Aireo MP3 player sports wireless transfer and FM transmitter

January 19, 2004

According to Pioneer Press, soon to be available at Best Buy for around 300 dollars, this MP3 player has a small capacity of 1.5 gigabytes, but is the world's first-ever portable wireless WiFi (802.11B) MP3 player. Nominated for a "Best of CES" slot at this years show, it has turned some heads and has it's sites set on the iPod.

SoniqCast president Kurt Thielen, who along with a small group of engineers that were laid off from their jobs at an Illinois telecommunications firm, conceived and produced the product themselves. Until last summer, they struggled along in development alone, without investors.

Here is a quote from the Soniqcast site about the the player:

SoniqCast President Kurt Thielen, says, 'Aireo won 'Best of CES Portable Audio' because it is different from every other player on the market. It automatically and wirelessly moves music from a PC to the player, utilizing a wireless WiFi connection. This eliminates the manual download process and the use of wires required with other MP3 players. Our SoniqSync software, automates the music download process, and makes it so much easier to capture and listen to music. In addition to moving content wirelessly from PC to player, Aireo's internal FM transmitter allows the user to wirelessly transmit music from our player directly to a car stereo. This eliminates more wires and accessories required by other MP3 players. Once consumers get used to the automatic download of music content that they'll get with Aireo, they'll never want to do another manual download again."

Aireo comes with SonicSync, automatic content management software, that gives Aireo owners the freedom to download music and data wirelessly on demand or based on a user defined schedule. And unlike other MP3 players that require a cumbersome cable hookup process, Aireo accesses Internet music services via WiFi-enabled computers and laptops that have an Internet connection. Future releases of Aireo software are expected to enable content download directly from the Internet via Hotspots and peer-to-peer content download from one Aireo player to another. When WiFi connections are not available, downloads can be performed from any computer using the Aireo USB interface.

Aireo's other notable features include an internal hard disk drive, a built-in FM transmitter for wireless broadcasting of music over home or car stereo systems, and two headphone outputs for multiple-party private listening.

Once an Aireo is linked to a PC with a Wi-Fi hook-up, the player can automatically synchronize the music-file contents of its hard drive with new digital tunes it finds on the PC. It also has a built-in slot for 1 gigabyte SD flash memory cards to transfer photos from digital cameras. This feature isn't fully operational on prototype Aireos but is scheduled to be available with finished devices for sale.

SoniqCast says the player is not yet fully compatible with new music-download services such as Musicmatch Downloads and Napster that sell copy-protected music. While the Aireo plays generic MP3 and Windows Media files, it isn't fully equipped to handle more specialized Windows Media files from the Musicmatch and Napster online stores. Details are sketchy, but you can go to the Soniqcast site to learn more about this player.

Source: Pioneer Press