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Sony's New Bookshelf MP3 Player -- Audio TiVo?

Posted by timothy on from the ok-now-run-with-it dept.

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.

7 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. RIAA Lawsuit waiting to happen by NETHED · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    --sig fault--
  2. The big problem by micromoog · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Even M-crew, however, doesn't let you copy MP3 files from your PC to the L7HD -- no surprise, really, when you consider that Sony is also a record company with a vested interest in stifling the casual trading of MP3 music.

    The lack of this key feature renders the machine dead in the water. Next.

    1. Re:The big problem by NickDngr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The lack of this key feature renders the machine dead in the water. Next.

      Just burn your MP3s to CD and play them on the L7HD. Problem solved.

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      Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
  3. Get a clue - it's a Sony! by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
  4. $1000 ?!? by TheMatt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

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    Fortran programmer...oh yeah. Array math for life!

  5. The irrelevance of the CD. by Chief_Wahoo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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...

  6. Re:Microsoft will be next... by TheDick · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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. :)

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