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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."
Is your workplace ADA compliant?
When Sony's in-dash mp3 player lets you bluetooth a song over to that guy in the lane next to you, I think you'll see the RIAA et al go after em.
It's not the ripping that bothers the RIAA (well, it does, but they dont have too much leverage here since ripping can be fair use), its the sharing that scares the shit outta them.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Not at all. http://www.mp3car.com
I run one of these systems myself. As long as you mount the hard drive properly (so that the heads swing on a vertical axis), there's not much problem.
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.
Imagine the ugly freeway pileups when the two cars tried to stay in range.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
Kinda gives a new meaning to 'listening to speed metal'.
"Old man yells at systemd"
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.
I agree that the platters should be vertical, but wouldn't it be better to have the heads swing horizontally than vertically? (i.e. they "dangle" rather than move up and down against gravity and road vibration)
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?
actually, I think this is what the public wants. My dad has asked about something like this for years. If he could get 10G orth of music, and not have to keep track of his CD's. he would live it. a lot of people feel that way.
The caveat is, it must have a good UI and be 'idiot proof'. so If I try to rip a cd, and I all ready ripped it, it would either noit rip it, or rip it over the previous one.
Your sentiment is understood, but I think this has strong apeal to non-geeks as well.
once we get past the introductory curve, competition will kick in, then the price will drop.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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
"...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
There's no reason...other than the fact that the connection and communication protocols are different.
You could take your iPod and hook it up and play it through the car speakers-but to transfer MP3 music off the iPod, you'd need a car head unit that speaks OSX and FireWire.
For many other players, this would mean following a tightly-controlled manufactuerer spec and USB support.
Or, you'd have to have a device that can control (SmartMedia/CF/Memory Stick/Digital Media/SD) and read/write to it.
There is no standardized interface-hence why all MP3 players have a special program you generally have to use to put music onto it. That's becuase the communications protocols are PRIVATE.
If that changed, maybe it would be easier--but, you'd still be left with a hardware problem. How much more expensive would a car head unit be, if it had to have an advanced integrated OS that supports plug and play, and has high-speed serial bus controllers?
A lot more expensive than $1,499.
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.
No, I can see where you'd want to do this -- ripping the CDs in your car is a great way to transport your music collection, which is already on CD (unless your "collection" consists of stolen music). You can build up a set of songs in the car that will allow you to leave your CDs at home in the future.
The real problem I have is that I've yet to see a really good interface for a vast collection of MP3's. This is something you really could use a simple GUI for, but most car audio systems force you to sludge through as if it were just a regular CD (ok for 14 tracks, shitty for 1400). If Sony or someone could come up with a good way to select a song without causing me to drive off the road, I'd buy that. As it stands, sticking to regular CDs is actually easier for me.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
if it's an older Beetle, I bet she's got a boyfriend that can bench-press a flat-four, possibly with the transaxle attached ;)
Bill - aka taniwha
--
Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
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!!
Exactly! The people who are hardcore enough on the music encoding scene to pay $1400 for an appliance are the same people who want to rip, mix, play with bitrates, encoders, plus surf and play games while waiting for encoding to happen. The car is not a place to do this. In the car, you want to listen to your pre-ripped, pre-encoded music.
This is why the in-car player should just be able to communicate with your PC via bluetooth so you can remotely up/download songs while you are at the PC and the car is in the driveway.
I would suspect that Sony has some subscription service in mind where you can pay $10 per month and set aside, say 15% of your storage for content: i.e. you specify what kind of tunes you like and whenever you pass a Sony Music Station, something new you've never heard in your chosen categories is uploaded.
If you take a crosscountry trip, you might end up with 100+ new songs you've never heard at the end of it uploaded automatically.
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.
this is what the public wants
No it isn't. And it isn't what geeks want either. What some of the public want and more geeks want is the capability to play MP3s in their car -- not the capability to rip MP3s in their car. One is about convenience and choice. The other is about enabling a gee-whiz function which has no bl**dy place in a car.
Am I missing something? I followed the link, and couldn't see anything to indicate the hard drive could be removed so you could hook it up to your PC and rip tunes that way. On the contrary; there's a slot in the unit so you can use memory sticks and transfer files from your PC to your car stereo.
You want to rip MP3s? Fine. Do it in the right context -- at home, in your office, where ever you have your burners. But the moment I see someone trying to do this in a car on the same road as me, I'm dialling the police and reporting dangerous driving.
Major thumbs down to Sony for the sheer stupidity inherent in even conceiving of such a device.
That's because there stupid.
'bout time we had what fighter pilots have...
I agree. I want one of these on my next car. That ought to do wonders on the idiots driving 40mph in the fast lane.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
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."
>Not unless they have a mobile link to a freeCDDB-type database for the titles -
Who wants 2000 songs all unlabled?
The Pioneer PEH-P900HDD car unit mentioned in other comments has a built-in CDDB (I wonder how they plan to keep it up-to-date, though - does anyone know?). Sony probably has a similar scheme.
>Plus, once you rip them in the car, I doubt it would ever be possible to move them indoors.
The Pioneer "features" a memory stick slot for this purpose. Unfortunately you can only use DRM-crippled "MagicGate" memory sticks for the transfer - gaaaack.
I'd like to replace the MD unit in my car with a HD-based player, but neither the Sony nor the Pioneer unit fits the bill. What I want is to rip at home (including correct song info, not the typo-infested stuff that comes from Gracenote) and transfer the songs to a 10 or 20 gig HD-based unit in the car via CD-RW or a portable USB2/1394 HD. And I won't buy anything featuring DRM, ever.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
hahaha great idea. make it happen! :)
Extraordinary Vacations. Exceptional Prices
And, given that there's going to be vibration, would you rather the heads get knocked off the track that they're currently reading and have to go back and read again, or would you rather that the heads plow into the track that they're reading, on the off chance that you have a relatively large supply of hard drives with all your songs on them?
When I first read that, I thought it was a data recorder for accidents and car problems, like a flight data recorder.
People, let's not forget: Sony *IS* the RIAA.
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
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
I remember having an ATRAC player in my family's pickup back in the 70s. C'mon, Sony...innovate!
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
I've been wondering about how heat would affect something like this. Here in Arizona the inside of the car can easily reach 140 degrees Farenheit. I don't know of any HD that has an operating temperature that high. Also, what about the somewhat rapid cooling once one gets in and blasts the AC? Could the heat, or the hot/cold swing, warp the platters or something?
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.
No, sorry, it seems that between moderation and positive comments, I haven't come across as a moron here.
A small, niche market will exist for these. That does not mean 'the public'.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
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.
their - possesive; e.g. their car.
That should be "possessive".
Only idiots can't keep this straight
If only you'd looked up, you'd have seen the joke go "whoosh" over your head.