Honestly, it sounds overly complicated and I still dont understand the basic principle.
Why not just put a music player program on my computer that streams the song into my existing network and have speakers that connect to the network and play it?
You say "You get one Play:5 device". So what is that? Why cant I just buy "speakers" that play whats send to them over the network?
You say "CIFS/SMB". Well, I could make my files available that way. But somehow it feels wrong. Will the song that is played then be streamed to some central device and from there to the speakers? Seems like twice as much streaming as necessary.
You say "Windows/Mac/iOS/Android". So I would have to bring one of my tablets into the game. ANOTHER machine in the mix.
You say "at least one Sonos device must be connected to a wired network" and I still dont understand why. I would understand it if you said "to access your files". Even thought I would prefer it to just swallow an usb stick so I dont have to fiddle with my existing IT. But you say "to act as a wireless AP to allow other Sonos devices to connect to the network and use standard internet services" and I wonder why do they have to? I want the "other devices" just to be speakers and play music.
Honestly, it sounds overly complicated and I still dont understand the basic principle.
Why not just put a music player program on my computer that streams the song into my existing network and have speakers that connect to the network and play it?
You say "You get one Play:5 device". So what is that? Why cant I just buy "speakers" that play whats send to them over the network?
You say "CIFS/SMB". Well, I could make my files available that way. But somehow it feels wrong. Will the song that is played then be streamed to some central device and from there to the speakers? Seems like twice as much streaming as necessary.
You say "Windows/Mac/iOS/Android". So I would have to bring one of my tablets into the game. ANOTHER machine in the mix.
You say "at least one Sonos device must be connected to a wired network" and I still dont understand why. I would understand it if you said "to access your files". Even thought I would prefer it to just swallow an usb stick so I dont have to fiddle with my existing IT. But you say "to act as a wireless AP to allow other Sonos devices to connect to the network and use standard internet services" and I wonder why do they have to? I want the "other devices" just to be speakers and play music.
The Squeezebox thing makes more sense to me.