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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.

11 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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    1. Re:RIAA Lawsuit waiting to happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      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.

      Well son, even without "ripping" the music, you should know better than to listen to someone else's CD on your CD player. CDs are licensed for the use of the purchaser ONLY. It might seem fun and anti-establishment to "share" CDs with your friends like this, but remember, you've just commited a federal crime, and deprived a hard-working artist of their income. Without income, artists won't have food to eat, and they'll starve to death. And if you're caught stealing music, you'll be put in jail.

      Now, your little "piracy get-together" doesn't seem so much fun any more, does it?

      And take note: another way groups of teen-agers get together to steal music is at so-called Rave drug events, where unlicensed music played free for anyone who will listen. So, clearly, sharing music is usually a gateway to hard drug addiction.

      So remember, IF YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, YOU CAN'T LISTEN TO IT!

      And roll up those windows when playing CDs in your car, you PIRATE!

      (note the sarcasm, I know it's hard to tell these dayz)

  2. Yes but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Will it play the copy protected CD's From Sony Music?

  3. 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.

  4. Re:Wouldn't "TiVo for radio" imply it has a tuner? by christowang · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you read down in the article it does say 'CD and Radio'. No more missing your talk radio show!

  5. Wow, I think I have one of these by Mononoke · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.
    I've got one of these. It's called a Macintosh. Does other fun things too.

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  6. 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.
  7. Does this mean by barista · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does this mean that Sony will sue itself for creating an circumvention device?

  8. Similar to RioCentral by adamjone · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  9. Be Did It First by ewhac · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

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    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
  10. Linux Radio Timeshift HOWTO by dara · · Score: 4, Informative

    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