Alpine, Clarion, et al – WHERE ARE THE HARD DRIVES?? September 1, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: car stereo, mp3
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In-dash car stereo continues to underwhelm the digital music age. I’ve looked hard and I’ve not yet seen a car stero that stores mp3′s. You’d think car-powered stereos 1,000 times bigger than the mp3 player in my pocket would also serve as big-honkin mp3 jukeboxes.
But nope, the best that’s being done in car stereo these days is an Ipod port for Ipod control, mp3 playback from cd, and mp3 playback from a USB port (think thumb drives). Pathetic.
At bare minimum, 100GB hard drives with front-facing USB ports for file transfer should be standard. But right now, that remains a pipe dream.
The likes of Alpine are making “digital music recievers” which lack cd players and purport to center around playing digital media. Yet they still won’t store any digital music. How could they miss the boat? I don’t get it.
Clarion gets honorable mention of sorts by taking a brave step forward which unfortunately also went a step backwards. Clarion sports a series of “bluetooth/SD” receivers which playback mp3s from SD cards. Not bad since an SD card is practically a portable hard drive. The steps backwards are that these units don’t have AM radio or cd players in them. Clarion’s AM/FM/cd units that playback mp3′s only do so from cd or Ipod control. Good grief.
The only near-viable candidate out there is the Blaupunkt Brisbane SD48. It is billed as a “digital reciever”. It has a SD car port, but it is limited to 2GB SD cards – not exactly the mp3 jukebox machine I’m looking for. But at least it has FM and AM radio. But, this unit stops short with its exclusion of a cd player.
Meaningless personal info nobody cares about March 24, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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I’m re-organizing my music. Here’s what I’m noticing:
My favorite music artist of all time: Sting. This guy is mega talented. Writes music, writes lyrics, plays instruments, and sings very well. And he puts on a heck of a concert. I’ve got more of his music than anybody else’s.
My favorite music group of all time: U2. This are for rock bands what Sting is for solo artists. Incredible. Oddly enough, The Joshua Tree is the only thing of their’s I own. Except for my freebit Rattle And Hum HD-DVD, which I was blown away with. On any given night, I could pop that in and be entertained for a couple hours.
The music re-org has been brought on by Yahoo. I’m divorcing myself from my previously balleywhoo’d (<- gross slangulatory misspelling) Yahoo! Unlimited service. It just wasn’t unlimited enough. I’m sick of DRM.
Apparently I’m trying to listen from too many different computers and that’s not allowed. Far worse, some music I’ve purchased ‘outright’ is no longer available for listening. The artist and/or music label snatched it back.
Enough with DRM.
Hello, Amazon DRM-free music downloads.
The customer is always right, part II January 6, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: blu-ray, consumer electronics, drm, hd-dvd, mp3
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Its been a glorious week for consumer electronics. DRM is dead and the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray format war is over. Consumers win on both fronts.
In the case of HD-DVD/Blu-Ray, consumers sat firmly on the sidelines until the industry was collectively ready to start selling players and movies. More movie studios and hardware makers simply picked a side, blu-ray. Thank you!
DRM has been a bit more frustrating. I can’t count how many times in the gym my mp3 player said “no license for playback”, requiring me to remember to sync the thing up with my laptop connected to the Yahoo Unlimited mothership. Ugh. Same goes for “buying” a DRM’d mp3 or wav somewhere and then attempting to play it on your computers (plural) of choice. Ugh.
At long last, the industry realized that while pirates will always pirate, you stand a good chance of turning otherwise good people into pirates if you make your product so #(%&’#$ frustrating to use legally. FINALLY, the recording industry finally sided with its paying customer base and quit using DRM. Thank you!
But Mr Digital Music Consumer, don’t get too cocky with DRM-free content. The stuff is still copyrighted and if you ship it around the internet, the RIAA will know. DRM-free digital music will still be watermarked with a code indicating who it was originally sold to. So if you distribute illegal copies, your essentially sending out red flags that indict yourself.
The customer is always right January 4, 2008
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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Take it to the bank – DRM is dead. The last major record label has begun selling DRM-free music in mp3 format.
Faced with free-falling music sales, the record industry has finally caved to consumer demand for simplified digital music. For now, Amazon is the most prolific DRM-free mp3 seller and others will soon rise. Yeah, iTunes it out there but they only sell stuff for iPods.
Pretty soon, everybody else in the world will be on a common platform, jubilant with broad compatibility, free from headaches over permissions to play songs on some players but not others, some computers but not others.
Amazon offering DRM-free music December 30, 2007
Posted by Shane in Uncategorized.Tags: drm, mp3
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Amazon is offering tons of high quality (256 kbps) DRM-free mp3 downloads. This means you can play this stuff on any computer or any mp3 player with no hassle about copyright management, synchronization with some mother ship or other nonsense. My Yahoo Unlimited subscription is trembling.
I understand 3 of the 4 major record labels are on board. It looks like DRM is all but dead. Thank goodness.
An open request for Pioneer, Eclipse, Alpine, and whoever else is (isn’t) listening March 24, 2007
Posted by Shane in Suburbia, Technology.Tags: car audio, mp3
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In the last year, there have been some nice attempts at introducing multifunction navigation and car audio/video entertainment systems. But the would-be early adopters at shanecrowe.org feel these efforts have fallen short of the mark. Let’s check our features wish list.
Required Features:
- AM/FM/CD/DVD – check
- GPS Navigation – check
- Mp3 player – check
- Internal hard drive for mp3′s – check
- Bluetooth interface for brand/carrier-independent hands-free cell phone operation – check
- Compatibility with Plays For Sure(tm) and Itunes DRM schemes – bzzzt! Need work here, people. Compatibility with portable players via a headphone jack doesn’t count. I want to copy my Yahoo/Napster/Itunes mp3 library to the hard drive inside the car.
- Wi-Fi – bzzzzt! About that copying the mp3 library to the hard drive inside the car….that’s not all that feasible one CD or DVD at a time. In as much as you’d rather purchase milk at Kroger than milk a cow, you folks should be putting wi-fi with bare bones file management software. Wouldn’t it be better to download or copy music from your garage instead of marching dics back and forth? This wi-fi idea should also facilitate downloading of mp3s from the content provider (Yahoo/Napster/Itunes). I’d love to be able to stop the car and download an album after hearing a great song on the radio.
- OBD-II diagnostics – bzzzzt! Mp3 downloading from Itunes (surfing the net, basically) is dangerous, you say? As if there already weren’t reason enough to make the car’s computer outputs visible to its occupants, you could use OBD-II to ensure Wi-Fi was disabled unless the car was stationary. To boot, I’d like OBD-II info on that snazzy touch screen interface so I could know why on earth my check engine light as been on for 60,000 miles.
Optional features:
- DVD video – check. That’s right, I’m saying movie watching from the front seat of a car is optional. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.
- DVD video outputs – bzzzt!! I don’t want video in the front of the car, but it would be nice in the back. Give me hdmi outputs and some monitor accessory with headphone jacks that I can put on the back of the front seats.
- Surround sound – check. Optional, yep. I don’t give a rip about surround sound in the interior of an automobile. Now when you can put a projector on the ceiling and put a big widescreen picture across my windshield so me and the Mrs can go watch 9 1/2 Weeks and act like we’re 16 again, get back to me. Maybe.
In summary the Navigation/Car Audio units out there are almost where they need to be – as much as a car without a gas tank is almost a car. Please, please, please add Yahoo/Napster/Itunes compatibility for those hard-drive stored mp3′s. But if you do so without wi-fi for downloading, you’re still waisting your time.
