OTHER TECH

PERFORMANCE Now ready to start streaming, I focused my attention on the rechargeable wireless remote. This wand has a truly sleek design that feels comfortable in the hand, with an attractive blue backlit LCD, scroll wheel, and a minimal number of buttons that keep things simple, including some large, readily accessible transport keys right in the middle. The remote really makes it easy to navigate your PC's music collection. The main menu shows My Music, Internet Radio, and other PC sources such as Podcasts. From the My Music menu, for example, I could select by artist, playlist, genres, albums, or songs. I particularly liked the DJ List of songs currently selected for playback; using the DJ List Add button to the lower left of the scroll wheel, I could put more songs or albums into the queue without interrupting the music - a great feature for parties. Of course, I could also control volume and mute from the remote.

The range for the Bluetooth transmitter, operating at 2.4 GHz, is advertised as about 150 feet, though in my house I got about 100 feet of reliable reception. Sound quality of the music signal was largely determined by the quality of the original file itself rather than the transmission path, which was stable and quiet. Listening tests with my extensive Pink Floyd PC music library completely confirmed that.

In short, if someone simply handed you the DJ Music remote, you might think it was a portable music player, because it operates exactly like one. But the DJ is more versatile: The system can stream MP3, iTunes (AAC), WMA, Internet radio, podcasts, and other types of audio. Moreover, it works with all kinds of popular media software, including iTunes, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch, and others, as well as with subscription services such as Rhapsody and Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

A decent number of StreamPoint screens are provided to let you access your music libraries, adjust remote parameters such as sleep-mode times, and more. For daily operation, though, you don't need to mess with these; StreamPoint mainly works in the background.