Hats off to Sonos

[phil4]

While the prevailing view is that Sonos stuff is over priced, and aping Apple in some regards, I found an unexpected upside today.

First a teeny bit of background. My internet connecting comes in upstairs, and goes into one of our bedrooms, known as "the study". There sits firewall, switches and server (yeah, I know... but I do IT and stuff for living).

Downstairs we've a telly, and around it Amp, Sky box, Xbox, PS3, Sonos Connect. And as you probably know, the Sky box, and older Amps, while networkable, don't do wifi. So to make my life easier and things more reliable, I've run a network cable from study down to the TV stack, and into an 8port switch. The devices all wire into the switch.

Now for the (perhaps) interesting bit. Just the other day, we stripped out the study to decorate it. The cable therefore was no longer plugged in up in the study.

But rather than leave everything by the TV with no network connection, the Sonos has stepped in, and now acts as a wireless bridge, providing networking to all those devices plugged into the switch. What I find even more amazing about that, is that the Sonos did that silently, with no changes or settings required from me. It just did it seamlessly.

So now I have a wireless backup should the cable ever fail.

[GoNz0]

very clever.

[Funkstar]

The old Squeezebox's could do that, although not seamlessly.

It's such a shame Logitech have abandoned the SB line, as it looks like they could have jumped on the coat tails of all this Sonos advertising going on at the moment. I do wonder if whole house audio is finally coming of age. Only about 10 years behind me

It might actually be that I have to retire my collection of Squeezeboxes and move to a Sonos system in the future

[TheAnimus]

Yeah, just don't count on it lasting.

They might send you an email then a fortnight later issue a mandatory firmware update that removes the feature you bought them for.

Sonos handled this very badly, explaining that they have removed the feature and I should instead use Spotify if I want DRM music playback.

I had to remind them very strongly of the laws, sadly they didn't care that Best Buy had decided to go bust that week, leaving me with my credit card company as only fall back.

I deal with a lot of technology firms and software vendors, I am used to addressing issues in a professional and competent manner. I also have realistic expectations (I am not entitled to a full refund).

Sonos did nothing to help. They are a truly terrible firm, to remove the key feature of their device. I would strongly recommend against anyone buying their kit.