San Francisco – Olive Media, marketer of multiroom hard-drive music server/players, is developing its first all-in-one model to incorporate touchscreen display, hard drive, network technology, and amplifier in a single chassis.
The Olive ONE component, targeted to high-performance users, takes the shape of an aluminum-and-glass disc that lies flat on a table.
The company, which has developed a pre-production prototype, plans summertime shipments at $399 with optional $499 1TB or $599 2TB hard drive. The company is tapping into the IndieGoGo crowdfunding web site to raise additional money to buy specialized tooling and enhance the company’s build-to-order capabilities. Although “established companies don’t typically turn to crowdfunding,” Olive’s crowdfunding plans will enable it to involve end users, app developers and musicians in the final design, said Robert Altman, senior VP of business development. App developers could develop music apps that enable interaction with musicians, the company noted.
The device, which is 1.5-inches-tall and 9 inches in diameter, connects to a home Wi-Fi network to recognize and stream all music stored on networked devices, but the optional 2.5-inch hard drives enable local music storage. Locally stored music can also be accessed remotely over the Internet from a remote PC’s web browser and from the company’s Android and iOS apps.
Within a home, multiple Olive ONEs can be set up to play the same song or different songs simultaneously, all controlled from the device’s embedded touchscreen or from a Wi-Fi-equipped tablet or smartphones. Music can also be streamed over a home network not just from PCs but also from one Olive ONE to another.
Though it can be controlled from its built-in multitouch capacitive touchscreen, Olive ONE can be controlled from an iOS or Android mobile device or from a user interface transmitted direct to a TV via Wi-Fi Direct to a TV. In that case, an Apple or Android mobile device would be used to control the UI.
The component also features Wi-Fi Alliance-certified Miracast technology, which builds on Wi-Fi Direct to provide simplified discovery and setup.
Each Olive ONE also accesses such music-streaming services as such as Spotify, Pandora and Songza as well as YouTube. It decodes MP3, FLAC, ALAC, WAV, and AIFF files as well as iTunes tracks. And it incorporates 32-bit/384kHz Burr-Brown DACs and dual amplifiers.
Stereo Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi Direct also enables each Olive ONE to stream music from Bluetooth- and WiFi-Direct-enabled mobile devices.
With optional hard drives, Olive ONE will locally store up to 6,000 albums in CD quality or 20,000 HD tracks, the company said.
A cylinder-shaped speaker that mounts underneath the Olive ONE is planned.
Olive ONE will be sold direct at www.myolive.com.
In November, the company announced plans for first-quarter availability of its first hard-drive music servers with built-in amplifier, smartphone connectivity, and new OS.
