Streamium Your Music Around The Home – Philips MCi500H

Philips has just launched the MCi500H Streamium Wireless Micro Hi-Fi System.
I was interested in the last one but on testing there were a few issues including sluggish ripping and not the best audio – I wasn’t too sure about its styling either.

This spanky new one looks rather nice and has a 100W Class “D” digital amplifier and two-way speakers with silk dome tweeters and 5.25-inch woofers and can play back CD, CD-RW, MP3-CD and WMA-CD disks plus MP3, WMA or (non-DRM) AAC encoded tracks. 

That all sounds pretty good but until I get my lugholes caressed (or offended) my judgement is still on the cautious side.

It has doubled its capacity and now has a 160GB hard disk.

CDs can be ripped to the hard disk at MP3 bit rates between 128 and 320kbps or alternatively using VBR – with the Gracenote system automatically adding metadata to be viewed on the colour LCD display.

You can play and store tracks saved on your puter via drag ‘n’ drop either via the supplied Ethernet cable or wirelessly streamed.

You can add satellite systems to wirelessly stream music stored on the hard disk to up to five rooms around your pad.

It will go on sale next week or so with an estimated price of £399