The Belkin Rockstar, Allowing You to Effectively Share The Music. Or Make Noise.

Now, the Belkin Rockstar is one more gadget from the "why haven't I thought of this before?" series: a dumb and simple idea that will definitely sell because it does what no other thingies like this do and comes for a price low enough to be affordable even for children.

The main idea behind the Belkin Rockstar is to have your own portable media player running with tracks you and your friend like and then sharing these tunes with your close ones; actually, we're talking proper close ones, since this is a hub for wired headphones and not a wireless one. The principle is painfully simple: you have a star-shaped piece of plastic with six 3.5mm jack plugs, able to accommodate five headphones. Five headphones because one of the plugs is used for signal input only, while the rest can work both ways.

Operating the Belkin Rockstar is a child's play (doh): plug a jack-jack cable in the output of your player and have your friends hook up their headsets to the remaining jacks, hit play then enjoy. One really interesting and most useless feature for the Belkin Rockstar is that you can actually mix in the audio signals coming from multiple players, let's say 5, and then listen to this sonic mayhem. What's the use of such a "feature"? Creating grindcore or noise tracks, that could do, but hey, there are a lot of dumber ways to "play noise", aren't they?

The Belkin Rockstar is compatible with absolutely any audio signal source sporting a 3.5mm jack, no matter whether we're talking Zune, iPods or any other fixed or portable player (cassette, CD and DVD players included). It works without need to be powered up and will easily fit in your pocket or player carrying pouch; the Belkin Rockstar will be available in March and the announced price will be around $20.

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