Re: Home Audio and Windows Vista

["Bill Kearney" <wkearney-99@hot-mail-com>]

> Yes. Read everything you can about Vista's DRM (Digital Rights
> Management) and how it can prevent you from using content you have a
> perfect right to use. Make sure you know what you're getting in to.
>
> If you really, really want Vista, I'd recommend waiting at least a year
> to see how things settle out. Or you might take a look at Apple's
> offerings.

That's bullshit.  If you're all hung up about DRM look no further than Apple
for it.  Their iTunes tracks are laden with it, not to mention sound crappy
too.  No thanks.

As for whole house audio, it'll depend on what sort of setup you're using to
distribute the audio throughout the house.  If you're planning on multiple
zones (each one listening to an independent source) then things get more
complicated.  That and how you expect to control the sources from within
each room.  I use a PC running J.River's MediaCenter version12 to distribute
both FM and 3 audio streams (mainly mp3, but some FLAC, ogg and wma stuff
too).  I've got three USB 'sound cards' attached to the PC.  I've setup MC12
to treat them as "zones".  Each zone gets it's own playlist.  They're
controlled in-room from Russound Uno keypads.  It's been working quite well
for a couple years now.  It'll make no difference to run MC12 on Vista, XP
or even w2k.

-Bill Kearney