Slim Devices makes Rhapsody its main Squeeze
By Ryan Block 
posted Jul 6th 2006 7:44PM
posted Jul 6th 2006 7:44PM
Squeezebox owners, listen up! If you've been pining away over Rhapsody access on your Slim Devices music streamers, your time has finally come. the release of SlimServer 6.3 and a Squeezebox firmware upgrade enable Squeezebox 2 and 3 owners to use the service like those Sonos-using next-door neighbors; too bad those Sonos loving friends of theirs they haven't yet gotten their PlaysForSure on like Slim, but hey, as far as Rhapsody support we're just about all on level ground now.[Via eHomeUpgrade]
Though really the support is rather lame.
To use Rhapsody with your player, you need a Windows PC running with the Rhapsody client installed and running. You then expose Rhapsody as a uPnP channel and can stream to your stereo. Talk about convoluted.
I don't know about you, but I would bet at leats 50% of the Slim users out there use a Slimserver running on Linux (cuz, lets face it, servers should be *nix), and therefore this solution is positively absolutely useless to them.
Like me. Lame!
The Pandora integration is rad in comparision and completely seemless. Really really really a shame Rhapsody integration sucks.
Im not sure how much better/different Rhapsody is then last.fm but I find last.fm and the publicradiofan plugin a pefect free replacement.
I tried Rhapsody (with my Sonos) about a year ago. The Real PC software kept kicking me out every few hours. It may have improved since last I messed with it, but I don't think too highly of the Real software from a reliability standpoint.
I have a roku soundbridge and use rhapsody which i absolutely love. The radio stations are really excellent, sound quality is great. I have an htpc on all the time running the client (and itunes as well) so that is not a big deal. The only major issue is as another poster wrote, rhapsody logs you out for inactivity, so I have to login before i can listen, a bit of a drag. If i don't feel like logging in, i just listen to my own stuff off itunes.
This is what the iPod Hi-Fi should've looked like!
There is no solution for Mac except a web-based client which doesn't provide any Upnp support.