Finally I decided to buy a Terratec NOXON audio. It's quite a nice device to play audio streams and what's best, it can play internet radio streams directly using an internet connection (like a DSL router)—there's no need to run a pc if you only want to listen to internet radio!

Main features

Here's a picture of the main gadget. The size is about 16 cm × 10.5 cm × 4 cm. It supports playing MP3 and WMA streams. The only network connection is WLAN. Terratec claims to support 802.11g, but just with 11 Mbit/s and WEP encryption—so it's basicly 802.11b in reality (compability of 802.11g to 802.11b is defined by the standard, isn't it?). But at least it does support 104 bit/128 bit keys.

On the picture you can easily see the biggest problem of this device: it's blue display. It looks nice, yes, but as many others on the web already pointed out: you can't read it from the distance at all! And it is pretty slow.

Further on the body look quite cheap. So even as it is silver, it doesn't fit 100% beside the display and the center speaker of my Pioneer NS-DV990, which is real aluminium (at least the front is).

The power supply unit is an external one and, as usual, a traditional one (no switching power supply), so it gets quite warm and is pretty bulky and the NOXON can't be switched off completely (see below what's all running after “switching off”). For audio input there's a stereo jack to RCA jack cable included. So no digital output, but I think you don't need this for radio streams anyway.

Experiences

The installation was quite painless. I had to set up my Fritz!Box SL WLAN for the WLAN and after that connecting the NOXON was not a big problem. OK, entering the WEP key using the remote control (see left) isn't much fun, but you have to do this only once, normally. ;-)

BTW, the remote control doesn't look very sophisticated but it's very functional and pretty ergonomic.

After an initial update of the list of internet radio stations you can start listening. To find a nice station you can browse by genre or by country. This takes quite a while, as there are so many stations. Once you found one just press play, after that you can save it to one of the numeric keys for very fast access or add it to the favourites. The favourites can be edited using the web interface.

Web interface?

Yes, you read correctly. The NOXON has a (very simple) web interface. There you can see firmware version, network settings, WLAN status, all network profiles, and your favourites. Unfortunately you can just edit the favourites, but no network settings. And the editing of the favourites is needed, but doesn't work very well (see below).

And I just discoverd one (not so) funny thing: you can access the NOXON even if it is switched of (but has power)! So this means, that switching off just stops playback and shuts down the display?

Quirks

The NOXON has quite some quirks. So saving favourites is not very good for many radio stations, because if the radio station is including the current artist and title the favourite will be saved using this and not the radio station name! It's even a bit worse for m3u sources, which are listed in the radio station list as well. If you save these, not the m3u will be saved, but the actual mp3 currently played! So you have to edit your favourites quite often. As I'm running Linux exclusively I just can use the web interface (it's good that this even exists). And for me it just works in 1 out of 5 times to delete or add a favourite and unfortunately you can't edit a favourite but you have to delete it first and add it again using the new name afterwards (or did I just miss something?).

The display isn't readable and much too slow. It neither plays OGG nor RealAudio streams (OK, I didn't find an interesting station just broadcasting one of this yet and all the RealAudio streams didn't sound too good anyway, but the 160 kbit/s OGG stream of Virgin Radio sounds very good). If you're browsing for a radio station and press play on a menu entry (a genre or country e.g.) the NOXON tries to play this, but it can't (this should be easy to fix). Otherwise it's nice that the stream is not stopped while you're looking for another station.

One nice thing to know is, that if you press the “i” button you can easily switch back to the menu where you've been before, but if you press the radio browsing button, you'll always start from the begining! If you want to test some stations it's nice to remember that. ;-)

Another “quirk” is, that there hasn't been a firmware update yet, though Terratec says that the NOXON can update itself over WLAN directly. But hey, this is only a feature, if it is used.

And please, shutdown the WLAN module on switch off in a new firmware release! True, this way the NOXON is already connected on switch on, but I don't think thats needed.

Further it would be nice to have the last station played on switch on and then to display the info screen (or at least an option to activate this).

Conclusion

It's a nice device for me, but it's clearly still a geeky gadget. I didn't test to replay streams served by my computer, but as others wrote, this works using Linux as well (Terratec even provides some documentation how to set up this). I rather listen to my CDs and SACDs directly. What I really like, is, that this is an audio only device and that it can play internet radio streams without additional software on a pc (there're not so many devices which can do that). I decided not to buy the Philips Streamium SL 400i as this gadget needs a TV at least for setup (and I don't have one). The SL 300i is even worse: there's no display integrated and you need a TV anytime to run it.

For my next big HiFi investment it would be nice to have an integrated system playing CDs, SACDs, DVDs, radio (digital and analog), as well as MP3s, and OGGs (files and streams) whith LAN and WLAN integration. So Pionieer: how about a NS DV995 available as upgrade to the NS DV990 without speaker (but a new display for more information)? I know, the NS DV990 isn't sold in Germany any longer, but in America as HTZ-940DV it's the top home theater sytem currently…