There's an increasingly common trend in technology to connect the home computer with the home entertainment system. Most of the focus on this is with outputting video from a computer- whether it's video downloaded from the Internet or simply the computer's desktop applications- but audio is also a very common, frequently overlooked, and much more technically feasible option for integrating the home computer with the home entertainment system. In the past, the common sense way to hook a computer up to a home entertainment system, whether for sound or video, was simply to run a cable or cables from the computer to the home entertainment equipment. While that's obviously a good solution in some ways it has limitations in other ways. For example, it means that you're faced with the option of either having the computer in the living room, which isn't conducive to getting work done on it, or running cables through the walls. Besides, if the computer is in another room, how do you get it to send the media that you want to watch or listen to on the home entertainment system?

The solution to all of this has been wireless technology. With wireless technology, you simply send the media over a wireless network using video and audio streaming technologies. This often involves some kind of a set top box that acts as an interface between the wireless network and the home entertainment system. The problem with this is that video doesn't stream across wireless networks very well and such a system is difficult and more expensive to implement.

Audio, on the other hand is much easier to transmit over wireless networks- less data intensive than video. And now there are gadgets that are designed specifically to interface between the home computer, or even the Internet itself, and the stereo system. One of these gadgets is called the Squeezebox and it's made by slim devices.

The Squeezebox makes it easy to transmit a variety of digital audio formats over your wireless network, from your computer to your home stereo system. It even gives you the option of transmitting the audio directly to wireless speakers without even bothering with the stereo system itself. In addition, the Squeezebox can stream Internet radio when the computer isn't even on!

In many ways, the Squeezebox is a great complement to any home entertainment system because of its versatility. In addition to feeding music into your wireless network, the squeezebox also acts as an alarm clock and will display news headlines across a built in screen. It supports a variety of audio formats including MP3's, WMA's, Apple Lossless, and many more; all of which can be streamed from your computer onto the stereo system. It's also preset with a selection of hundreds of Internet radio streams.

There are also a number of other convenient features built into the Squeezebox. For example, the Squeezebox has physical output jacks, so that if for some reason a cable connection to your home stereo system is desirable, it is an option. Of course the device also has an Ethernet port so that it can access the home computer as well as the Internet directly to get the audio. This device is also compatible with a number of operating systems including Windows, Mac OS, and Linux.

In general, the Squeezebox is a good alternative for anyone who loves music and wants a huge variety of it.