Cisco Linksys Wireless Home Audio Premier Kit--Includes One Director with IR Remote, One Player with IR Remote, and One Controller

I'm a big Linksys fan, but this product is junk. Devices didnt connect cleanly to anything. They wouldnt recognise the NAS server. No wonder they discontinued it, just wish I noticed that before the purchase.

I have never written a product review before but I wanted to share this horrific experience so that no one else will purchase this and have the same one. I don't even think this product deserves one star but for the idea of it, I'll give it to them.

I purchased this product in the hopes of having music in my house, accessing it via a cool remote and playing different music in different rooms. I very excitedly paid $100 for overnight shipping which then took 4 days. Once the box arrived, I uncrated everything and proceeding to set the system up on a brand new installation of Windows 7, a machine that had nothing on it and for which I was going to just stream music from. I'm a software engineer and like to think of myself as relatively smart. I had a friend with me who is also a software engineer... 8 hours later, the system simply would not recognize anything except the conductor. Finally, after removing everything and resetting up the system from scratch, opening up all firewalls, etc. I got the system to work...except the remote...that would never work and no amount of resets, no firmware updates, nothing would remove the "system busy" message. Then disaster occurred, Windows did an update (clean machine) and rebooted and wala when it came back everything was gone again (although to be fair, even though Cisco's software didn't recognize it, the Conductor would still stream music if I asked it to but only directly from the interface, my PC no longer recognized it). Back to square 1.

So frustrated I decided I would never trust this product and decided to return it... only I purchased it direct. Not only do I have to pay to ship back the most expensive consumer product I've purchased but they want me to pay twice because they shipped it in one box but require me to ship items INDIVIDUALLY back. On top of that I've called their customer support 4x... one time I had the customer service rep ridicule me... another time they promised to call back by end of day... nothing... emails with 24 hour response, I don't think so... 5 days later I'm still waiting for a response.

Yesterday I had the equivalent sonos system delivered. 5 minutes flat to install and music streaming downstairs!! And, I don't even need the killer remote control because my two iPhones and my iTouch can all control the system from anywhere in the house.

Cisco/Linksys, you're not ready for consumers. Buyer beware.

I never review products but wanted to pass along my thoughts on all of the Linksys home audio products. I recently purchased 2 sets of the Premier package for a 4 room house that I wanted to stream music throughout. I liked the idea of a Director so that I could plug in the linksys speakers for the 2 rooms without a stereo system and the Player in the 2 rooms with stereos in them already. The set up took about 10 hours for me to complete. This included about 2 hours on my own, 4 hours (all in one setting) with the Linksys rep logged into my computer configuring everything, another 1-2 hours on the phone again with Linksys, and another 2 hours on my own. But all that being said, I didn't give this a 1* review because of the setup. The help was very good and eventually I got everything talking to each other as advertised. HOWEVER, after setup, I attempted to play a few albums from my collection. That's when I realized that the 'player' software was absolutely unusable. Without going into painstaking details, rest assured this is NO ITUNES. Albums can't be played in their entirety; only ONE SONG AT A TIME. This is from the Director's screen, the Controllers screen (ps. controller wireless range is poor, maybe 1/3 of other wireless devices), or from your computer control software. There was no option for playing 'entire album' from the list of songs contrary to what the online manual states. And, when you select Genre, it gives you a selection of albums.... who remembers which Greatest Hits goes with which artist... should be programed to go Genre-ARTIST-Album-Song like in iTunes. Long story short, the concept is nice, and the package nice, but the functionality is very poor. I have since purchased 3 AirPort Express', an Apple TV, 2 Bose sound systems, and an iTouch (to function as a remote when not in front of my computer or appleTV) to stream iTunes throughout my house perfectly. It actually COST LESS than all of the linksys products. Research and make your own decision. If you like iTunes then I strongly recommend staying away from Linksys... you and your party guests won't have any idea how to play music.

I was very excited to get this product. Seemed like a great product at a very good price. I was one of the first to order it. I even ordered the new Linksys Dual N Band wireless router to make sure that my router worked with the components. Set up the router with small problems. Pretty straightforward (and this is my third wireless router setup).

Then I tried to set up a Director. No luck after spending over 6 hours during the weekend. It would recognize while I was hardwired then wouldn't recognize the network when operated wirelessly. Even right next to the router.

Same with the controller. I called customer support and spent 9 hours of my time (and theirs) over two evenings trouble shooting. And we still couldn't get it to work reliably. My opinion - this is a piece of crap and not yet ready for primetime. I'm looking for another solution - this one is not it at all. I sent them back.

Cisco Linksys Wireless Home Audio Premier Kit--Includes One Director with IR Remote, One Player with IR Remote, and One Controller

Great sounding product that was a lot easier to setup that I would have expected. I received the package with the 3 components, stuck the CD in my computer, and it walked me through the few easy steps required for each component and I was up and running in 20 minutes. I was surprised to find that it found all of my music on my laptop right away, categorized them by album, genra, artist, etc. perfectly - complete with album art, and was able to access them without issue. Cool!

I setup the Player in my living room, connected digitally to my Home Theater system, and found the sound to be outstanding. CD quality - as it should be given I was playing .wav files, but even the compressed files sounded exceptional.

The Director is setup in my bedroom and despite being in a completely different part of the house from my wireless router, has no issues with connectivity. And while not up to par with my Home Theater, the sound (with the matching Linksys speakers) is above average for what you'd expect for the price. The screen is bright and beautiful and easy to see from across the room.

The wireless controller found all of the "zones" I setup right away, also has a bright and beautiful display with big touchscreen buttons that are easy to click for my big fingers. It is intuitive to use and offers all of the playback features you could want.

The biggest suprise, though, is the Rhapsody integration. Pretty much every song you could ever think of on tap, tons of channels, and all in CD quality. In fact, I was amazed at the quality of the streaming music - definitely comparible to my dedicated CD player.

Given the sophistication of the product and the technology, I would have expected a few speedbumps along the way, but so far have found none. I am extremely happy with this system, and found it worth every penny. The flexibility, qualty, and ease of use are all exceptional, and access to Rhapsody is way better than I could have hoped for.