MaximumPC 2006 01

W

e’re of three minds when it comes to the Olive Musica streaming box. The

audiophile in us says, “We’ll pay any price for a streaming box that sounds

this fabulous.” The skinfl int in us says, “Why pay for features our PCs already

have?” And the geek in us says, “That’s cool!”

The Musica has several characteristics in common with our 2005 “Gear

of the Year” pick, the Sonos Digital Music System. The Musica, for example,

is outfi tted with not only an 802.11g wireless access point, but also a built-in

four-port Ethernet switch. The Musica delivers absolutely pristine audio quality

that’s at least on par with the Sonos. But like the Sonos, the Musica has a few

redundant features.

Where the Sonos includes a superfl uous built-in amplifi er, the Musica comes

with not only its own 160GB hard drive, but also its own CD burner, music data-

base, and Internet radio presets. In fact, one

of the manufacturer’s stated design goals is

to render the server PC unnecessary.

Olive has wisely

recognized, howev-

er, that ‘tis better to

augment a PC than

to replace it with

something inferior.

Despite the large,

high-resolution

LCD, the innovative jog/shuttle controller, and the collection of buttons adorning

the Musica’s brushed-aluminum face, its user interface is much simpler than a

mouse-driven GUI. The remote control serves its function well, but it’s certainly

not the best remote we’ve ever used.

It’s inherently cool to watch the Musica suck a CD into its tray-less CD

burner, and then proceed to rip the contents (you can even program it to do

this without touching a single button). You can digitize analog sources, such as

your collection of classic vinyl, too. Burning a CD on the spot is equally nifty.

Armed with these gee-whiz features and the Musica’s immaculate sound, the

geek and the audiophile in us

succeeded in overcoming our

skinfl int’s objections.

—MICHAEL BROWN

Olive Musica Wireless

Music System

This audio streaming box is expensive, but worth every penny

P

innacle’s ShowCenter 200 receives not only audio streams over a wired

or wireless network, but digital video (including HD), digital photos, and

Internet radio, too. Ultimately, however, we found the device to be hobbled by

design shortcomings and DRM-related constraints.

The device sports a bounty of audio-video outputs, but HDTV owners will

be disappointed by the absence of a DVI or HDMI port. You can plug digital cam-

eras and storage devices into the handy front-mounted USB 2.0 port.

We connected the ShowCenter 200 to an 802.11g network for our tests.

The server software consumed minimal CPU and memory resources on the

host PC, and a Sigma Designs RealImage EM 8620 processor handled the

decoding duties at the receiving end. We rarely saw more than 3 percent

CPU utilization while streaming formats the player supports natively. Video

and audio quality were uniformly excellent.

Pinnacle’s MediaManager software

makes it a snap to organize the video

and photos stored on your hard drive, but

Real Networks’

Rhapsody is the

only music sub-

scription service

it recognizes.

Importing iTunes

playlists is a

clumsy process

requiring third-party freeware, and then you’re restricted to importing MP3s

because there’s no support for AAC files (the ShowCenter doesn’t support

FLAC or OGG files, either). And despite the fact that Yahoo’s music subscrip-

tion service uses encrypted WMA files, just like Rhapsody, MediaManager

won’t import songs from Yahoo’s service at all.

The news about video formats is decidedly better, because the ShowCenter

supports both Divx 6 and VOB fi les ripped from a DVD, as well as DV AVI, WMV,

and most other fl avors of MPEG.

The interface used to browse content in your living room could be

improved. The UI is not entirely intuitive, and it responds sluggishly to com-

mands sent from the remote. The ShowCenter 200 is a big step in the right

direction, but we’re still a long

way from having perfect video

streaming in the living room.

—MICHAEL BROWN

Pinnacle ShowCenter 200

This A/V streaming box has too many limitations

reviewsTESTED. REVIEWED. VERDICTIZED

78 MA XIMUMPC JANUARY 2006

The Olive Musica streaming box will look right at home next

to the finest hi-fi gear in your rack.

Pinnacle’s ShowCenter 200 can stream audio, digital photos, and

video, including high-def.

OLIVE MUSICA

9

MA XIMUMPC

KICKASS

$1,100, http://www.olive.us

SPECS

AUDIO INPUT Analog (RCA stereo)

AUDIO OUTPUTS Toslink, SPDIF, analog (RCA stereo),

headphones

AUDIO FORMATS AIFF, AAC, FLAC, MP3, Ogg/Vobris,

WMA, WAV

EXTRAS Built-in 160GB hard drive, 24x CD-

R/16x CD-RW, USB 2.0 (2)



PINNACLE SHOWCENTER

$300, http://www.pinnaclesys.com

SPECS

VIDEO OUTPUTS Component, S-Video, composite

VIDEO FORMATS MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (including VOB),

MPEG-4 AVI, Divx (including Divx

6), Xvid, DV AVI, WMV

AUDIO OUTPUTS Toslink, SPDIF, analog (two RCA

stereo pairs)

AUDIO FORMATS MP3, MPA, PCM WAV, WMA