Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rip CDs Directly to Your iPod

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the get-ready-for-someone-to-toss-a-lawsuit dept.

Kevin writes "A company out of Taiwan has released a device that rips audio cds directly to your iPod. It converts them to MP3 and even does all the tagging for you." Zettabyte, the company producing the units, hopes to hit market within the year and while it could work for any MP3 player, it is being marketed exclusively for the iPod right now.

8 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. How Long by GmAz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How long til the RIAA finds this out and makes them disappear from the face of the earth. Good idea, but I have a feeling it won't hit the market, and if it does, it won't be there long.

    --
    Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
    1. Re:How Long by Otis2222222 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I'd like to see them try. If you own a physical CD, ostensibly one that you bought legally, and you copy its contents to your iPod, no laws have been broken. If you got said CD from your neighbor there could be issues, but I'd say that a device like the one in question has, as they say, "substantial non infringing uses".

      After all, if it's well established that you can legally use an iPod in the first place, then what is the legal difference between putting a CD in your computer, ripping it, and copying it to your ipod versus eliminating the middleman and copying the CD to your iPod directly?

    2. Re:How Long by Dachannien · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This just takes out the "computer" step.

      One would think that the RIAA would be more supportive of this than it would be of CD-ripping in iTunes for that very reason.

  2. Automatic playlists? by jelloshotgun · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This device from Zettabyte will also save you from using all your ten fingers when changing or revising your playlist as everything is automatic.

    As much as it's dumb that iTunes is supposed to be the only interface to your iPod, I do like the ability to visually manage playlists and create smart playlists. I don't think this device will be able to automatically decide that I want $song on $playlist.

    --
    Sometimes I feel like +1 Reasonable should exist.
  3. More functions? by jtorkbob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Notice the three (apparently) buttons? In, synchronize, out? Offering to burn CDs from your iPod, or back up music to an internal drive?

    Interesting. I wonder how much hardware this thing has. It looks big enough.

    --
    AC: Only on slashdot... could the sentence "My hovercraft is full of eels." be moderated "+4, Insightful
  4. Small market... by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What is the actualy intersect of people who own digital music players but don't own a computer? It's hard to imagine too many iPod owners out that that don't have a computer...

    --
    Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    1. Re:Small market... by oneiros27 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't know how large it is, but it does exist --

      one of my co-workers mentioned a friend w/ pre-teen daughters who requested iPods for christmas -- and their parents got them ... but they didn't have a computer, so they didn' have a way of loading music onto them.

      So, the problem isn't the typical yuppie, or college student, it's the families out there that don't have a massive income, and don't have a computer at home, but have kids who want iPods.

      Of course, this particular situation won't be helped by the device, as there doesn't seem to be a way to way to tag the files created manually (based on the images available), and they wouldn't have internet access for it to get the info, unless it were done from a library and/or school.

      --
      Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
  5. Re:What we need is...... by Kadin2048 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I wonder if you could produce a product that, out of the box, would only transcode DVDs that didn't have CSS applied (home movies on DVD-R, etc.) but was built using a system-on-a-chip that stored its programming in a way that would let it be re-flashed. So you could download a new image ("for use in Sweden only") and re-flash it so that it would do the De-CSSing in software. It seems like this would be at least technically feasible, especially if you used ASICs for MPEG-2 decoding and MPEG-4 encoding, both of which I'm pretty sure exist right now, the MPEG-2 decoders are in every DVD player around, and the MPEG-4 encoders are in lots of flash-based camcorders. That way the SoC would only have to do control functions, and DeCSS.

    I suppose a company would have to really have balls of steel (and an army of lawyers) to bring something like that out on the U.S. market. I bet it would be popular in Asia, though, and the Chinese don't have a whole lot of copyright laws last time I checked.

    It's going to be a sad day when Americans are smuggling technology out of China and into the US in order to use their own electronic devices, but I could definitely see it happening in the near future. Maybe we can set up a US/China technology exchange program -- 'I'll trade you one uncensored Wikipedia snapshot for an un-crippled DVD ripper.'

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."