enjoy radio station logos and pictures that can be shown on your player. A remote allows easy music management from a distance.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #25622 in Consumer Electronics
- Color: Black
- Brand: Philips
- Model: NP2500/37
- Dimensions: 3.90" h x 1.34" w x 9.94" l, 3.10 pounds
Philips NP2500/37 Network Music Player - Wireless Music Playback from Any PC
The new Philips Streamium network music player NP2500 won the coveted CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award 2009. It is a highly compact and elegant player that connects users to diverse realms of music from their PC music library and the Internet radio and Online Music services (only in US) – all to be enjoyed in superb FullSound™ on their existing home stereo
 Enjoy music wherever you are |
Free the music on your computer in your house - great sound quality, easy to setup
If you are music lover like me, you will just love this product, I have tons of music on my computer and have not listened to many of them in years just because of the pain of going to the computer every time I have to listen to them.
This unit will unlock the music by streaming all that music in a neatly bundled package with remote, display and sleep timer so that you can listen to your favorite music from your computer, internet radio stations
Target use for this unit: Connectivity to home stereo/theatre
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This unit does not have inbuilt speakers - actually this device designed to be used with your home theatre/home stereo system or a set of speakers.
Setup and connectivity to Internet: Excellent
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Overall setup time required : About 10 mins after you unbox
The setup is pretty easy, just like you would connect to your laptop to the secure/unsecured wireless internet/wired internet - you will have to just type in the wireless security password with the remote that comes with this unit.
Audio Quality: Excellent
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Audio quality is superb if you are listening on a set of external speakers, headphones or your home theater it sounds very clear and crisp.
Has simple equalizer settings for Jazz, Classics and Pop
Display: Good
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The display is well designed and useful information. If you are playing music, it displays the Band/singer and the time remaining on the song and if you are not playing anything, it will display the current time.
Streaming audio from PC/network drive: Excellent
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Installation & Usability : Very easy to setup streaming, because of the software (twonky media) which they have bundled along with the unit. All you need to do is to install twonkymedia on the computer which contains all your music files. On your unit, go to the menu and look for uPnp servers and the unit will display your computer, select that you are all set to listen to your favorite music based on artist/album/playlist.
There are 2 conditions for the music streaming to work:
- the philips Network music player and the computer hosting your music have to be on the same server
- the Upnp port should be open in your router for music to pass through the router, typicall it is open for all internal data, if it does not work it is something which you want to check in your router manual and open the port
Sometime this year, I want to buy a nice media drive, which comes with a built in uPnP driver, so that I can host the music on the drive instead of a computer.
Internet Radio : Excellent
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Installation :
No additional installation required
Usability :
East to browse through stations, radio stations categorized by Genre, Language, Country ..., you can even search for internet radio stations.
Audio quality:
Very good audio quality, way better than your regular FM or satellite channels.
Rhapsody: Good
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Installation :
No additional installation required
Usability : Easy to use, well organized channels
Wish list
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(1) A FM tuner would have made this unit a comprehensive unit, I really miss it
(2) A video player + photo frame on a slightly bigger screen like the Philips AJL 308 !
Works great for accessing your computer files remotely
I've been working from home a fair amount and have a netbook that has my music library loaded on it. I keep my music library on a netbook as opposed to an Ipod because I rip my music using a lossless format to preserve the quality of the sound (I love classical music and have top of the line headphones so want to preserve the detail of the original recordings).
When I'm home, even though I have my big stereo and could use the actual CD -- I find that I'm spoiled with my playlists from my netbook and don't want to have to get up and switch CDs all the time. I would hook my netbook up to a set of Klipsch 5.2 speakers and that worked pretty well but it seemed kind of stupid to have those speakers sitting next to my main home stereo system.
Enter Philips Network Music player. I can now access my computer music collection and play it through my home stereo system. I can even use a remote to control the music. Set up was a breeze with our wireless router and hooking into the amplifier of our system. Sound quality is even better than through my headphones or the Klipsch speakers -- presumably because my home system is much much better.
I have played around with the internet radio some and that seems to work well. I particularly like the access to the XM station play lists. I gave the system 4 stars, though because using the internet radio features etc wasn't as intuitive as I would like.
This is a near-perfect little system that I would highly recommend to anyone who wants to take advantage of all the hours spent ripping their music collection onto their computer and creating playlists just the way they want them. Price is very reasonable -- especially considering the amount of money we have invested in our home system and our music collection.
[NCJVR]
One of its functions is great, the others...not so much
The entire problem with this player is that it does one thing really well, but has a couple of other features thrown in addition that don't work as advertised.
As a player for Rhapsody, this really rocks. The songs come up quickly, the interface is easy to navigate, and all the songs feature artwork that looks great on the small but crisp LCD. The only downside is that it requires a paid Rhapsody account, although the free month is a nice introduction.
When it comes to internet radio and streaming music as an UPnP device, this player really falls apart. The internet radio functions work well, but the connectivity is very slow compared to the Rhapsody service, and it is unable to display song information from every station. Some stations work, some don't. Also, to find radio stations you are limited to either browsing the menus, or using the number pad to enter the station's name or a serach keyword. The number pad works about as well as using a cell phone without T9, so it is functional but very, very slow.
The UPnP service for streaming music from your home computer never worked for me. I installed the bundled software, updated it from the company's website, but the music never started. I was able to find my music library, even my iTunes playlists, but when I hit "Play," the player just hung forever and never started the music. FYI, I'm running a Macbook Pro with iTunes, and I keep my music on an external network hard drive, so that may have been the issue. A search through the forums of the Twonky Media Player(used for streaming) revealed nothing helpful, and I was unable to resolve it in the time I had to review the item.
As far as the player itself, the design is attractive and should fit well with most home electronics. The screen is bright and clear, and the remote works as well as can be expected. There are no on device controls, so the remote is essential to any use of the player, but I had no problems. It was also easy to connect to the internet, although entering a wireless network password using the number pad was time-consuming.
Bottom line, don't expect it to work seamlessly as a streaming media center from your PC or Mac's music collection. If you want it mainly for internet radio, it works, but is a bit hard to use. Rhapsody works great, but again, it requires a subscription.
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