apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

why not do without the ipod altogether and stream the music wirelessly from your computer to your stereo with the airport express thing?

I do what joe suggested. I stream from my MacBook to an Airpot Express connected to my stereo. Using iTunes to control music playback is a lot more flexible than an iPod. This works really great if you have a laptop.

If you really want to use the iPod or your computer is in another room than I would suggest the SendStation PocketDock USB. It has a line out to go to your stereo and USB plug you connect to iPod AC adapter using the appropriate cable. That's two cables but I don't know of any single cable soultions.

http://www.sendstation.com/us/products/pocketdock/lineout-usb.html

Here's a single cable solution for an iPod with video.

http://www.sendstation.com/us/products/pocketdock/av.html

ron,

do you have any other suggestions besides the sendstation? these are not available yet.

I would be able to hook my ipod or laptop up to the bose 321 system and get both sound and video right from this right?

...I would be able to hook my ipod or laptop up to the bose 321 system via this cable and get sound and video right?

I've had the PocketDock Line Out USB for a couple years so it should be available but it only does audio. The PocketDock AV is a new product and will do both audio and video. The PocketDock AV is meant to be used with an iPod. If your laptop has SVideo out, I suppose you could use AV cable with your laptop. The video quality would probably not be great.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

The PocketDock looks really nice and is the best solution so far (for the direct cable on top of the kitchen fridge problem). I'm torn about having the lineout and USB ports on the iPod end of the cable. I really like the Belkin auto adapter style where there's only a single, thin cable going to the iPod and the rest of the lineout/power cables are hidden away on the stereo side of things. The less cables/connectors on the iPod side the less visible clutter and less likely one of those cables is accidentally disconnected (since the iPod is being constantly connected/disconnected). Having the mini plug available for plugging in a shuffle or some other device could come in handy but we're looking to keep things simple and flexibility always has a cost.

We've been using AirTunes for distributed audio and really love it. They especially did a great job syncing playback across multiple AirTunes. We've been running iTunes from our desktop and streaming into the living room and kitchen which in general has worked out great. We've run into a few limitations though:

- to select a playlist/skip a song/view track info you have to walk from the kitchen into the livingroom to change songs on the desktop

- if someone was working on the desktop/laptop they get bumped when the other person wants to change music

- can't stream one playlist to the kitchen and another to the livingroom at the same time from the desktop (iTunes limitation).

Anyone know of a home stereo adapter modeled after the Belkin auto adapter that plugs into AC power and has a longer (6ft/10ft), thin cable to the iPod? I really like the idea of hiding the iPod on top of the fridge or in a drawer and only take it out when you need to change playlists.

Think I've found it. I'm going to try this extender cable with a Kensington dock.

http://www.cablejive.com/extendercable.html
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009JR5IM/ref=pd_cp_e_title/102-8654362-5738533

I know a friend who improvised something similar with an computer power cord. The problem is that it worked only for two weeks. It broke easily after and broke the iPod as well.