I am unable to play playlists that I have created in Rhapsody on my stereo. I have the SoundBridge M1001 and it is able to play custom channels but not the playlists. Is there a setting that I am overlooking?

What happens when you connect to Rhapsody, and go to Browse -> Playlists?

I can browse the play list and select it. When I tell it to play I get the message "Prepairing to Play" then after a few seconds it says "Unable to play" then tires the next song and repeats the same messages for each song.

Can you play local content properly, if you don't choose playlists?
For example, can you play albums, artists, etc?

What type of content are you trying to play?
Are they located locally on your computer, an external hard drive, or on a network drive?

which version of rhapsody do you have?
And, has this worked properly before?

I had another user who reported a problem only after updating from Rhapsody 3 to Rhapsody 4. I couldn't duplicate his problem in rhapsody 4, but downgrading to 3 was a temporarysolution for him.

I doubt that this is the problem, but one thing that you do need to make sure of is that the tracks you're trying to play are available for streaming. Some Rhapsody tracks are download only -- not streamable. Unfortunately, because of how Rhapsody's UPnP server works, only streamable tracks can be played, and even tracks that are downloaded to your drive are instead streamed over the Internet.

I have never used anything but Rhapsody 4 and am new to this also. The content I am trying to play is streaming audio since I only have the free account that I get from having comcast cable internet. If I create a "My Custom Channel" this does work. If I want to play any other content on my local hard drive I do not use Rhapsody rather just use the Windows Media Player via my Roku device.

With the free service I am limited to only 25 songs that I can play per month via the streaming service and do not have the option to download any. Untill I can get things working so I can play them on my stero system I do not want to pay for any additional service with them.

You may want to check with them to be sure that the free accounts allow UPnP devices to stream. This is not something I'm certain of.

I have no problem playing any of the channels and these are streamed audio via UPnP. From what I know a stream is a stream, if one works then the other should also.

I'm not at all sure that "a stream is a stream" in this case.

I contacted Rhapsody and it seems that the problem is that there files are streamed in a real audio format that is protected. As such the SoundBridge will not work since it does not support protected files. They refered me to either the Sqeezebox, Sonos or Nokia N800 devices. Looks like I have to sell my SoundBridge and get something else.

I use the free Rhapsody service, but use version 3. I can play the Radio stations, but not playlists or tracks. However, on the version 3 UPnP server page there is a check box for transcoding to WMA and MP3. This would probably only work for downloaded songs, not for streamed songs. The radio stations are listed as protected WMA streams on the Soundbridge. It might be worth it to download (buy) a track to see if it plays on the Soundbridge, or pay for a month's subscription to see if that works by downloading the tracks to your computer, in protected format of course! Either way is cheaper than buying a new unit......

jarmar wrote:

I contacted Rhapsody and it seems that the problem is that there files are streamed in a real audio format that is protected. As such the SoundBridge will not work since it does not support protected files.

Hmmmm, that's a bummer.

What?! No, that's absolutely incorrect information. Absolutely incorrect. We were one of the very first devices to support Rhapsody streaming, in fact. Whoever gave you that information gave you completely wrong information.

I'm playing streamed Rhapsody content on my unit right now, and it works beautifully. I've been a Rhapsody customer since they debuted.

Here's the deal with Rhapsody. Their content is streamed in WMA format, protected by a special streaming DRM system.

They currently offer two different ways to stream music to client devices. One is to stream via the Rhapsody UPnP server built into the Rhapsody program, which runs on the PC. With version 4.0 of their software, Rhapsody can even run in a "UPnP" mode, where it's minimized to the System Tray and uses less of your computer's resources. This mode -- using the PC, either minimized or not -- is the mode that we support.

Rhapsody also has a new service where devices can stream directly from their servers without using the PC program. We do not support that direct connection at this time, but we are very interested in pursuing it.

Downloading a file has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on being able to stream to a SoundBridge. Even if you have a downloaded file on your computer, when the SoundBridge asks to play it, Rhapsody streams it over the Internet. I believe this is because when Rhapsody downloads tracks, they're wrapped in Windows Media DRM (not Rhapsody's proprietary streaming DRM), and they didn't want to implement the extensive client/server handshaking required to play WM-DRM tracks over the network.

So, as I said above, I suspect that the problem may lie in the limited nature of your account. It is not a limitation of the SoundBridge -- we play Rhapsody files just fine.

It must be something with the free accounts. I can't even browse to select the tracks or a playlist in the library from the Soundbridge, but the radio stations work fine (in WMA protected format). The UPnP server is active, and transcoding is selected. Maybe I'll play with it a bit more, to see if I can get the tracks to work.

Rhapsody says "Warning - The Selected Streams will not be added because you are not a subscriber" when I try to add any of the Rhapsody track streams to the Rhapsody library. So it seems it's a limitation of the free service.

EDIT: ..and when I add a "regular" mp3 track to the Rhapsody library, it plays back fine on the Soundbridge.