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There is no way you need your entire collection instantaneously. So all these "I have better things to do with my time" people just don't seem to be using their brains about how they're likely to use that MP3 player.

There are people for whom this is useful, but it's not your average Slashdot reader. Wealthy people pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to have people set up their home theaters and whole-house audio systems. The professionals that set these up will often install mp3-based music servers such as the AudioReQuest http://www.request.com/ or the Escient Fireball http://www.escient.com/. These installers will usually pre-load the music servers for their clients. A CD ripping service would be very useful for them, but not for the average slashdotter.

There's already several things similar to this out there:

http://www.elanhomesystems.com/product/music/viadj /viadj.asp
http://www.slimdevices.com/
http://www.escient.com/products.html
http://www.request.com/us/

I don't think it it was the biggest.

Wasn't there a magazine cover which went something like "This guy just lost 800 million dollars. Why is he smiling?"

I believe that was eToys.

What's wild is how startups would spend money. I worked for one here in Indiana. $750 top-model Aeron chairs. What everyone doesn't realize is that webbing is like sandpaper on your jeans - providing you're smart enough to wear jeans when sitting in those chairs. Dress pants are guaranteed a short life. The worst part about sitting in those webbed chairs? You can't fart. Nothing to muffle the sound. You have to become an expert at left cheek sneaks or throw caution to the wind and forget what anyone else thinks.

It's (the one in Indiana) still in business (but a shadow of its former self and essentially zero market share.

If you've got some extra money, check this out. FLAC audio storage, DVD changer control, etc. If you don't mind having your DVDs in a changer, it's a good product.

Glad to hear it.

Actually, this isn't all of that surprising. When I was working on settop box for Escient Labs (about 5 yrs ago), we talked with MS then about putting in the box. They were totally unflexibly about licensing etc....we ended up going with BeOS (unfortunately we couldn't sell a pure linux kernel to our managers because of a previous "bad experience". Long story--short version no one new what they were doing).

I'll admit, if the product is all that the review makes it out to be then I would be very interested. Cheap, too--it's selling for $169.99 + free shipping. Of course, you still have to add in your connectivity of choice, but regardless, a more than reasonable price considering some of what I've seen from similar media delivery companies such as Escient and SonicBlue.

Unfortunately, it seems that it's only a nice deal if you can get it to work. Three reviewers over at Review Centre are a little less than satisfied:

"Oritron NPD3117 networked DVD player is a very unreliable product. The first one I had, it stopped working after two weeks. I couldn't get the DVD door to open reliably...While playing DVD movie, the pixel would just break up all over the screen. The service center was no help. They did replaced my breaken unit. The second unit broke after one week."

"Had to return the first Oritron NPD3117 DVD player because networking did not function properly. Second player sent worked for a month and then would not turn on properly with wireless network card."

I used to work for Escient Labs writing software for settop boxes (we used BeOS or linux depending on the box). I figured this information would apply since most HD TVs are flat LCDs.

While I worked there, I learned that HD televisions had to support 22 different HD specifications. In other words, when you bought an HD TV you were really buying 22 of them as the manufactor could not predict which formats you would need at the time of manufactoring.

This was the result of an FCC decision in the early 90s. The FCC then demanded that all broadcasts be sent in HD by 2004 (in major markets and 2006 for the remainder--I think). But the FCC decided not to make a decision on which HD format would be required and decided the industry could duke it out. It is this decision that has caused so many delays in seeing HD reach the market.

Naturally, this made the cost much higher than nessecary.

Recently the FCC and the industry have agreed on a HD format. In theory, the HD TVs should now start to drop in price as the TV only has to support one format. How long that takes to reach the market is hard to say.

I tried to research the net for some links regarding this. Unfortuately I'm running out of time. I would appreciate some replies w/ such links if you have 'em.

So what rights do I have with this data? I was kinda burned when FireFly sold all my record reviews (along with those by hundreds of other users). CDDB being sold to (and locked up by) Escient is a better example of this phenomenon. (For those who arrived late, freedb is an open source fork of CDDB, which is now called GraceNote).

No more submissions from me until someone tells me what happens to my work. I don't mind someone like Jon Katz quoting my /. posts, but I'm not willing to have my work turned into proprietary data.

Good project tho; I'm surprised it took this long to happen.

Computers have been built into stereo equipment for years. Pop open a proscan cd changer and you'll find a serial port which you can log in as root. Most stereo equipment runs embedded linux or BeOS. Shockingly more are starting to have Windows now that harddrives are getting added to the systems.

I used to write software for stereo components for Escient Labs, who had major OEM agreements with RCA, Harmon Kardon, and (more recently) Compaq (now HP). It was quite the cool experience to see all of my favorite hi-fi systems run linux.

Secondly, you're right, they took over cddb after a useful amount of seed work had been done for free. Quite ingenious, and quite evil of them. And like most evil things, it's been quite profitable for them too.

The reason for the exclusvity clause in their contract is so it's hard to compete. I think the open source community should take the time to use freedb, or help on cdindex, so escient doesn't end up being the only purveyor of this information in the world, in which case I think we can all be sure that it won't be free anymore.
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Oops..

If you want to fsck someone at cddb go for the CEO .. email him saj@escient.com

If you want to fsck someone at cddb go for the CEO .. email him saj@escient.com

I'm glad they've decided to do this. We've needed a new protocol for a while. They'll be routed around quick fast and in a hurry.

FYI, Escient is located in Carmel, Indiana. This is a very wealthy community full of people who believe in equality as long they can be a little more equal.

Escient's catch phrase on their home page says "We make technology behave."

Bad technology! Go to your room! I don't want to see you out here until you wipe that ugly GUI off your face!

Check your facts. Escient did NOT invent this protocol. They bought it - it used to be free and open. The guys who invented it sold it, unfortunately, and now Escient wants to exercise some control.