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Sony's New Bookshelf MP3 Player -- Audio TiVo?
Betelgeuse writes: "The NY Times has a story story about a new bookshelf MP3/CD player from Sony. Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive. It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site." As the article puts it, they've come up with "the world's first TiVo for radio." Long overdue -- I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard, and let you pull tracks to other media. Update: 07/11 18:17 GMT by T : Ooops -- messed up that link, now fixed.
Or will the DRM issues prevent this. Maybe they can roll it into their XBOX/UltimateTV can't do two things at once media hub...
[UID-HeinzIntel]
See my FP stupid ass, it already runs Windows.
Cunning linguists
Sony is one of the worst offenders when it comes to the issue of being able to rip one's own CD's to one's own goddamn comfuter. Why the fsck would they provide a standard format and a means to transfer the tracks to your own PC so that you could just share them with your little ring of pirates?
\
Alright, so I buy one of these, and it rips my CDs, thats alright.
My friend comes over w/ her CDs and we play them in MY player, and it rips those too. Now what? I just pirated music w/o intent, but I still did 'steal' the music. Oye.
--sig fault--
I could see Microsoft doing this, but I think both will be hindered by DRM issues. My personal opinion is that I would like Sony electronics better if the electronics division would split into a separate company from the publishing division. The memory stick Walkman, for example, could have been a wonderful toy if it weren't for the DRM crap in it.
Hmm... well, I would say that remains to be seen...
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
Oh for chrissake, that was totally uncalled for. Using your pseudo logic, the XBox doesn't exist. Because there was already a console by another company that ran Windows before it (DreamCast). Did that prevent Microsoft from making their own console.... No. Spend a little more time thinking things true and less time trying to FP and call people names.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Will it play the copy protected CD's From Sony Music?
The lack of this key feature renders the machine dead in the water. Next.
and let you pull tracks to other media ... this sounds like you would like to pirate music. Do not let that pig Hillary Rosen find out. She would squash you with that fat Kosher ass that has been humping Jack Valenti!
Isn't this the same company that released a Celion Deion CD that would crash some Macs?
Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
I believe he was referring to standard-as-in-Microsoft-standard. Obviously a company as upright as Microsoft isn't going to endorse a file format designed primarily for the purposes of piracy. They are hard at work developing a secure media / player / file combo that will allow the major players in the entertainment to provide us with the digital media we all clamor for.
Cunning linguists
This is Sony we're talking about, a company with interests in record labels as well as making hardware... wonder how they've crippled it?
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
the world's first TiVo for radio
It creates MP3s from CDs that you play, not from the radio.
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
Most people don't read comments by dumbasses with 0 karma.
Or Anonymous Cowards either... I'm just as lame as l33t j03.
Why buy a CD anymore when you can just borrow your friends and copy them? Er.. wait? what?
From the article:
(The L7HD stores audio in Sony's own Atrac3 format rather than the more common MP3 format. But since you can copy music only onto the hard drive, never off it, the storage format makes no practical difference.)
This is an excellent point, which is totally correct! Almost all independent record labels give away mp3s. This proprietary system is doomed to fail.
This guy's post should be modded up.
If this thing were an am/fm radio that let you record/scrub a live radio broadcast or something, that would be cool. Not that this isn't cool, but that's what I though it was when I read that phrase.
Would be useful for those Saturday night DJ mixes you hear, or I suppose if there was some talk radio segment you like, or a really funny morning-radio skit.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
I wonder how the Sony Music People (the music label and copyright holders) feel about this?
It seems to me that after all they and other labels have been trying to accomplish (and doing fairly well --I might add)this could cause some problems. I suppose they are 'separate' but I can't see how on one hand they can argue for no copying, than go ahead and copy on the other hand.
"The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
Some people prefer other formats and would find it very easy to use a device like that to rip their CDs to.
:(
Live music dies in MP3 format. SHNs are the only way to go. If I could pop in a CD, have it rip to SHN I would be VERY pleased. Currently I have to rip to WAV, convert to SHN, etc
What part of this paragraph didn't you understand?
"Indeed, you can program the timer to record certain radio shows automatically, including on a daily or weekly schedule, so that they are ready to play whenever you feel like listening to them (or pausing, rewinding or fast-forwarding them). If you've ever used a TiVo or ReplayTV digital video recorder, you're no doubt smacking your forehead in recognition: In effect, Sony has created the world's first TiVo for radio."
(And somebody modded that up?)
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
otherwise you'll be reading about them next week when some evil 4 letter acronym is sueing the pants off of them.
/usr/games/fortune
Hmm, $1000 for a player that doesn't let me conveniently use my existing MP3 collection or an iPod at half the price that not only lets me use my MP3's but holds more songs because they're stored as MP3's. I won't have to think too long about this one.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Why buy this expensive CD player with a hard drive, when Sony is one of the very same companies that is busy putting things on the CD to keep them from being read in this way? It will likely be unable to read Sony CD's if they have their way. And even if it can, do you want to support a system where it's OK for a Sony CD player to rip Sony CD's, but no other brand of CD player or your own computer can? Will you buy one of each brand CD player for each music company that publishes CD's? Get a clue people, Sony should get the word loud and clear that people are going to stop buying all of their products until they stop screwing with the redbook standards to screw the consumer. Unless this happens their copy protection games will continue.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
'The L7HD stores audio in Sony's own Atrac3 format rather than the more common MP3 format.'
how can this be an mp3/cd player, when it only playr Atrac3/cd??
it does NOT store the files as MP3 it stores them as ATRAC3. This is the same thing the NetMD does. In the case of the NetMD it says MP3 compatible, but what it does is convert MP3-->ATRAC3. Now that you have downloaded the music on to the HD of this machine YOU CAN'T LOAD IT OUT. Just like the NetMD player. THe NetMD player has a mic in...so I record an interview...well guess what, I can't upload the recording onto the computer through the USB port! I have a NetMD player, but $ony's attitude about file security ensures I won't buy any more similar products.
This seems to be Sony's motif with regard to compressed audio; it goes in, but it never comes out. Do they view themselves as singlehandedly holding back the P2P flood? A bit irritating, because I've got news for them: the shit's out of the horse already, folks, and there's no way I'm gonna dump this kind of cash on a device like this if they're going to cut off what would be its biggest convenience -- autoripping MP3s off of the CDs I play in my stereo so that I can play them at my computer later.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
I bow my head in shame....
The revolution will be televised. Blackout restrictions apply.
MP3 is not the de facto standard of digital music these days at the consumer level. Neither is Ogg, or the MiniDisc, or DAT, ADAT, etc.
The standard for digital audio is the current compact disc format. I believe that most people currently rip their MP3s from this standard format.
Will the pinheaded moron that modded this as "Insightful" please proceed immediately to the Slashdot preferences page, and uncheck "Willing to Moderate"? It's bad enough that posters don't read the articles...
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
Would you like me to post it with an account with 50 Karma? If that will help further your education I'd be happy to do it.
Cunning linguists
For $1000 you could get a cheap Shuttle PC with a CD drive and a 180 GB drive (and more). Put in a good sound card and buy speakers, and it'll sound as good. Plus, you can rip to OGG, MP3, whatever.
Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!
if the picture up on the link is real, I must say it does carries a certain resemblance to Bang Olufsens' music systems. See for yourself
n tu ry&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab =wi
http://images.google.com/images?q=beosound%20ce
then again, there are only so many ways of designing a music system..
.
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Let me see if I understand this...
I pay for a CD player that automatically writes my music to a hard drive, and then automatically retrieves the album information from the Internet. I can thus play the music off of the hard drive, instead of using the CD.
Why even bother buying a CD if its sole purpose is as a transfer medium? This portends the obsolesence of the compact disc...
But its a story about a story!
If you have been keeping up with press releases you'd realize microsoft has already come up with a similar device, it just isn't on the market yet.
We all know that M$'s little X-box playes DVD's and CD players right? Does anyone remember that tiny IBM hard disk that holds 80 GB? Well the next generation X-box has two of these inside of it (Yes, 160GB), the plan as microsoft stated it was to have these suckers hook into your entertainment system, and download songs and movies off of the internet for a cost, store them temporarily (supposedly you can't perform opperations on the hard disks, they are just for storage while you watch a movie), and watch them for a set number of days before the device deletes them.
Pretty cool idea? Not if you read further. First off it doesn't play MP3's (microsoft is getting quite a kick back from realplayer), and it logs everything you download and watch, packages it, and ships it off to M$ for sale to other companies (don't watch pr0n!), so we basically a huge piece of spyware. In addition, microsoft tags on it's own commericials and trailers into programs and audio downloaded. Sure it plays games, and does everything but the dishes, but do you really want this?
I don't
The story can be found here
Does this mean that Sony will sue itself for creating an circumvention device?
You COULD run WinCE on the DC, but it wasn't on the console (the OS never is) it was on the game disc. And MOST (90%) of the games used Katana, the Sega OS, NOT CE. The CE games sucked. :)
"The L7HD stores audio in Sony's own Atrac3 format rather than the more common MP3 format."
This is not 'Sony's new bookshelf MP3 player' it's Sony's new bookshelf Atrac3 player.
The NY Times has a story about a story new bookshelf...
Huh? Is this some sort of meta-story? Did you mean to say a 'starry new bookshelf...' or more like just 'a story about a new...'
I've been thinking of making some kinda "Tivo for radio" thing for a while now. There's been so many times when I wanted to hit rewind while listening; and there are a lot of programs that come on at odd hours for me. Then there's the convenience of loading some talk radio onto my MP3 player.
However, this particular device is rather costly. Anyone have a FM/AM PCI card? How is the software? Any problems with reception?
A real simple software solution would be to just run the radio into your Line In, and setup a timed recording. But of course that wouldn't be as convenient and configurable.
Hmm... did I say that clearly enough? Okay, I'll sum up: I want to read Slashdot without you . Please go away, back to usenet or wherever you came from. Actually, on second thought, don't even go back to usenet. Please take all your computers and give them to someone who will post intelligently.
Side note: I'm posting with my +2 to show how important I think this is. I'm really sick and tired of the S/N ratio around here these days. Please keep in mind that this is an On-Topic reply, albeit to an Off-Topic troll.
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
-damental
"The unit's ability to save audio onto its hard drive is not limited to CD's, either. It can just as easily store the music on your tapes or even vinyl records, thanks to the analog and digital audio inputs on the back, or even from the built-in radio. "
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
What's so special about Sony's device? My Request ARQ1 (http://www.request.com) that I've had for 18 months does everything this device seems to do. Additionally, it's got a built in webserver, streaming capabilities, SMB sharing, and no crap ass DRM.
- It doesn't use MP3, it uses some Sony proprietary format.
Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive.
- Unless it's a Sony CD, probably
It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site."
- Sony have CD-Text, but made it so proprietary that it hasn't caught on. So what a waste of time. Needless to say, if you have a spare $1000 you'd be better buying a PC in a small case to do the job for you. If you don't want a PC but want one of these boxes, this functionality will be pretty bloody useless.
As the article puts it, they've come up with "the world's first TiVo for radio."
- It's got nothing to do with radio.
Long overdue --
- Since when has some proprietary crap been "long overdue"?
I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard,
- Closer to standard? Either it IS standard, or it isn't.
and let you pull tracks to other media.
- OK well we can let this pass. No doubt of course it will be hackable to pull to other media, but you might not be able to hack the proprietary format.
And to think, all those submissions which are made, and this is the best they have? Puhlease.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
Encoding CDs to mp3? My computer will start encoding any audio CD I feed it.
Radio? Most radios I listen to are online. There are many programs I can use to record them. If a local radio broadcasts something I want to keep, I can buy a cheap cable and record it too.
Sharing? My computer automatically stores them on my server, which I mount with nfs and let some friends access via FTP.
I really can't see how Sony is going to make people pay $1000 for something unefficient they can get for half the price.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
Be, Inc. had a device like this that used MP3 as the format many years ago. Heard about it being shown in a couple of trade shows back in the day. Networkable, too.
*sigh* Coulda been cool...
Sorry, I was going by the Slashdot story. Which is wrong. Maybe they should change it.
Apparently it's OK for Sony to do this, but if you were to start a company and make a similar device, Sony would be one of the first companies lining up to sue you for violating the laws they bought. Does anyone else see a problem with this?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Hence my use of the phrase "ran Windows" vs. had Windows loaded on it. But I suppose "was able to run a version of Windows," would have been more explicit.
[UID-HeinzIntel]
2. ethernet connection to share ripped files, as well as upload files from external sources.
3. open-ended decoder that will be able to understand future compression formats using a plug-in style format.
4. function as both an mp3 server to other networked devices, as well as a stand-alone audio CD/mp3 player.
5. also plays DVDs, to reduce component clutter
I've looked very hard for such a device; many come close but don't have all the features I want. If I had the time and experise I would roll my own :P
NO CARRIER
Read again, it will record to hard drive off radio, and can be scheduled to record particular programs, just like the Tivo does with TV.
The title is misleading. This is not an MP3 player. The songs are stored in Sony's own format.
Also, this device can copy from any audio source, digital or analog. That means CDs, tapes, radio and even your PC (when it is playing music).
Sony has not attempted to build CD to MP3 ripper/player. This is a digital jukebox very similar in concept to TiVo.
All your favorite sites in one place!
What is SHN? Is it a lossless/lossy compression?
Is it actually supported by any devices? Not even Ogg Vorbis has hardware support...
What would actually be nice is to have a device like this with a giant (120 GB or so) HD that could rip to uncompressed WAV if desired.
I mean realty, if the parent company is making these kinds of products shouldn't it just dissolve its Music Division?
First? How is this any different from the escient fireball????
http://www.escient.com/ecg.htm
This Sony products sounds very similar to the RioCentral from SonicBlue. The RioCentral rips a CD that you insert, grabs cd track info from cddb, and stores on 40GB drive in mp3 format. It has USB ports for connecting your portable MP3 player, and you can connect it to the rest of your network with the ethernet port. A feature it has over the Sony model is that it can also burn CDs that you mix. You can also transfer files to and from the unit over the network. The only feature sony seems to have on this guy is the ability to tune to radio stations.
As I replied to someone else, the story says MP3 in the title. That's where I got "mp3 format" from.
See:
Escient Fireball
Audieorequest ARQ2 Pro
-Andrew
I've had a TiVO for radio on my PC ever since I bought my Happauge WinTV PCI with built in stereo am/fm tuner, if you go to their website, they even have an app that lets you set times to record anything to. I used to use it to record these great techno and hip-hop mixes every friday night on a local community radio station, and record from NPR every once and a while.
What could cause some problems. I can't see many Ogg Vorbis portable players, do two things on one of his life. Why buy one hand they have their Tivo can't see how the very same companies that this thing were an am/fm radio segment you pull tracks to pirate music. Do not let that let that after all of being able to read in this key feature renders the issue of CD player or something, that fat Kosher ass that this expensive CD player or I suppose they are going to stop screwing with a means to transfer the copy on the Sony CD player or I read that you hear, or your own PC so that matter (compared to standard format and he's warm for a standard format and other brand CD player to accomplish (and doing fairly well --I might add)this could cause some problems.
... this happens their copy protection games will likely be closer to read Sony should get the CD player with that has been humping Jack Valenti! It will likely be cool. Not that phrase.
I suppose if they stop screwing with a day, but no copying, than MP3? It's the de facto standard than MP3? It's the radio. If this thing were an am/fm radio segment you buy one of their products until they can argue for no other brand CD player or a clue people, Sony is one of each music company that let that is busy putting things at once media hub...
Why the other media
While at a conference a few weeks back, I spent an interesting evening with a grain of salt.
Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive. It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site.
This new Sony machine will rip the CDs that I play. SO if I play one of the anti-ripping CDs in it will it rip it for me? Or will it not play it? The songs that it rips, it will get the albumn track info from a PC link. How soon will it be hacked? I would not be surprised if the PC link will be hacked before the release (if it is released at all).
MP3s are also copyrighted to Brandenburg, who has also created MP4. MP4 have better quality and are better than MP3s. Besides all the tighter restrictions on MP4s, why don't they use "the latest" in audio files?
Personally, I don't like mp3s, I have some, but not alot. I would prefer to rip my CDs to Ogg Vorbis if I rip them at all. The sony machine would look alot more appitizing if other music formats are used.
The 20 gig hard drive would be minimum that is factory installed. An updgrade to a 50 gig or greater would be ideal (Why not a 120 gig?) That way I won't have to worry about space. 20 gis just won't do it!
I've been doing this at home for months, and I know I'm not the first, because I got the idea from some other slashdot reader a while back.
all you need is a D-LINK USB Radio tuner connected to Linux box with soundcard; some radio-control, sound recording and MP3 encoding utilites like radio, brec, and lame; a simple shell script that takes 4 parameters, and a fair amount of disk space
the script should do something like: ~/bin/record X N Y archive/FOO
says "tune to frequency X, then record for N seconds, encoding as MP3 with Y quality, into filename FOO_datetime" if filename is not in archive directory, don't append datetime, just overwrite previous file.
Spent a day or so tweaking the script, and now I record programs for daily listening, and some radio shows my wife likes for long-term archiving as MP3s. Scheduling is handled via cron, who already knows about days of week, etc - why reinvent? Might be nice to add a front-end that checks for schedule conflicts, but that's a low bang-for-the-buck effort, versus just putting alkl my cron entries in chronological order, and being careful...
Linux users who ant to try this: (The usb-radio module is "dsbr100" -- you need kernel >= 2.4.17 for this driver to actually work; Debian users: apt-get install radio brec; google for and download lame or other MP3 encoder) and you're more than halfway there.
did I leave anything out?
Yeah, "Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of..."
Other than that, you got most of them.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
Etree
from the article
"It can just as easily store the music on your tapes or even vinyl records, thanks to the analog and digital audio inputs on the back, or even from the built-in radio."
Hrmm...so I guess a person could hook their computer's digital out on their sound card directly to the digital in on the Sony unit and copy the entire contents in one big stream over a few days. Not ideal, and certainly not what they intended.
Of course the $1000 price tag makes absolutely no sense. One could build a new micro-atx mini system that would sit in about the same footprint for less than that, and it would do a whole lot more.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
The real purpose of a cd is now like a 'proof of purchase'. Without that, how can you really prove that you bought a license to listen to a track? If you buy a track online, what proof do you have besides the track that you bought it? Since the track is digital and easily (and exactly) copied, it's hard to prove that it's been paid for. Compared to a cd where you have an actualy physical object that cannot be copied exactly. Sure you can rip it, and copy it to a cdr, but its not the same as the original.
CDs may be overpriced transfer mediums, but they also prove that you paid for it too. I was a member of eMusic.com for a while and have aton of tracks that I bought by downloading them. How can I prove that I actually paid for them? And not just copied them from someone on gnutella? I guess that I could look up my old reciepts, but it would be hard to prove it.
Could you post that message again, this time in your native language?
I wish someone would make something like this for the car. There are multi-disc changers, but they hold, at most, 10 cds and are often mounted in the trunk. I'd love the versatility of a large range of music, without...
- having to juggle which cds are in my car and are in my house
- the mess of many cds sitting around in the car
- not being able to play a cd because it wouldn't be safe drive while trying to find it
- the chance that my cds will be stolen/damaged
MP3 cd players are nice, but I still have to select a playlist and keep the cd up-to-date with my favorites.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
This sounds a lot like the HARP or Aura home audio box that Be was demoing a year or two ago. I'm glad someone finally is trying to sell this idea. needs a minidisc tho.
Woo hoo! I haven't had an Atrac tape player since I wrapped my '77 Chevy around that phone pole. Now I can listen to my 'Pure Prairie League' and 'Three Dog Night' tapes again!
it also doesn't save them to MP3 format, it uses sony's own ALTRAC3 format.
Xaotik Designs
Please read the article someone!
The L7HD stores audio in Sony's own Atrac3 format rather than the more common MP3 format.
At least get the Subject right...
Seems Sony hardware division does not play well with Some Music division.
Maybe they will sue each other and implode from the mass of lawyers.
so where is the ability to schedule recording of radio shows??
I dont care about auto-cd-ripping.. I can rip cd's just fine and with a decent encoder (I guarentee that this toy doesnt have a top-class encoder)
Hey sony, why not make products that people actually want! encode from radio or line-in.... or better yet ethernet on the back so I can play my 95,354,232.12 songs I have already encoded...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Here in Sweden digital radio broadcasting MP2 music has already been cut down to a minimum. There were no killer application like this, not even any players for sale. Whenever they plan for the next technical standard with a lifespan of 50+ years they'd better get support from the industry first.
I predict that the next big thing will be suffocated by licencing costs.
Come on, is that the best you can do? Why not go to troll friendly sites like this?
/., if you don't close a tag the whole thread gets messed up. Best of all you can post images, and the moderators are hardly ever around!
They are a lot dumb gullible morons there, and I think their IQ level is at most 1. There are always flamewars going on, and it is so easy to start one. You don't have the stupid [here is the address] when you post a link. Their html seems to be worse then
Only downside it you have to wait 24 hours before you can post, but just create several accounts and you are set. Oh year, the have a lame filter so First Post turns into Boobies but there are ways around it. There are other words that get censored, but you can get around that makes the filter pointless.
About a year before we cratered, Be, Incorporated, had developed a prototype of a product very similar to what Sony's come out with.
It was called HARP (Home Audio Reference Platform). Built on top of BeOS (naturally), the HARP prototype looked like an ordinary stereo component (principally because we bought an actual stereo component, hollowed it out, and shoved an Intel 810-based mobo in there). When you inserted a CD, HARP would begin ripping it immediately, convert it to MP3, and store it on the internal disk. But all that happened in the background; you could still play the disc immediately.
We used the built-in database features of the BeOS filesystem to index all internally stored MP3s. And we'd send off to FreeDB.org for the tracklist. But the really cool bit was that HARP had a built-in Web server. Just fire up your PC -- or your wireless Web tablet, of which we had plenty laying around -- connect to the HARP server, and you'd get a browsable list of all the songs on the machine, viewable in any Web browser. Pick one, and it would start playing.
We never got to finish the prototype; Be died before that could happen.
Funny, though; I seem to remember that we had showed HARP to the Sony people when we were developing the e-Villa Web appliance for them...
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
I for one like that it does not record to the drive in mp3 format.
This unit is designed for the person who doesn't 'rip' all their cd's onto their computer. It is a great thing for the average teenage girl/guy who doesn't want to deal with their cd's all the time. They get to play them once, and it is 'magically' stored 'in' their stereo, forever easy to access, manipulate into play lists etc etc.
This is device is not for the average Sony Vaio (tm) owner.
This unit only has regular analog audio out, like any other piece of audio equipment. So there is no way to take the digital music back out. That is the kind of copying they can support, one-way and in a proprietary format.
I'll wager that it is an ordinary audio CD player in there too(rather than a CD-ROM player), so that it can play their copy-protected CDs, which means that the audio goes from digital to analog before encoded back to digital.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
Unless it also downloads a list of what is going to be playing on the radio for the next two weeks and lets you choose what to record by name, adjusting when it records when your favorite radio talk show changes timeslots, automatically finds the sports coverage of your favorite teams, etc., then it's not like a TiVo, it's more a glorified VCR using hard drives and recording radio instead of video.
No, I haven't read the article. It's the New York Times. Free as in PII. And never have I seen posted user/pass combinations or those sites that create throwaway subscriptions work once.
Ummmm...sound quality perhaps?
Most digital encoding technologies are lossy to some degree, so there is always going to be some loss of quality when compared to the original CD. Admittedly, a lot of people can't tell the difference or don't care, but for those of us who can tell, the CD is still a must have.
Hmm so they release copy protected cds AND do this as well??? http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/new _media/newsid_1912000/1912466.stm
okay then!!
I, personally, would reserve judgement on calling this device a "Tivo for music" until I get a little more info on how expandable it is. Half the reason Tivo has such a great community of supporters is the fact that you can mod them out and do so many things with them that the designers didn't fill in themselves (network cards, bigger drives, new software to run it, etc). If Sony can give those same capabilities with this device, then they might actually earn the honor of being compared with the Tivo line.
This tagline is umop apisdn.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
to storage audio, data, and video simultaneaously !
infinity storage for 100 years but the bandwidth
performance will be second to none !!
http://colossalstorage.net/colossal.htm
I only wish it used a format that was closer to standard, and let you pull tracks to other media
With the SDMI comliant^h^h^h^h^h lawsuit avoiding players out there, it ain't gonna happen. A copy of a copy is a no-no. Get used to this. The only way it will die is if nobody buys this. Unfortunately nobody will release anything else due to the attack lawyers awaiting a target. Ya gotta walk a very tightrope to put out a player that the public will buy and will keep you out of the court system.
Current standards are not going to be supported anymore except by write and erease players.
An player that will serial copy from one player to another is a device that will be soon under legal attack.
The truth shall set you free!
If you use Linux or Windows, you have a TiVo for the radio now. See Linux Radio Timeshift HOWTO.
If you use Windows, try: Nowhere Man - Messer's Home Page.
There is probably something for the Mac, but I wouldn't know.
Both solutions require that you have an external radio tuned to the station that you want or a Radio Card you can control from your OS. Unfortunately neither Windows or Linux is capable of waking up from a deep sleep via the computer's clock (this is ridiculous, somebody should fix this and offer a smarter computer/BIOS), so it isn't exactly the same as a VCR for the radio. But if you leave your computer on all the time anyway, it doesn't matter.
Dara Parsavand
MP3 player for digital music player
Band-Aids(TM) for bandages
Kool-aid(TM) for fruit punch
Velcro(TM) for hook-and-loop tape
Coke(TM) for sodas
Playboys(TM) for skin mags
Kleenex(TM) for masturbatory cleanup tissues
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
I just want a shelf system that plays mp3/cds with a nice design. I don't want the cassette deck anymore.
I can't find a system like it. Rios are the only ones who come close.
...Apex. Or any other conveniently located electronics manufacturer.
;)
Just imagine a device like this one, same looks, same sound quality etc, but with the following subtle differences:
1) It plays MP3 CDs in addition to audio CDs (in this case copying the files themselves into the HDD instead of encoding);
2) It uses MP3 for encoding. Ogg Vorbis optional.
3) It is actually a small Linux machine with an Ethernet port. You can hack it at will. All of its software is GPL. It also comes with a rescue CD in case you screw up and forget to include the sound chip and network drivers in your latest kernel compilation.
3a.) It has a Samba/NFS server set up by default so you can browse the HDD contents.
I'd work for minimum wage for a company planning to build this.
HP released this same product over a year ago (and has already killed off the product line) they haven't gotten aroundto killing the link on their site yet. You can see the HP Digital Entertainment Center HERE They even were selling these at Best Buy for $995US but I heard a rumor from a B.B. manager that in the whole US they sold 6 of them! Cool Idea, but too expensive!
I'm assuming the wav -> shn convertor is command - line based. If it is you cvan set up GRIP to rip to shn, (it does all the ripping to wav converting to shn behind the sceenes and tags everything with CDDB info)
Why not fork?
Anybody else picture Troy McClure saying this in a Simpson's show? Just add the following obligatory lines to the beginning and you're set. "Hello my name is Troy McClure. You may remember me from such other educational films such as 'How to invade Mexico' or 'Why Incest is Bad'..."
Sony has had a car version of this out for some time now. They don't "automatically rip your cd's".. you have to tell it to.. and you can pick certain tracks or the whole CD.. can organize it into folders, etc. It has two different bit rates and has a 10GB internal hard drive. Go to any of your local circuit citys and you can check it out
I actually set up a primitive Tivo for radio
using some scripts that drive a Yamaha RP-U100
USB Audio/Radio device. It can do scheduled
audio recordings, like "record 91.5 FM at 6:00am
for 2 hours".
It's sort of neat, but it would take a lot
of work to make it as neat as a Tivo.
Unless you count on-board video [as] "normal PC s"
The original Macintosh computer had on-board video. So did the Fat Mac, Plus, SE, Classic, and SE30. So did the IIsi, IIci, IIvx, Performa, and LC models. So did the old iMac and the G4 Cube. So do the current eMac and iMac machines. So do all laptop and tablet computers. In fact, the only Apple computers not to have on-board video were the too-expensive-for-most-home-users models: II, IIx, IIcx, IIfx, some Macintosh Quadra models, and the desktop and tower Power Macintosh computers.
win-modems
The first internal modem for a PowerBook computer was a winmodem. Some winmodems are actually real modems that use a language other than Hayes AT to talk to the CPU; others (the HSP models) are in essence glorified sound cards.
The top of the line G4 with a 17" studio display is: $4,548.00
Yes, but families wanting an entry-level computer often don't have $1,099 for Apple's bottom of the line computer, the eMac. (Please, no extensible editor jokes.)
Will I retire or break 10K?
You know how some people resent Microsoft for its size and ambition? Well, here's a conversation starter: Why don't people resent Sony?
Moderators: you're going to be tempted to hit "Offtopic" here, but keep in mind the above is a direct quote from the article and I'm commenting on it.
I don't know ANYONE who resents Microsoft for its size and success. But somehow, when the topic of conversation turns to Microsoft and the people with whom I'm conversing with are dazzled by Microsoft's phenomenal position in the industry, concerns about Microsoft get answered with "You're just jealous!"
That ain't it. We're disturbed by Microsoft's apparent ambition of total control over the desktop computing experience (or computing experience in general). About the prospect of not being able to work with a computer w/o HAVING to use a piece of Microsoft's software.
Size and success have nothing to do with it.
Maybe being an Apple advocate for many years does turn your brain to mush. David Pogue should know better.
(I use and love a Powerbook, Apple fans, just in case you want to flame).
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
to find out if you have copied mp3's and sent the RIAA police to you house in one fell swoop.
I ain't buying one of these spyware machines.
Note that when you buy a new Sony Minidisc recorder to record music on you minidisc....you can't upload that music to a different machine than the one used to record it.
SOny is doing everything to lock you down. Don't buy this ting. I have their Minidisc recorder, which is cool, but I can't transfer files from my work pc to my home one using the MD.
Then, a recent addition to the wishlist, is to say "copy the latest recordings onto cdr" (or cdrw if my car player will read them) so I can play them in the car.
I'd almost pay a kilobuck for that...
I've thought about something similar for a long time. Basically it would be cool once digital radio catches on (and maybe sooner with digital cable music stations) to set up a computer to rip mp3/ogg off the digital broadcasts, since the digital broadcasts include enough info to build the id tags, it seems like it would be very easy to set up a computer to suck down all the songs for a given period (day/week/month), etc and amass a large collection. You could then "streamline" the collection by using a nice slick interface to search and delete unwanted songs or duplicates.
Essentially the whole process should be automated, so no more getting crappy mp3s of gnutella or kazaa or binary newsgroups etc. Even thoguh it may take longer to get a song, you'll eventually get the one you want. With local digital radio you may be able to call a radio staion and even request it, though they may get suspicious if your request list is a 500MB text file!!
I have been wanting to do this since the RIAA started persecuting napster. It seems to me it would be very hard to stop this type of thing, and it would be a great way to build a large a reasonably free music collection. Hopefully it would piss them off enought to start wasting more money on legal proceedings.
I figure if we keep doing enough things to piss them off they will try to sue everyone and go bankrupt on legal fees (though they of course would blame the pirates and a loss of sale, rather than look at their own wasteful and fruitless legal attempts to put a geniee back in a bottle.)
-ms2k
Ooops -- messed up that link, now fixed.
Use the Preview Button! Check those URLS! Don't forget the http://!
XXOO.
Every time you play a CD, the machine automatically copies its tracks onto its built-in 20-gigabyte hard drive. It will then try to get album track information off the CD or, alternately, you can use the PC link to get titles off your favorite cddb-like site.
It's called a Nomad 3, and it costs only $400.00
I record my favorite radio show every week onto the HDD of my G4 Cube, using the Griffin iMic USB audio adaptor and Peak DV, (a basic audio editing program, there are many others that will work just as well)
If you have analog audio jacks on your computer, you can use those instead of the USB audio adaptor.
You will need 2 headphone minijack-to-RCA jack cables (also known as Y-adaptors)
if your computer has RCA jacks, you can use standard RCA style component patch cables.
It's patched in to my component stereo system using the DAT inputs (it also works using the regular Tape inputs)
The connections are:
Stereo Tape Output ---> iMic Line IN
Stereo Tape Input ---> iMic Speaker
Now your computer is taking the place of a component tape deck... You can record from any of the Stereo's components (Radio, Phono, Cassette, MD, etc.) directly to your computer's HDD. And you can play back all of your computer's audio (Music, Video, Games, etc. ) through your Stereo's nice big speakers.
About HDD recording... that 3 hour radio show recorded in 16-bit, 44khz AIFF (CD Quality) format creates a very large file, (almost 2GB) You'll probably want to convert it to MP3 format (that same file is only around 250mb in 160kbps MP3 format) iTunes works great for this.
The results are very good quality, equal to or even better quality than the original source. (If you enhance the file using your editing software)
Good Luck!
When I read the part about it using an 8-track format, I knew it was sorry.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Funny, they create audio CDRs, MP3 players, rippers, VCRs, DVD burners, and the like. Then they complain when you use them. Its like buying an action figure and being told not to play with it. It just looks good in the box.
... Makes me wonder what percentage of sales made to me are being used again people like me.
...
They are pushing the paraphenalia into the hands of the consumer, then seek, in turn, to sue them for the use of them. I would almost say it would be the equivalent of The Tree of Knowledge. Just listen to the "No" or I will splank you.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we must question the toys that bite us back. The more we spend, the more munitions we give them to fight with and fight against. Catch-22. Deny technology and deny freedom. Accept technology and deny freedom.
Contradictions.
Beware Greeks bearing gifts. Beware accepting the gratuitous scapegoat role.
I savor technology. I live on my curiousities. I have a CDRW, an MP3 player, a scanner, broadband, a VCR, a tape recorder,
And to the Corporations, for which it stands. One populace under suit
DRM, DMCA
I'm glad this is happening. While the world aims its' missiles at Microsoft, AOL-Time Warner and Sony have been rising in power. Both of them control both content (movies, music, magazines, TV, etc.) AND the distribution/playback of that content (CD/DVD players, AOL). This is problematic to me. I know, MS has msnbc, and maybe a few others, but nothing the size of AOL and Sony.
Take the Minidisc. Beautful piece of kit. Small, light, long battery life, very cheap digital media, feature packed. Lovely. Ideal for sticking your MP3's on there. LP2 compression and two albums (22 odd tracks for 3 UKP). Pretty good going.
But nooooo. Sony come up with a one way device, with flakey software that requires you to check in and check out your songs. That is, they place restrictions on the music that YOU own. Once the music is on the minidisc, you can't do anything with it, but check it back out again (yep, the MD won't let you delete it).
Oh yes, and you have to convert it to Sony's music format (ATRAC) - so now you have two music formats floating about on your HD.
So, in short, what could have been a pretty damn good MP3 app, gets absolutely shafted and restricted up to the hilt because on one hand Sony wants to capitalise on the MP3 boon but on the other wants to kill it dead and replace it with something more controlling.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
This Sony device won't let you extract any files, which are stored as ATRAC rather than MP3 anyway. I would think this means that Sonicblue has a bigger edge than adamjone is saying.
It's a bot. Read his other posts.
Totally unrelated to the topic. I wanted to ask you where you got the Peace/Love/Linux shirt. Please post a comment in your journal so I can find it. Thanks.