Home solutions for iPod pricey, complex

Like the car-stereo makers before them, the companies that develop high-end audio gear are starting to jump on the iPod bandwagon. Their "whole-home" audio systems have long allowed you to listen to music in any room of a house and remotely control tunes using screens or keypads -- "now they're coming out with gadgets that let you pop your iPod into a dock when you walk in the front door and listen to your favorite music throughout the house," reports Business Week. These solutions are not cheap, and they're "far from perfect." The iPod adapters run $600 to $800. To make the adapters work, you need to plug them into systems that include amplifiers, speakers, touch-pad remotes, and distributed audio servers that let you play whatever music you want in whatever room you happen to be in. "Only one of the three systems I tested met that benchmark -- Crestron's $700 CEN-iPod. And it did so only because it was hooked up to a 15-inch touch-screen monitor, also made by Crestron, that costs $12,000."

Filed under: iPod