The Wonderful World of Wi-Fi Page 4

Omnifi Wireless Streamer

If Wi-Fi can extend your computer's reach to the farthest nooks of your home, there's no reason it shouldn't venture out into the garage, too. The Omnifi Wireless Digital Media Transfer System, to give it its full name, lets you access music files stored either on your computer or on the Internet and download them to your home theater or car on a prescheduled basis. So if a car commute is part of your daily grind, the Omnifi system lets you roll out of the driveway each morning freshly loaded with new tunes and other types of programming. omni dms1

The full system includes the DMS1 Home Digital Media Streamer ($299, see "The Cutting Edge," for a more detailed report), the DMP1 Mobile Digital Media Player ($599) - each of which can be used separately - and SimpleCenter software. You use the software to convert CDs to MP3 or Windows Media Audio (WMA) format on your PC, tag the files with artist, album, and song title information via the Gracenote CDDB online database, and then organize it all into playlists. You can also use it to schedule a daily download of the Wall Street Journal's Web audio service (at $50 a year for an online subscription) and a sampler of new music from online sites like pressplay. Once you decide what you want and when you want it, SimpleCenter will fetch it for you.

To get up and running, you hook up the system's home and car components to a wireless LAN adapter ($70) via their USB ports. This allows them to wirelessly link up to your PC via a Wi-Fi router and download music and other audio programs streamed off its hard disk. The DMS1, which connects to your A/V system via composite/S-video and stereo audio jacks, has a front-panel jog wheel and LED screen for browsing content stored on your PC. But you'll be better off hooking it up to your TV and using its remote to navigate onscreen menus. Once you're done, you can kick back and listen to music stored on your PC as easily as you would with any other component in your rack. (Fosgate Audionics, another brand owned by Omnifimedia's parent company, Rockford, also has a video-capable media streamer slated to reach store shelves in spring 2004.)

The DMP1, which consists of a dashboard-mounted controller and 20-GB removable hard-disk cartridge, has both RF and stereo RCA jacks to connect to your car's head unit plus a USB port for the wireless adapter. A jog dial and graphics display on the controller's front panel lets you scan files stored on the resident hard disk, selecting the album, song, playlist, or other type of program to listen to. As with the Omnifi home receiver, the DMP1's wireless adapter enables it to make a wire-free link with your PC, loading you up with enough music and news for your daily ride. You just pull up in the garage, hit a button, and in a few minutes you're ready to roll with a new batch of tunes freshly loaded into the DMP1's mini hard drive. How cool is that? And if you're going on a long trip and require more storage, you can easily swap out the hard-disk cartridge for a second one filled with more tunes, news programs, audio books, and so on.

If you're one of those people who spend almost as much time in their cars as they do at home, the Omnifi system is worth checking out as a way to keep both entertained and in touch with world events no matter where you are. The wireless connection to your PC means that both the home and car receivers never have to be removed, and with the customizable SimpleCenter software controlling the flow of data, you'll be in the driver's seat.

www.omnifimedia.com

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