[golfinguy]

Been looking into streaming devices to solve a Music on Hold issue for us, but have come up short thus far. Figured people here would be more knowledgable on these devices than I.


We have a high number of locations that need this. The locations have no local staff or servers. We have opportunity to config things before they are shipped, but this device really needs to be plug and play - quite literally.


We're looking to either stream audio content form the home office over the network or from local storage in the device (SD card, etc.) that can be updated remotely (drive share, ftp, etc.).


I've found and tested devices that can do this, but here's the rub - none of them have an auto-play option for what we want. If this thing loses power and reboots we need it to start playing content (either from a remote media server or the local storage) automatically.


I know there are companies that sell music on hold specific devices that can do this - but they are priced at more than twice the cost of the streaming devices I've looked at (Asus, Roku, Sony, WD, etc.). That adds up fast given our number of locations (several thousand).


Is there a streaming device that I have overlooked that can do this?


Thanks!

 

[mayhem13]

Not sure in the commercial world where you would go to purchase a closed network media system, but you could certainly turn to a software/developer to write code that when a streaming device is turned on, it would start up and access an HTTP (your office of course) where a music catalogue of your choice would play constantly. We have such a device in mmy high end retail environment known as network branded media where it's updated by the marketing/advertising dept on a weekly basis. It's a stand alone PC with monitor that on start up simply does it's thing. Does require some in house maintance from time to time but what doesn't?

 

[MarkHotchkiss]

Hi GolfingGuy,


I don't know where your price point is, but these are not much more expensive than some of the consumer media streamers, but are meant for your application.

http://www.barix.com/Exstreamer/771/

 

[golfinguy]

Mayhem, we have very small offices and a PC is not available for use. Although we did consider tossing something on a user's PC to run in the background, but its not an attractive option given the current application burden on the PCs and the cabling that would be required.



Mark, Thanks for the link, that is one company I had not found yet. Closer in price than others but still twice the cost of the Internet streamers I was hoping to get working.