Yeah, such a terrible idea that the Empeg guys implemented it flawlessly in the Rio Central and in their prototypes for Visteon.

I do believe that you've missed the point. In your house, it's a great idea. You're in your house doing other things; you can easily multitask swapping CDs and doing other stuff. In your car, you're driving. Period. If you want to rip CDs, you've gotta take a bunch of CDs to the car, either wait there for them to rip or wander in and out, leaving your car on the whole time.

As far as convenience, sure, it makes enough sense for it to be able to do that. (I'm surprised that there's not a legal battle over it, as it'd be pretty easy to copy your friends CDs that you want to listen to in the car.) But ripping all of your CDs in car would be an awful experience. If it also has another way to get music on the player, fine, but my impression is that it doesn't.