Tue May 29, 2007 11:28 am
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.
Last edited by RokuMike on Wed May 30, 2007 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.