Hasta La Gadget!

This little box will turn any line-in capable stereo into a Bluetooth receiver

XtremeMac’s InCharge Home BT is a little box that will turn any stereo into a Bluetooth receiver. Thus you can stream music via AirPlay from your iPhone (or any other Bluetooth music source) to the box, whereupon the radio waves will be converted back into a signal that is then pumped through a jack into your regular stereo. The tiny black box also has a USB port for charging your phone.

It’s a tough sell, especially if your home is already full of Apple gear. At $80, the InCharge Home BT is just $20 cheaper than Apple’s $100 Airport Express. The AE will also stream music over AirPlay, using Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth, and it will also charge your phone via USB.

But it does more. You can use the AirPlay Express as a router (very handy in hotel rooms with ethernet connections), and you can plug in a printer for wireless printing. You can also use it to extend a wireless network, bringing not just tunes but a better signal to dark corners of the house.

So why would you opt for XtremeMac’s box? First, it is tiny. Second, it uses Bluetooth, which doesn’t have the latency of Wi-Fi streaming. Hit play on an Airport Express setup and you have to wait a couple of seconds for the sound to buffer. Bluetooth is instant, and this also means you can beam game soundtracks to speakers and have it stay in sync with the game itself.

Thirdly, it should run a lot cooler. I have two AirPort Expresses which lie discarded. They run so hot it seems wasteful to leave them on all day for music streaming, so I now just jack in a cable.

The XtremeMac InCharge Home BT will be available soon.

InCharge Home BT product page [XtremeMac]

See Also:

• The Hidden Secrets of Apple's AirPlay
• Beam Music, Movies, Photos from iPad to Mac With AirServer …
• Apple's iOS Update Speeds Web Browsing, Expands AirPlay