from your PC in your living room. Basicly like the Slim Squeezebox, but half the price.... I worked for the company the makes the chip, reference design and the complete firmware for this product (I no longer work for this company). But the first product idea started in 1999 in Silicon Valley... (2007 update): Since almost three years I dont work for this company anymore. Since I wrote this little webpage a long time ago, but was afraid to post it. Well, the management is totally different now, the first generation of engineers has almost gone to other places. There is no big secret I telling here, just an interesting tech story, without names, places and too many details. This company did have a great team of engineers, I would say the best team of engineers that I ever worked with (well - except at my current job!). Better engineers than at Silicon Graphics! HISTORY 1999, Silicon Valley.
1999 I applied for a job to Kerbango, the first company that
shipped a fully functional Internet radio appliance, but I didn't
get the job.
2002 Zurich, First Prototype. Internet Radio only.
Demo shown to various customers. Terrible user interface,
the LCD is hard to read and very small. It plays a handful
of hardcoded radiostations.
Work on emulator for most of the time (chip is not available yet).
3 engineers share one emulator board. 80% of the time is spent
debugging not application specific stuff, the OS is really buggy.
2003 Jan Official Projectstart. 2 engineers. skunk work mode.
Initial assignement is wrote two software modules (audio player and
internet radio module). We are building a ready to use product,
we fear otherwise the the project might be easily canceled.
2003 April. Wired version works. Access MP3 files on PC and Internet Radio.
Small fleet of four prototypes for real world beta tests.
2003 May. Wirless Version works. New PCB with wireless chipset,
replace ethernet driver with wireless driver. Demo shown in the US, customer
wants it. "It should be like Slimp3, but wireless and half the price.
We want this one".
2003 June. Project gets ramped up, staffed up with more SW engineers.
UPNP control point added for playing MP3's from PC.
2004 Feb. First Product, available in US
2004 May Second Product, available in US
2004 Nov TerraTec Noxon, available in Europe, Euro 99.00
People actually like it. Works reliably.
Product Description from TerraTec
In Switzerland it's available at K55 and at MediaMarkt for CHF 149.00 (list price EU 99)
2007 (latest update)
I'm no longer with this company.
I know that there are about 10 Streaming Audio players in the market based on the
software and chips that were developed by this company.