Digital Trends

Roku SoundBridge M2000 December 14th, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

The first thing you will want to do when you get your SoundBridge is to check for a firmware upgrade. Just go into the setup menu and have it check for updates using your existing Internet connection. Roku has been adding a lot of cool features to their SoundBridge product, like adding support for Slim Server 5.4 and a web interface, so check for updates often. For our tests, we decided to try the SoundBridge with our Media Center PC using Microsoft Media Connect and Windows Media Player 10. A Media Center PC is not required in order to get the SoundBridge to interface using Windows Media Connect. We do recommend that you pay a visit to the Microsoft Windows Update page so you can download Media Player 10 and Media connect. Once you get Windows Media Connect installed, you will need to enable it and let the software know that you plan on using it with the Roku SoundBridge. Before you use any networked devices with Media Connect you need to give it permission to do so. This prevents others from using your media library without your permission. Once we installed Windows Media Player 10 and Windows Media Connect, we had WMP 10 search for the artist information for our digital audio tracks. WMP 10 will fill in the artist, song and other track information for you including the genre for the artist.

Once we got our library in place, we simply turned on the Roku SoundBridge and followed its setup prompts. The SoundBridge will ask you for the name of the network you would like to connect to as well as the SSID and WEP key so it can connect. Setup was very simple and did not require any extensive processes — we literally had it up and running in 10 minutes time. Using Windows Media Connect, the SoundBridge interfaces directly with your computers library allowing you to browse by artist, album, genre etc. as if you were actually sitting at your computer. The bright and attractive display will show you the song information or an equalizer graphic depending on how you set it up. The SoundBridge is great to use for dinner parties or other events where you are entertaining. If people are curious about the artist that is playing, the SoundBridge has the information there for you.

The SoundBridge has one major flaw when it comes to streaming media, it will not recognize shared drives on your network. Instead it requires that you install 3^rd party server software from Microsoft, iTunes or Slim Server (just to name a few) utilizing UP&P (Universal Plug & Play)(mostly Windows-based servers), DAAP (iTunes, under license from Apple), or the SlimServer protocol. before you can actually stream music with it. Whenever you decide to rely on another company's product in order for yours to work, it can throw in a whole slue of problems and for the novice user this is a nightmare. If the SoundBridge has a problem streaming music and you just can't figure out what the problem is, do you call Roku or Apple? And will either one of them own the problem at issue?