Denon's NetAudio

By Dave Winer on 1/30/07; 12:54:28 PM.

This morning I explored the NetAudio feature of my new Denon receiver, and found more new interesting ideas, fully implemented. Had Apple done this first, we would all have raved about how they were reinventing home audio, what Denon is doing is that good, with the usual caveat that the user interface is at best workable and at worst -- slow and ugly. But it works, and that amazes me. 

The first thing I did was visit the central website, radiodenon.com, enter the MAC address of the receiver, which I got from the attached devices page of my Netgear router. It needs to know the address because once a day the receiver checks with this website to see if I've updated my favorites, and the ID it uses is the MAC address. Then I browse through the directory, by geography, by format or by language, and added my usual favorites, WBUR, WNYC, KCRW, WJCT. And a few new ones, including Virgin Radio and the DNA Lounge. Now I'm going to wait 24 hours and come back and see if my receiver knows about it. 

In the meantime, I found that there's a minimal directory available through the fractional horsepower HTTP server in the receiver itself. I navigated through its menus, and chose WBUR, my favorite Boston radio station. Now I feel like I'm at Berkman, living in Newton, and getting ready to dig some snow!