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Sony Hard Drive Recorder for Cars
blues5150 writes "Sony has introduced the Sony MEX-1HD. This is an in-dash CD/Receiver with a 10 giagbyte hardrive built in to rip CD's at 8X speed. It also has an auxilliary input that allows connection of an MP3 player, tape, MD player, and/or an optional Sony plug-and-play XM Satellite Radio tuner. The price is a little steep at $1,499.99, but it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants."
That's pretty neat. Sounds like a bit of a fragile thing to be putting in a car though ..
I don't get it... Kazaa, WinMX, etc.. get sued all to hell, but these car audio makers market devices to rip mp3's and no one says a damn thing.
Kinda makes me wonder.
10 gig ipod + car kit...a little of my time to make sure it has somewhere to sit...less than $600...
Is your workplace ADA compliant?
I always wonder... is Sony Music tearing their hair out, while Sony Electronics develops a way to copy music CDs?
-Berj
is some ass cruising down the road trying to eat, shave, apply makeup, talk on the phone, read a paper, AND rip MP3's.
No thanks.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Umm.. The public wants to rip CD's in their car?
Yeah, right.
And they thought it was bad for people to use cell phones...
No, this is for kids who drive the base model Civic, because the insurance would kill them if they (err, their parents) bought the Si. Now that they've added the coffee can exhaust, 300 pound wing (someone explain why you put a wing on the back of a FWD car that isn't set up in a way to break the rear loose) $800 worth of stickers, and $2000 worth of wheels/tires, the only thing left is some stereo.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Great, when the RIAA comes calling, I can engage in a high-speed-chase while continuing to commit crimes.
The trick to these sort of devices is how you pick the song you want to play. I know it's a pain to do this with my Apex DVD/MP3 player in my home theatre; the thought of trying to do this while driving a car and looking at a tiny LCD screen seems a little challenging.
I wouldn't want my insurance agent to know I had one in my car.
Just what we need... more gadgets to distract the guy in the lane next to me.
Some of you can wish for the day that Bluetooth lets you swap files with the guy in the lane next to you. I'd prefer we both concentrate on driving, so we won't have to be swapping insurance company information on the shoulder of the highway.
Thanks, I'll pass for now.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
Doesn't Sony have a music division which is part of the RIAA? And doesn't the RIAA make a concerted effort to stop people from ripping CDs? So how can Sony make a device to do just that? Is one division going to sue the other or something?
As it was explained to me by a salesman (and please, someone correct me if I'm wrong...), the one thing you cannot do that would seem obvious is copy mp3s from a cd to the harddrive.
_______
2B1ASK1
This would be an excellent application of voice recognition technologies.
Kenwood has a similar product, the Music Keg. Their version works like a CD changer with a removable hard drive cartridge.
My other first post is car post.
they probably copied GPLd code to use in their overpriced "buy MP3 gear from us to help fund our fight against P2P" box and won't release source.
Does it crash when you try to use this to rip the Celine Dion CD? How can one division of Sony publicly oppose ripping by putting out a CD that can destroy your computer, and another division publicly encourage ripping by buying this device? Christ, if there ever was evidence violation of fair use rights needed for a Judge, this would be a good example to give him.
Man.. at $1.5k I might as well PAY for my music!
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
- Proprietary compression
The unit uses Sony's ATRAC compression which is proprietary and heavy on DRM. Even MP3's which you copy from a memory stick to the unit are converted to ATRAC, resulting in loss.
- No direct PC connectivity
You can't wire up, say, an ethernet jack to this unit as you could with the Empeg, etc... and copy files to it from your computer. No way. You must either sit in your car and rip (at a paltry 8x) every friggin CD you want into the unit, or use a Memory Stick back and forth from your PC to this unit. An utter waste of time, IMHO.
Pioneer Electronics came out with a unit that is extraordinarly similar yet has a larger, easier to navigate menu system... it still, however, suffers from the same shortcomings as the Sony unit. I am not sure what type of compression Pioneer uses, though.
Anyway, my two cents...
Isn't Sony the company that distributes the Celine Dion CD that was copy protected? I guess they think it is okay to rip any CDs except the ones they make? ;-)
What the public wants? This remindes me of the old dual tape decks that JC Whitney once sold. Yea, I can see myself driving and ripping; oh the fun never ends.
Even the geek public did not want (in enough quantity) the Empeg/Rio Car. A better unit (as far as geeks go, because it has ethernet, Linux, can be modded to the hilt). I do not think the "public" will buy this Sony unit. Geeks will not, they already have their Empeg.
Cheers,
Josh
I will echo the other comment that says iPod is the answer. I use mine in the car all the time with a tape player adapter - not ideal, but it works fine. A better iPod adapter (say a cellphone style rack with built-in audio feed to the stereo) would be ideal, since iPod stays in your pocket and doesn't get stolen, unlike this thing which just about screams "Soon I will buy a No Radio sign."
sulli
RTFJ.
Except for a few homeless people, who are now living in their car, I can't think of a market for this product. Nobody I know wants to 'rip' their Audio CDs in their car.
Automobile audio systems are generally meant as playback systems. You do all the futzing around to set up 'playlists' in the comfort of your home, then drop it in the Car's sound system when you're driving.
This sounds awkward at best. When I've 'ripped' CDs into the hard drive out in the car, how do I edit out the tracks I don't want? How are play lists constructed? It seems like just another thing on the dashboard to distract the driver.
Put one of these in your Viper and you can outrun DMCA enforcement thugs in their boaty Crown Vics.
You can understand why they did it:
1) They're Sony and they don't _really_ want to support PC-based sharing
2) They'd have to come up with a PC-based app to manage the music. Emplode is getting there, but its a lot of work for a consumer electronics company to write software :-).
but it's lame.
What I'd like to see is a low cost, low power, hard drive adapter which I can plug into my cigarette lighter to recharge and access from my iPaq whenever I'm within a few hundred feet of my car.
to possibly cause people to have more car accidents?
oh, well. evolution in action.
This player automatically magic-markers the crippletrack to make the CDs copyable.
:)
However, you might get some severe bumper dentage if you start bluetoothing Celine Dion tracks to guys in the next lane.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Whatcha gonna do when the RIAA comes for you.. heh heh
.oO(Sound of COPS music)Oo.
.02c (hope this is funny)
It sounds like a nice thing but I'd rather prefer a 1,200$ laptop.. (My MP3 player can get on the Internet and play Q3A, what does yours do?) I think this is a cool idea but this is gonna be really bad if they do get the bluetooth thing going..
COP:Do you know why I pulled you over?
Driver: No sir
COP:Do you know how fast you were going?
Driver: Uhh.. 65?
Cop: Try 384K/Sec.. You do know that the speed limit in this zone is 256K/Sec?
Driver: But Officer! It wasn't me!!
Cop: Tell that to the judge.. You have MP3's spewed all over the place.
How will we be able to tell the RIAA police from the Real cops? will they have dark blue cop cars? In Houston the cop cars are sky-blue... Just my
Partnership for an idiot free America!
I never asked to rip CDs in my car. And I never agreed to pay $1,400 for it!
I think the best thing for a geek right now is a hard drive based MP3 player. I bought a Dension DMP3 ( http://www.dension.com ) for around $300 and stuck a 40 GB hard drive in it. It's got a very nice and somewhat customizable satellite display, I've got the unit itself under my driver's seat. Driving down the road with 3,500+ songs at your fingertips is very cool.
If you ask any real car audiophile they will say that Sony is a second rate company when it comes to car audio. Both Sony and Pioneer now have HD based headunits out now.
Why is sony getting the hype and no mention of the Pioneer?
'bout time we had what fighter pilots have...
Consigned to flames of woe.
Anybody else think it's kinda ironic that Sony, one of the RIAA big-5, is going out of its way to facilitate supposed "unauthorized copying"? (Not to mention all the other Sony products like CD/MP3 portables and their DVD/CD/MP3-player home units that specifically advertise "CD-RW compatible") Is this just a failure to communicate between their Electronics and Music divisions or are they finally seeing the light that fair-use is actually profitable? If so, this is a good sign that consumers are realizing the value of their rights and perhaps it'll be easier than we expect to get folks to shun M$ Palladium.
Doesn't this seem like a bad idea? I don't even want to touch my computer when it's doing heavy hard drive access, and now they want to put it into a mobile machine? It better have good shock absorbtion, otherwise going over any sort of bumps at fast speeds would certainly cause havoc.
If anyone remebers, this used to be an issue with the first in-car CD-players -- they'd skip...
This is just what the world needs....another distraction for drivers.
They can:
Read, write, eat, drink, compute, play games, watch movies, apply makeup, talk on the phone, and now, BURN FSCKING CDs
All while they should be driving.
Someone, please tell me where are the automatic cars? These people could be sitting in the back reading, writing, eating, drinking, computing, playing games, watching movies, applying makeup, talking on the phone, and burning CDs while the autopilot drives them to their destination
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
Keep in mind that Sony, the company that builds MP3 players, computers with CD-RW drives, CD players, DVD players, etc., is also the company that owns Columbia Records, which tries to prevent their music from working with those MP3 players, computers with CD-RW drives, CD players, and DVD players.
Are you going to go out and spend $1500 on a piece of equipment from a schizophrenic company that's trying to sabotage their own products?
you hit the nail right on the head.
can't use your mp3's with it. can't take the music you rip anywhere. nearly impossible to manage.
why not try the phatnoise car audio system (they're selling them again). pretty similar to an empeg, except that it emulates a CD changer, so it connects to your existing headunit. plays mp3, wma, and flac (lossless encoding). removeable hard drive connects to your pc via usb, and lets you use all the music that you already own.
even with the price of a new headunit it's cheaper than this sony pos.
But I already ripped my entire collection once, over a 2 week period, plus hours of deleting songs I decided I didn't want, and making play lists. Now Sony wants me to do it again? Now if it had a USB or Firewire connection, that would be an entirely diffent story. But it doesn't because of course that would let me load "pirated" music.
Doesn't someone make a deck with a pull-out HDD that can be mounted in your desktop for loading up the music? That makes a whole lot more sense to me.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Explain that one to your insurance company...
Oh I was ripping CDs to MP3s at the time sir.
----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
> The plural of box is boxes. Anyone who uses the term boxen should not be taken seriously.
You may not like the term "boxen", but at least the people using it are doing it on purpose to be colorful. It amazes me that those who speak english for their entire lives still do not know the difference between "your" and "you're". THESE people should not be taken seriously.
Gives new meaning to the terms: Hard drive crash Make tracks Any others? Let's hear 'em!
nobody said it yet, so...
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.
This is old news. Pioneer and Kenwood have similar products and they've been out for months. I'm only surprised /. would decide to post this story now.
The ripping purpose is so that the music is ripped and stored tot he Hard Drive, thereby allowing you to leave the CD at home from that point onwards. Now if they would add something like the 801.1(a|b) specs, so that as you drive up to your place, music is downloaded or uploaded to a server at your place of work or residency, I would be happy and impressed.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Ripping session of the latest CD's will now be done at the same place the rice rockets hang out.
...
Not particularly useful unless you could get the data out of the car (firewire HDD or CD-R). Ripping is soooo much faster on a PC anyways.
Not to mention the safety factor of some loser on a cell phone and ripping CD's and tweakin the knobs on the amp all while "driving"
Get paid to code OSS
I don't get it... Kazaa, WinMX, etc.. get sued all to hell, but these car audio makers market devices to rip mp3's and no one says a damn thing.
Kinda makes me wonder.
It does? About what?
The fact is, Kazaa, WinMX, Napster, Scour, and Audiogalaxy (et al) specialized in profiteering through the exchange of misappropriated intellectual property. The format used just happened to be MP3.
Sony is profiting through the sale of legitimate hardware that allows the user to store copies of CDs (which he presumably owns) on a hard drive in his car. The format it stores them in just happens to be MP3.
I see absolutely no connection other than the fact that both things used MP3.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Not unless they have a mobile link to a freeCDDB-type database for the titles -
Who wants 2000 songs all unlabled?
Plus, once you rip them in the car, I doubt it would ever be possible to move them indoors.
Now what would be really cool is an in-car MP3 web server with wireless 802.xx networking in a kind of open mode. Stuck in traffic? Download the songs in the car next to yours!
"Officer, honest! I wasn't drag racing him - I was just trying to finish my Procul Harum download, but the light changed!"
No *that* would be cool...
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Is this the same Sony that doesn't want you to be able to rip their CDs? Will they only allow their CDs to ripped in this thing?
-- My HARDWARE, My CHOICE.
It is called hedging your bets. RIAA wins, Sony makes money. RIAA loses, Sony makes money.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I think the concept of the player is great - but why on EARTH is there a disc tray that ejects from the front?!?! This picture shows the tray, I would have *much* preferred a front-loading mechanism like on their bottom-of-the-line model.
Bad Sony. No cookie.
I'm a 2000 man.
i saw this (and the pioneer one) at CES. 10 gigs (unupgradeable) of music that rips from your cd player. unuseable (atrac3) format that you can't take out of the car. the only way to get music on it is by inserting a cd and waiting for it to rip or by magicgate (drm'd) memory sticks (which means my music collection is useless with it). and how do you manage, navigate, control all that music through the stupid headunit interface?
these guys had it right. create playlists on your desktop (mp3's), transfer them to a removeable hard drive via usb, plug that drive into a device that emulates a cd changer in your car. don't even have to change out your headunit. sounds like it does just the opposite of what the sony unit does, and is much more practical. they also make a model specifically for kenwood, so it does look like they're gaining headway in the market.
K4B00000MP3!
What does seem to be happening is that the forces that be are allowing us to copy music from CD to CD or CD to MP3, but not MP3 from a non-CD to MP3 to a non CD. What this means is that the consumer is going to be inconvenienced by having to rip cd to many different places, instead of ripping the CD once, and then piping it to different stand alone devices. One assumes that if DRM is implemented, this will also apply to the GPC.
There is really no reason why I shouldn't be able to take my portable computer, IPod, or whatever, and transfer MP3s directly to my car.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Sony MEX1 Japan (japanese but plenty of pics)
1064$
Even more info
http://www.caraudioexpress.com/SONY2001.htm (typo or just old?)
These are becoming more mainstream.
For instance, Pioneer has one too.
However, I think cd players that play MP3's off CD-R/CD-RW's are a much better deal
They cost LOTS less, they hold "enough" music, and if the media dies, it costs 20 cents to replace it.
I't should also provide black-box type data recording to keep track of speed, steering, braking, cockpit communications, dashboard events, and other status, so that distracted drivers can have their accidents replayed in court.
I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the Empeg (later bought out by Sonic blue and called "Rio Car" mp3 player.. this player had most of the functionality of the sony unit (NO - it doesn't rip your mp3's.. but why the heck would you want to do that in your car????), and a software which was much more advanced then the Sony's software...
http://www.empeg.com
end-of-lifed because of poor marketting/advertisement:(
-mark
So, does this thing rip sony copy-protected cds?
Before I profess my undying love for my Empeg, allow me to point out why Sony will never produce the in-dash dream audio dream device: they are a music publisher.
The MEX-1HD is a fixed single DIN unit that can rip music from a CD in situ and store it to an internal and, I believe, non-upgradable hard drive.
The Sonic Blue RioCar/Empeg, one of which I was fortunate enough to obtain some two or so months ago, is a Linux-based pull-out single DIN device that supports up to 2 2.5" laptop hard drives with a maximum supported capacity of 128GB total.
The MEX-1HD could never hope to compete with the Empeg... except that Sonic Blue decided that they couldn't break into the good ol' boys club that is the car audio market with such an expensive (at the time, $1200 on up) device.
However, as Sonic Blue has ceased production of Empeg devices, you can now purchase them on E-bay. Many of the Empeg vendors on E-bay bought the last of the Empegs/RioCars (the name is virtually interchangeable in that Empeg Mk2 == RioCar) during a fire sale from Sonic Blue and are selling them in brand new, still in the packaging, condition.
If you choose to get a RioCar/Empeg, be sure to check out the Rio Car Site
>> mod up parent, funny stuff!
punch parent in the face
moderators can choose how they want to mod on their own.
"...but it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants."
Since when did anyone have the burning need to write CDs in their car? You can't leave home for an hour without having to make a CD? Try leaving all the techno crap at home and try DRIVING for once.
What's next, wood working while driving?
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
It also has an auxilliary input that allows connection of an MP3 player, tape, MD player, (...) it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants."
Why do more car stereos NOT have an Auxilliary Input?
The only thing I really want in a car stereo is an Auxillary Input. I want to be able to take my portable CD player, iPod, whatever, and plug it into my car stereo with a minimum of sound quality loss.
I have used one of those Tape Deck inputs
(One end looks like a cassette tape, other end is a stereo jack. Plug the stereo jack into your device, insert the cassette into your tape deck, hit play), on & off for 15 years, but the sound for those things is horrible: all treble, no base. Sound is muffled (This is on 5 different stereos).
Is there some conspiracy against manufacturers putting a simple stereo input jack on the front of my stereo?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
I wondered what a 10 giagbyte harddrive was, so I searched for it on google. All the links are these "Giagbyte" motherboards. I guess this has ten of them. That makes me wonder, how do they fit ten motherboards in a car stereo? The more important question I have is, what's a Beowolf cluster doing in my car?
but it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants.
;-)
Yes, just what I want to do on the way to work... Rip CD's. That's what I do AT work, not on the way
>I'm surprised that noone has mentioned the Empeg
>(later bought out by Sonic blue and called "Rio >Car" mp3 player."
What about the RIAA Car mp3 player? Use of it requires use of a hardware key (yes a key like you put in your apartment door) personally handed to you by Hillary Rosens. It requires that you purchase the original songs on CD, Secure CD, 8-Track, Dat, Cassette, and Edison Wax Cylinder (tm) formats.
When all is said and done, the only thing you can listen to is 10 seconds of Metallica's "Unforgiven", and that only when Lars Ulrich is sitting in the passenger seat next to you.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Personally, I've always wanted an audio version of the TiVO, so that I wouldn't miss my favorite radio shows, but rather could listen to them at my leisure (and skip past the ads). Something like this comes awfully close...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Ain't this the same Sony that is busy doing things to CD's to keep people from ripping them to a hard drive? And we should be glad that we are being allowed to pay the $1500 for a car device that will be unable to operate as intended because of the things they are doing to the CD's used in it?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Every Car audio enthusiast knows that really, there are only 3 or 4 names in car audio. For Heads it is Blau's, Kenwood, Denon, and HK. For Subs it Kicker, Pheonix Gold, Fosgates, and Bazooka. The rest are just 2nd rate. I will wait for one of my previous picks to sink into the market when it is STABLE!
"On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."
Why would I want to pay $1,499 for 10 gigs? This is being "ripped" off. Sony is part of the RIAA aren't they?
I'd like to see the product rip radio as well... Doesn't seem like any techknolgical difficulties... Legal boundaries?
Why you ask... Have you ever been listing to the radio and you hear a song that you like, but you have no idea who it's by or what the song title is... and then you try to find out from a friend who might be a little more musicly inclined, and you are forced to stoop yourself to try to sing a line or so from the song while all your friends laugh at you... Well it would be cool if you could just record a clip of it and play it for your friends...
How about contest phone numbers, I have a hard time remembering those... it would be cool to just record it and play it back.
Or how about you are just a cheap lazy bastard and you want to listen to the top 40 over and over again without buying any CDs or going through the pain of downloading them.
Your mammas flamebait.
I saw someone selling a little FM transmitter for iPods so you can just play it over your radio.
I can't find the link - anyone? anyone? Beuller?
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
The price is a little steep at $1,499.99, but it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants.
Especially when said car audio manufacturer is the biggest proponent of audio cd protection schemes.
b/c each of those devices adds at least 2 hp respectively! you put an Si sticker on a DX model and that's like speed in a can!!
I have a wing on my 91 Topaz with the spread of a Piper Cub!
And I stuck a Mustang Cobra badge on there for the xtra ponies (get it!? ponies! mustang!)
aah nevermind
No sig for you!!
The fact is, Kazaa, WinMX, Napster, Scour, and Audiogalaxy (et al) specialized in profiteering through the exchange of misappropriated intellectual property."
Except that the material in question is almost all properly appropriated: everyone making copies available did this on purpose and will full knowledge. No theft involved, no misappropriation.
The actual misappropriated stuff (such as Eminem tracks before his CD is released, perhaps swiped inside the studio) is only a small part of of what is available.
Where are the Automatic cars you ask? Well, we could make them now except for the fact the none of us Americans would buy them because the Autopilot won't drive like we do.
Write Autopilot software that is as arrogant as we are and you might have something that people would buy.
Might be kinda fun this way too. The car companies could all merge together and have one power plant and one body style, but a variety of Autopilot software.
Hey Bob what'cha driving?
"Get out of my way v2.1"
oh yeah, well that'll never keep up with my
"I own the G-damn road v5.0"!!!
Hey Steve, I've got that too, but I also bought the "I'm the most important person in the world so SCREW YOU!!!" package.
We said we wanted to _PLAY_ mp3's that we had burned onto CD-R media in the car _NOT_ rip them in the car.
whoa.
Wax on, wax off baby!
How many copies of the Library of Congress is that?
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
Where'd you get your data that the public doesn't want this?
Who'd you ask?
You don't think Sony has done market viability research on this?
Sorry, but you totally come across as a moron here.
No Comment.
Sony has figured out a way to give us our fair use. We've always complained that we wanted to be able to rip mp3s so we can listen using CDRs in the car. Now we can rip straigh to the hard drive. It makes no sense for them though. Just think, the next time you are at a friends house and they just got a new CD, you can say "Hey lets go out to my car so I can rip myself a copy". Sure, it's acopy that you can't bring inside with you or give to anyone else, but you can still make a copy of your friends cd. Very strange. I would just like to see these companies make more cd players that play MP3s off CD-Rs. Unfortunately that will probably cease since they don't want to promote MP3 and all.
Go buy a $150 P-100 laptop with 32 megs of RAM, a $99 Matrix orbial 4x80 LCD screen, a $10 4x4 keypad, about $40 in various parts and a $29 power inverter.
Step 1. Install Linux on said Laptop
Step 2. Install XAudio on said laptop
Step 3. Install CAJUN on said laptop
Step 4. Wire it.
Step 5. Load music on laptop's HD or burn to CDROM
Step 6. Push "PLAY", and laugh at all the poor schmucks who just paid $1400 for something that you constructed (more elegantly and probably cooler).
Mouse, Mice. Goose, Geese. Moose... Moose?
You can get one that plugs into a tape deck in the car for about $50. (that is a CD player that plays regular CD's as well as CD-R's burned with mp3)
I love those regionless DVD players. They are configured so they don't play DVDs from any regions.
I'm not complaining, but at $1,499, can't they fit a bigger hard drive in it? A 80GB drive goes for about $20 more than a 10GB drive nowadays, so if they put a 120GB drive in there, it would raise the price to about $1,519. The small additional cost seems worth it to me.
Or, at the very least, make it a removable hard drive. Then we can spend the $1,499 and throw away the built-in drive without feeling like we're wasting much money.
I should mention; I've also tried two different those FM transmitter things (Send a radio signal from your portable CD Player to the radio), but they also have serious problems: I get a lound whine from the engine, if I pass by a building or under an underpass, I get wierd static noise, etc. It's like listening to a radio station which fades in an out (But the quality of the sound was pretty good).
A wire that connects the portable CD Player directly to the stereo would be much less noisy then the FM Transmitter thing.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
of course i'm not expecting the unit to play cd-r (like most of sony's incanations) as apparently all home users have professional pressers for their self-made music and self-made dvds(reference to sony dvd players which won't play anything other than store-bought dvd titles)
I saw one of these a few weeks ago at Best Buy - it was an impressive, expensive little unit. The thing that caught my attention was the display - beautiful. Full color LCD... Mmm...
WRT labelling and CDDB, I thought I saw at BB that it comes with a snapshot of the Gracenote CDDB on the hard drive. I couldn't find anything official at the Sony site (redirects to Crutchfield for all car audio), but a quick Google search turned up this page, which confirms that it does have a snapshot of the CDDB, to eliminate any labelling issues. Yes, new stuff won't be included (unless they include a mechanism to download updates - you can download your own photos to display, so it's at least feasible), and yes, it's Gracenote, and they're the bad guys, but at least it's there.
Now, if they'd just drop the price...
Jenova_Six
When I first read that, I thought it was a data recorder for accidents and car problems, like a flight data recorder.
I don't know why anyone would spend $1500 on something like this. For $150-$350 you can get a great car CD/ CD-R / CD-RW / MP3CD player with MP3 player input (JVC and Aiwa make fine units [my JVC unit is stellar]) and with another $400-500, you can get a 5-10GB IPOD or other MP3 player.
So,... bottom-price: for a little more than a third of the price, a person could have all the functionality and space as this SONY unit. Also, with an IPOD (or similar unit), you have a player that you can use walking, at home or work. This SONY unit is actually very limiting as it can only be used in your vehicle.
Also,... I didn't notice if this was USB or had FIREWIRE... IPOD's FIREWIRE is 30 times faster than USB.
My car unit:
http://www.empiremedia.net/jvc/jvc.jpg
Wouldnt that be a violation of copyright if you recorded off your XM reciever? Making this a
DRM circumvention device in effect?
Seriously.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
How about someone develop an enclosure that mounts in the dash and accepts any 3.5" IDE hard drive? How many people have some 1 or 2 G hard drives lying around doing nothing?
How about building your own?
Link here to an mp3 player (OK.. not a recorder, but it's a start)
http://www.h2go.co.uk/mp3home.htm
I used to do that with my iPod in my '99 VW Golf Wolfsburgh whose eletricial system was all screwed-up.
Of course i knowingly gave up that ability when i just bought my 2002 BMW 325i. But I play CDs. You've gotta think about user-interface though. The nice thing about an in-dash CD player is that you can easily interact with it without thinking. Which is good while you drive. I *do not* want to be thinking about ripping CD's while in the car:
"do i really want to rip this CD? should i save HD space for other CDs? Which CD's should i rip first? I want to rip this CD but i don't wanna listen to it rite now and i can't do it at home because there is no computer interface".
Because while in the car ... I tend to be driving. And thinking of those things as i'm driving can't be good.
Technology in your car should be highly convenient, yet *remain out of your face*. It should be there, ready to assist you, but not invade you.
BMW gets this. The cockpit controls were carefuly designed and positioned with those goals in mind.
A friend of mine has a really cool AUDI with a slot-loading/6-cd changer/tape deck combo system. It has dual climate-control settings for the left side of the car and the right side. and a slew of buttons all over the place. Perfect for a geek, but man, at night, when all controls are lit-up, the whole thing *looks* just as complex as a plane's cockpit.
plus his brand new audi has had some weird power-steering fluid issues. and they've been giving him sub-par service. which is consistent with my whole VW experience and one of the reasons why i switched to BMW. that and bmwfilms.com 'cuz i wanted to be all dark and mysterious like clive owen.
but i'm digressing.
What I really want now is Apple and BMW to get together and find an incredibly slick way for my iPod to just *plug* into my car's stereo system, check this:
iTunes could have a "special car play list" which users could populate with songs they might wanna listen to in the car. Within that list, an ability to group songs into virtual "CDs" might also be nice.
The in-dash sound system already has 6 buttons to switch radio stations. When in "CD MODE", versus "RADIO MODE", pressing any of those buttons would trigger the corresponding iPod "special car playlist" --> "cd number matching the number you just pressed" --> "first song". Then toggle thru songs via normal controls on steering wheel and in-dash stereo system.
1) without an iPod, the whole system behaves like it always has, which is a simple slot-loading CD system.
2) plug your iPod in, and the whole thing turns into a 6-CD changer system.
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
Now if it came equipped with long range wireless adapters so you could share music with cars passing by...... ;)
Heh...true.
Also, people just like their cars too much. They like to be in control. This is the primary reason why we're not all being driven to work on trains or other mass-transit.
"A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn't have an air force." -William Blum
The onion had a great article that nails it. Something like:
98% of Americans feel that *everyone else* should use public transportation.
I remember having an ATRAC player in my family's pickup back in the 70s. C'mon, Sony...innovate!
Well, not the stock units that come with the cars, but after I bought a Nomad Jukebox I went to Best Buy to look at car CD players and ALMOST HALF of them have a nice, little standard headphone jack sized input on the front of the unit. All you need is a male-male headphone cord from Radio Shack and you can plug your iPod or Rio or Nomad right in and go.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
$1,500 is a little steep?
2 @navel.introspect.html
i talVideo/2002/01/17.html
Why are you promoting Sony, one of the pushers of the DMCA, SSSSSSSCCCAAAA or whatever its called today, and one of the attack dogs of the record company cartels?
Sony is coming after individual file traders. Their spokesperson has called librarians terrorists:
http://zgp.org/linux-elitists/20020119202427.C910
http://www.theshiftedlibrarian.com/categories/dig
They are one of the main attack dogs against fair use.
Consumers who care about fair use should not buy or support Sony products in any way.
One of the wonderful things about the Empeg is that I don't have CDs floating around in my car. I rip them once to my home server, and stick them back in their case and put them into storage. No loss, no damage. The same mp3 files are played in my office, in my lounge and in my car. None of this proprietory bull.
Not to mention that my empeg has 60GB of storage. And can be upgraded for even more. And there's no chance of my empeg being stolen as it is removeable.
"Sony has introduced the Sony MEX-1HD. This is an in-dash CD/Receiver with a 10 giagbyte hardrive built in to rip CD's at 8X speed. It also has an auxilliary input that allows connection of an MP3 player, tape, MD player, and/or an optional Sony plug-and-play XM Satellite Radio tuner. The price is a little steep at $1,499.99, but it's still nice to see a major car audio manufacturer delivering what the public wants." Just what we all needed! Now we can fiddle with an expensive piece of equipment while we should be keeping our eyes on the road! Now if I could fit my burner, an internet connection, and my computer with Kazaa into the car, I could download the songs, burn them to a CD, put the CD in my flashy new MEX-1HD and rip them to the hard drive! More music for my car! Wait, no, completely unfeasable. Seems like an overpriced and redundant gadget to me. But then again I could rip my entire collection of MP3CDs, then bring new MP3CDs and I'd have twice as much music for those 50 hour car trips that we all take. Wait no, bad idea again. Isn't this a bit of overkill? :P
*HUGS*
Megumi.
:)
It's the usual Sony/RIAA "You can't, but we can!!"
FRA: STFU GTFO
I just got one of the new Aiwa units that comes with an aux-in. I got the one that will also play an ISO-9660 CD filled with MP3 files. Cost was under $200. I like the unit a lot and use the aux-in for a Sony XM Radio receiver. However, there has been a big problem with this.
The XM receiver gets its power from the cigarette lighter. When I use a male-male minijack cable to plug it into the aux-in of the radio I get two horrible whines. One coming from the engine (pitch changes with RPM), one coming from the fan that is internal to the XM receiver.
I reasoned that the engine whine is the result of the cigarette lighter and the radio being grounded at different points setting up a big ground-loop so I bought a spare accessory jack from radio shack and wired it up behind the radio in parallel with the radio ground and power. This seemed to reduce the engine whine (didn't eliminate it completely), but it did nothing to the fan noise that the XM unit puts out. I have no idea how I will tackle that.
Anyway, in some cases a direct electrical connection to the stereo such as an aux-in provides will actually degrade the sound, especially in cars with such a large potential for ground loops. I guess that the XM fan noise is being transmitted along the common of the minijack conector now. I had none of these problems when I was just using the tape adapter that came with the XM receiver. If the stereo was not superior in every other way to the factory fm/am/cassette that had been installed I would put the factory radio back and just use the tape adapter.
It's called the Archos Recorder, and I'm listening to one right now. Records in stereo from analog or digital line-in at 44.1khz at up to 160kbps, which should be at least enough for your requirements.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Wouldn't it be better to just have a dock for the iPod? $1000 less expensive. Double the space.
A neat feature would be if you could play the CD while copying it. Let's say your friend gets into your car and wants to make you listen to a CD. You would then have the chance to listen and record the CD before you drop him off.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
It wouldn't post it with no text
That's why it ISN'T first
I was delayed and had to do it, and then when I added text it stopped me AGAIN with "Slow down cowboy"
... and roll your own.
/.
/. needs a DIY section for hardware hackers.
Look at MP3Car.com which has the details you need. Check out the forums.
Currently the Epia MB with a laptop HD via a 2.5 to 3.5 HD converter a slimline DVD/CD-R. You can use the S video or composite for a mobile LCD or serial based character LCD or go all the way and run VGA or SVGA LCD. Schematics on building the Sproggy DC to DC PSU or buy an ATX DC to DC power supply which is probably the hardest component to find.
On mp3car.com's forums you can find schematics for Delayed relays, noise suppression, why NOT to use an inverter, etc. For pics: mp3 webring list or searchmp3cars list.
Look at Mini-itx which has the spacecase that was discussed here on
So much for your afternoon.
Yes,
Many modern CD stereos come with the ability to control a seperate multi-CD-changer unit or another type of audio device. (My 1989 toyata even has a connection for a seperate tape unit.) The connection between that unit and your stereo is often a 13-pin DIN. A quick search on google for your car stereo's DIN pin-out will show you how to build a quick little interface to connect other devices up to your stereo. Of course, the car stereo people aren't going to tell you this, but it is a pretty easy trick. There is even some company that makes a small device that basicly lets you do the same thing without having to solder up a connector. The commersial connector was around $50 and it costs about $5 in parts to build your own. Anyway, that is one way of getting around the tape-on-a-wire solution.
...get down to below $100, and can play mp3/xmms via CD/CDRW or DVD-RAM then I'll get one.
When I sell out to a company like OSDN, then I'll be able to afford spending the extra $1400.
Sony are trying to get people who rip music off CDs killed in horrific car crashes ;)
You might find this hard to believe but using this machine in New Zealand would be considered a breach of our copyright laws.
That's because under NZ law, the purchasers of copyrighted music have *no* right whatsoever to copy that music.
That's right -- you can't tape your CDs or vinyl, you can't tape music from the radio and you certainly can't rip CDs to MP3.
The head of Sony Music NZ is also at the front of a local campaign titled "Burn and get Burnt" which is trying to convince consumers not to burn CDs.
So on the one hand we have Sony selling its MD players/recorders that claim to be able to rip CDs to MD, and on the other hand you've got the head of Sony standing firm behind a law that says consumers are not allowed to rip CDs to MD or any other format.
Talk about two-faced!
The most useful audio gadget in the car to me would be a radio version of the TiVo. So often I listen to a piece of music, or an NPR story, but have to leave the car for half an hour or so, and miss out on the rest of the program. When I get back in the car I would love to be able to continue where I left off before. This sort of thing would be so easy and cheap to do nowadays, with a 5G HD or less, and fairly little power consumption to run off the car battery for an hour or so. Since all the hardware is in the anyway, it might as well play MP3, but thinking of (and marketing) more than one feature seems beyond the capabilities of most companies, so I'll just take the radio TiVo.
20 GB Drive for it: $130 at computer show
Memory Upgrade from Ebay: $8
Software: Free, and some of it written by yours truly
PCMCIA Network Card: Free (actually traded a toner cartrige for it with a friend)
PCMCIA Flash Card reader (hey, this little tosh makes an EXCELLENT companion to the digital camera while on the road using gqview and ROX with thumbnails enabled!): $8 at computer show Power inverter for car (cheaper than buying the cig adapter for the toshiba): $45
Result: A car jukebox that has the exact interface I want, but that can be used for so much more (even mozilla). Much better than $1500 for something that is pretty inflexible.
"They'd have to come up with a PC-based app to manage the music."
Sony already has one, OpenMG Jutebox. It's been out for a couple of years, they're on version 2.2 already.
this technology and others in near future !!
That tray actually locks the disc into the tray, which prevents (says Sony) from excessive wobble. That tray then rides inside another suspension, and the whole mess rides on a 1/4" of a silicone gel to further isolate vibration.
:P )
The goal was to prevent skipping at over 145 decibels when frequencies went below 80 Hz.
It appears to have succeeded, we've yet to see one of these skip yet in our shop (and we've tried...
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
After duping a CD at work on a Sony home dual well burner for demo use (so I don't scratch the shit out of my CD's) I attempted to rip the copied CD to the MEX-1HD. No go. "CANNOT REC" flashed up, and nothing.
Of course, CDs made at home on my PC rip effortlessly.
It will pick up the CD-Text on your discs, it *WILL NOT* rip MP3 cds to the HDD inside - "CANNOT REC". Dammit. I was hoping for an easy way to move my MP3s to work for demo. Heh.
"If there's hope, it lies in the proles..."
--you put a really bogus radio in the dash, like one of those kmart audiovox 29.95$ am/fm no tape no cd models. The better radio and player goes in the glove box, glove box gets a serious lock. You also have ZERO visible speakers anyplace, you hide those under the seats. Car stereo thief glances in window, sees crap, it ain't worth his time, he goes to next victim with all the fancy wheels and wing/ground effects and huge speakers you can see thru the windows. Too bad for him his car screams "I'M A JUICY TARGET, C'MON IN!".
The other way is just go full portable with a smallish unit, it goes in the bookbag with you when you leave the car.
--friend of mine in 68 had an older electra his folks gave him when they traded up/new. It had an in-dash vinyl LP player that worked great, even on the bumpy dirt roads we cruised on to go waste time, burn 15 cents a gallon gas and eat burgers and drink brewskis. Wish I could remember the make of the player now but no dice. It WAS a factory install came with the buick, though.
So I imagine if they had that figgered out in the early 60's when that car was made, they can do it with HDD's now.
With that said, some of the audio systems on cars now are sorta overboard, I really dislike the mega thousand watt amps, no matter what the music is. I fully understand "feel the music", I am an old rock fan, got the hearing loss to prove it*, but still, too much is too much. You need to have some contact with the world around you while driving, the audio and the video part, way, way, way too loud is just that, it's "too".
*ya, you young guys think your ears won't go? HAHAHAHAHA! They'll go, and it don't take too long, either! big hint, if you enjoy music, and want to CONTINUE to enjoy music, quality is better than quantity when it comes to decibels and tones.
rip cd's whilst driving... "what the public wants"
which public... a handful of wankers with more money than they know what to do with?
what a waste of resources
Something along the lines of a removeable hard drive that you put into your box and load with mp3 (or whatever sound format) and then put it in the deck in your car and it plays the mp3s. The various mp3 players are small enough that this should be real easy to engineer. Also, if you use a standard format drive, you can upgrade the size as needed without pulling out the whole deck. Based on what mp3 players go for, I can see a deck without the drive included for about $50. I'll fork that over and slap in my 4.3GB IDE drive that I haven't put on ebay yet and I have tuneage for a serious road trip. Imagine the evil that can be accomplished with a 160GB drive. But that approach would be too logical and therefore is counter intuitive to the car stereo industry (well, take your pick of industry).
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
All 99.999% of the public gives a shit about is if their car stereo plays CDs and sounds "fine". Most people will look at the price tag on the Sony deck and laugh, as anyone who isn't a damn moron should.
In any case, for $600 I can get a good MP3/CD player with a front input AND either an Ipod (5GB) or a Creative Nomad 3 Jukebox to plug into it. With this configuration I get the open MP3 format instead of Sony ATRACs AND the ability to take my MP3 player anywhere & sync betwen it and my computer, all for less than half the price of the Sony deck.
What a wasteful piece of shit. Not even enthusiasts should like this thing. Only people who should are those who like to blow hard-earned money on crap.
The only tool you've got against psychosis is experience.
riocar is the best, they don't make them anymore, BUT you can still get them if you look around for a good price. they run on linux and my friend bought a 10GB one, it's VERY nice.
U = SMARTES