Philips WAK3300/05 Wireless Music Station

Thank goodness it's been discontinued so that nobody else will have to suffer this utterly useless product.
It's sold as an alarm clock, yet:
The clock frequently freezes or sets itself to a random time, so the alarm doesn't go off.
The display is bright enough even on the dimmest setting to read a book by.
The alarm volume cannot be changed - on first going off it ramps up over a 10s period to FULL VOLUME! After a snooze, it comes straight on at FULL VOLUME.
Philips are well aware of these problems but have no intention of doing anything about them.
Avoid at all costs.

I don't usually write comments on products, but feel I have to in this case. I've had the Streamium Wireless Music system for a good few years now and it's amazing. Never had any problems with it. So I decided to buy the WAK3300/05 (on Ebay) to go with it, to use as an alarm clock. But was really disappointed with it. The display was far too bright at the lowest setting & the alarm volume was far too loud. - Just as PC-B has described. I rang Philips & they agreed to take it back and give me a refund. So they must've been aware of the problem. So basically I would say this is probably a good product if you just want to extend your Streamium system to another room, but useless if you want to use it as an alarm clock. I was hoping Philips would upgrade it or bring out a new Streamium alarm clock, but that still hasn't happened, apparently, which is a shame as it was a great idea.

Well, this should have been a simple enough thing to review, the Philips Streamium MCi500H. I suppose in essence the Streamium music centre is a fine piece of kit. It was ordered in the depth of the worst weather we had experienced, since, well, the previous winter! It was ordered through Pixmania and despite coming from France it arrived within a week. It was up and running pretty quick, with the only problem, getting it to connect to the internet, which with a little perseverance and help from customer services at Philips, I managed to get connected and was able to listen to some fantastic radio as clear as a bell, all the BBC channels, and because we are multi lingual, Greek and Ukrainian stations. Superb!
After a few days, and having satisfied myself that the Streamium worked and was appropriate for my needs, I ordered a Radio Station in order to `stream music effortlessly', to other rooms around the house.
I ordered a WAK3300/5 from Electrotown via Amazon. It arrived quickly, and then my problems began.
It would not connect to the Philips Steamium Centre, as it should, according to the instructions. I was on the phone with Philips for hours. Connecting it with ethernet cables to first the centre, then to the router. No joy. The technical chap at Philips, decided that there must be a fault with the station, so I returned it to Electrotown, who sent a replacement.
Guess what? That didn't work either, after more hours on the phone with Philips, the technical chap decided that there must be a fault with the centre, so I returned that to Pixmania, who because I had it for more than 15 days, kicked up a fuss, but eventually, after a great deal of stress agreed to replace it.
Guess what? That didn't work either, more hours on the phone with Philips. They finally came up with a solution, which would involve changing the channels on the router, from 11, to either 10 or 12? An engineer would have to do it. Hang on I thought, this is getting a bit extreme.
I contacted Electrotown, who kindly offered me a refund on receipt of the WAK3300, which I thought was good of them.
Even though I had the option of getting my money back, I still wanted it to work. So I retired to a darkened room and had a think, I also did a bit of research on the internet, about WAP's and encryption.
So I had another go with the WAK3300 and under the network settings I installed my WAP encryption key (not for the first time) and lo, it connected to the Centre, the computer and everything.
The moral of this story? I suppose it should be that the instructions should be clear and concise, I am no technical whiz, but neither would it appear are the techies at Philips.
Even though the gestation period of the Philips Streamium MCi500H coming together with the Philips WAK3300/5 was a troubled one, I am please with the outcome, as long as it works!
The sound is fantastic, from the centre, although limited from the station, but having said that it's sufficient for background music in other rooms.
The WAK3300 is not an internet radio!