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LG
If you’re right in the middle of your favourite song but you’ve just got to leave the house, LG’s new Music Flow system has you covered. The Music Flow sound bar, network bridge and wireless speakers connect to an app that seamlessly keeps playing as you leave the house. Clever, eh? And you can control it over IM! OK, that last bit’s just weird.
The wireless audio ecosystem is controlled by the Music Flow Player app for Apple or Android, which streams music from services such as Spotify, Deezer, and Napster, Internet radio stations, or from any gadgets connected to your home Wi-Fi network — including phones or devices belonging to friends, family and visitors. Devices connect with mesh network technology and dual-band Wi-Fi, and pair with a single tap via NFC.
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You don’t need to juggle with another app to listen to music when you’re out and about, either: the LG Music Flow Player app works as a standard music player on your phone when it isn’t connected to the speaker setup, so you can march in and out of the house without interrupting the ‘choons.
This next bit is a bit weird, but bear with me: you can control the app by sending it instant messages through IM app Line. That’s called HomeChat, and it lets you chat to the speakers and the app to do things like ask for musical recommendations. No, me neither.
Other less inexplicable features include a cinema mode for watching movies and multi-room mode that plays the same music on all the Music Flow speakers in your house — so you can frolic from room to room dancing to the same song, “Risky Business” style.
The R1 network bridge and the 40W H5 and 70W H7 speakers are the first bits of the system to hit shops, arriving in the UK this month and the rest of Europe in September. The 30W H3 speaker and the HS6 320W Sound Bar will follow later. Prices and exact dates are yet to be revealed.
We’ll see the whole setup in a couple of weeks at IFA, the annual technology trade show taking place in Berlin, and your humble correspondent will be just one of an elite corps of gadget-hunting CNET staffers there to bring you all the first photos, videos and first impressions of Music Flow and all the other cool kit being unveiled.
