I'm glad to see Squeezebox has improved, (believe since version 7.2)!
Check out http://wiki.slimdevices.com/index.php/SlimProto_TCP_protocol for an interesting read. Strangely it doesn't detail why UDP is used on port 3483, but a quick google indicates it's used for discovery purposes, but as you noted it is indeed TCP. Sadly that wiki page doesn't indicate how the data is sent, just all you can assume it's TCP now, so questions about synchronization and buffering still come to mind. Also, after reading a few pages of the wiki you get the impression that "LAME" is now default for the server and it will transcode the files to a lower bit-rate based on network performance automatically where before you had to configure that. It's limited to 24/96 music, but i'm sure future devices will support higher res files. Since you can get 24/176.4 Rolling Stones files now, it might be a bit more difficult to select sonus.
Other solutions like Airplay, DNLA(uPnP) both use UDP and tons of products now support one or more of these convenient protocols, but as Squeezebox figured out it's not that reliable since most home networks buy lowest cost gear. Sonos, another solution, is very propriety so not much details on that other than they are optimized for wireless and they don't recommend using uncompressed lossless formats like WAV or AIFF. Two very high-end solutions, Olive and Naim Uniti, both use uPnP between clients, and the hyper-car of high-end meridian sooloos (+$10k) has a rather priority ethernet connection between clients and the HDD, so if it happens to be TCP, same question applies that I still have for squeezebox. As long as the HDD is large enough, I would just naturally avoid streaming so I wouldn't have to rely on the server(s) to be up. In the end it's probably not fair for me to judge them that way since I have no plans on streaming music, but I should just focus on the fact that Sonos, Sooloos and Olive are all limited to 24/96 playback, Naim will do 24/192 and has PS2 ports (WTF?) and all can be configured to use a local HDD.
The BDP does exactly what I want: transparent playback of the hi-rez file (24/192), and with the least amount of effort. It's now just up to the DAC and the downstream components to do the heavy lifting.
The only buffering issues i ever had is with one wifi connected Squeezebox3 in combination with an old Linksys wifi router and a running microwave. But that problemwas wifi/microwave centric, the SB3 was a casualty as were my laptop and iPad and any other wifi devices in the immediate vicinity.
Regarding the HD formats, I don't currently have any, so it is not an issue for me. It would be interesting to inquire what logitech's plans are for the future. As you can tell i like the Slimdevices/Logitech approach, open source code for the SqueezeServer, and relatively low cost transport devices with coax and optical digital outputs, so I have external options for the heavy lifting. My current occupation is based around moving applications over to IP/MPLS and indirectly Ethernet as the L2 transport, so I know these things can work if properly Engineered.
My only issue with the BDP1 is the current lack of streaming capability. I know the damm thing will sound good....its a Bryston! I have a rather large music library, and a variety of SB's around the house. On any given evening several people are picking up the Logitech remote Controller or the iPAD (acting like a remote control) to add songs/albums to there current playlist. With the Squeezeserver they have 55K songs.flac immediately at there fingertips, either on one of the main systems or in there bedrooms, or out on the rear deck. No running around looking for music, that kind of flexibility can get addictive!
I have used several platforms over the years to host the squeezeserver software, including window PC's, and a home built fanless low speed industrial CPU based system running freeNAS. Currently I have 12 bay server running Ubuntu Linux and it acts as my squeezeserver music library and movie library, as well as my desktop. A very smart gentleman wrote a plugin for squeezeserver which will monitor all the squeezebox's in the house, if they are all idle or it's between the hours of midnight and 6:00pm it will put the server in suspend mode and it only draws 16 watts of power. If someone turns on a Squeezebox, it will send a "wake on LAN" packet to the server and pop it out of suspend mode.
Again i love the flexibility, I believe Slimdevices/Logitech have engineered a great transport solution which removes all streaming issues and allows me the option to off load the heavy lifting to a external DAC (which I do use on a couple of systems). If when Bryston supports remote file access over Ethernet I would certainly entertain purchasing one for my audio room.
Cheers,
