SonicBlue's Digital Audio Center

grecorj writes "This article on the NY Times website (free registration blah blah blah) talks about SONICblue's new Advanced Digital Audio Center ; a digital entertainment hub which can store up to 650 hours of music. For $1500!" Here is a press release that has a bit more details. It sure does seem overpriced for only a 40G hard drive.

Comments

Lawyer to engineer ratio?

[mwalker]

Having already infuriated the entire television industry, SonicBlue was unsatisfied with it's level of legal disasters, so they have now gone and scared the bejeezus out of the RIAA.

Well done. I won't be surprised if the RIAA & MPAA just drop the pretext and break out the laser-guided bombs. Where's SonicBlue's headquarters?

WTF

[spatrick_123]

1500 bucks and it can't even play vinyl! Screw that.

Cost Split

[Cougar]

It's probably $100 for the 40 Gig disk, and $1400 for the "Digital Content Management"..

No thanks, I'll stick with my 4 year old, 20 Gig jukebox/server.

Re:Cost Split

[Anonymous Coward]

No thanks, I'll stick with my 4 year old, 20 Gig jukebox/server.
Damn straight you will. If you bought a 20 GB drive 4 years ago, you're still paying off the mortgage on that beast.

woah.. expensive..

[josh crawley]

That's quite expensive for a 3.9 MB hard drive. Oh wait? It's not 3.9 mb? My mistake, I just use the standard unlisted 'slashdot' bitrate of 8kbps.

Target market - Audiophiles?

[nyquist_theorem]

I can only assume from the pricepoint ($1500MSRP, so $1000+ street price, at least initially) that the average MP3-laden geek is not the target market here. In fact, the pricepoint may be one of the things that allows this thing to avoid (at least somewhat) some flak from the RIAA and its gang of enforcers.

For an audiophile, this thing just might make some sense. First of all, the type of people who spend $300 on speaker wire are obviously not concerned with value per dollar. Second of all, such folks also cling to the ridiculous notion that the rotational stability of a CD is of key importance to audio quality, with typical ghetto-trash (read sub-$5000) CD players incapable of reproducing their music faithfully. For these folks, having a device that would play their music buffered from a hard drive (with the device stashed far away and connected with Monster Cable Ethernet would eliminate the need to worry about such things as spending thousands of dollars to isolate their hardware from any vibrations caused by their cat farting or toilet flushing. (That last link rules) :)

Seriously, a device that allows audiophiles to play their music from a non-CD platform, esp thru decent D/As, or even better, their multi-thousand dollar outboard D/As, would sell. The Linn Kivor, no doubt priced in the stratosphere, is one such example. My guess is that the SonicBlue DAC is about a tenth the price of the Linn.

Sooo, while I'm not going to rush out and buy one, I'd still say it may find a market with audiophiles.

Re:Target market - Audiophiles?

[reaper20]

Thanks for those links. I have tears from laughter in my eyes. I don't know what's funnier, the fact that Monster sells ethernet cables for $20, or this fine quote:

Monster Cable JNOCNJHP3, September 20, 2000
Reviewer: doy004 from Claremont, CA
Worked great with my T3 connection at school. Ive noticed I get faster downloading speeds than with generic cables.

Man .... too much ...

hub

[jaavaaguru]

...hub which can store up to 650 hours of music

WOW! A hub with storage space! mine's only got 8 flashing lights and some ports!

Seriously though, my MP3 collection wouldn't fit on this device so it's not that useful.