This is what SB should be looking at, not wasting time, money and effort on this kind of stupidity.

We are sat here wondering why the (our) beloved empeg player is dead. If even half the money spent on the preliminaries of a court case had been spent on sorting out a decent advertising campaign (never seen it advertised), a decent on line shop (always closed/out of stock/whatever) and someone who could actually deliver the ruddy things to you when you have paid for it (let's not get further into that one, shall we? ) then we would still have our toy now, alive and kicking.

Pathetic.

Well said. A truly pathetic display of misplaced priorities from a company that just doesn't "get it."

And we all know who loses this court battle... The customer.

The thing with the patents is that this is the "typical" patent game with big companies.

Some of the TiVo patents apply to SB's gear, and could cause SB problems..
Some of the SB patents apply to TiVo's gear, and could cause Tivo problems..

So what one of the companies does (in this case, SB) is offer a licensing program. You can bet it'll be something like "Tivo pays SB $1.00, and allows SB free license to use patents XXXXXXX,YYYYYYY,ZZZZZZZ, while SB allows Tivo use of patents MMMMMMMM and NNNNNNNNN"

That's the patent licensing game. Played all the time.

D

That's the patent licensing game. Played all the time.

...and made possible by totally clueless (or worse) patent office staff. Perhaps they are able to tell obvious or previously widely used (and thus unpanentable) configuration of gears, levers, springs and pistons, but come anything involving more than 19th century science or technology, they are lost. As the result, we have seen use of XOR for drawing a cursor on computer screen patented, as well as use of metadata in HTML pages (years after those meta tags become standardised), infamous Amazon '1-click' 'technology', or a naturally-occuring gene (not method of sequencing it, not use of proteins it encodes, the gene itself).

What's next?

Out of interest, what exactly do you think we should we be doing about that Pressplay announcement?

Rob

I'd agree with Rob that SB should be developing a MP3-to-standard-CD type of product. We both know that controlling the costs of such a development would be crucial, but it would offer a desirable (and accessible) product to the greater public (those less than technically adept) would crave.

BTW: Nice title oh great CarpalTunnel master.

I'd agree with Rob that SB should be developing a MP3-to-standard-CD type of product.

I agree, too. Oh well, too bad they don't have a product like that in their current lineup.

I wonder why the mystery product hasn't been released yet?

Sean

I wonder why the mystery product hasn't been released yet?

Maybe because it's not quite finished and will be released Real Soon Now?

why would I want to pay to download mp3's have to burn them on a cd using whatever crap sony decides I should use then not even be able to play the cd in a cd player

or am I missing the point of the article ?

Thanks, now im up to date! I was thinking that the german SB team was working on the hardware design when they all got laid off.

Could we please com up with a better name than mystery project something intresting like Project X or something after all i am sure that you call your empeg a Mk2 i call mine a Mk2 even although it is a Mk2a riocar

just a thought

Frankly, since you own an empeg, you probably wouldn't. However there is a huge group (100x easy, and I'd even wager it is closer to 1000x the empeg user base) of people who have MP3's on their computers, but don't have a way to play them other than through their PC's. This type of product would allow them to tap the power of MP3 with a lower technology hurdle.

The participants in this forum are probably not likely candidates for such a tool, but we all probably know several people who would be...

Could we please com up with a better name than mystery project something intresting like Project X or something

Well, I happen to know its internal project code name. It's actually a cool code name.

I could tell it to you, but then I'd have to kill you.

quote from the article
"So don't necessarily expect a CD packed with tracks downloaded from one of Pressplay's retailers, including Yahoo!, MSN, MP3.com and Roxio itself, to be playable on a hi-fi. ® "

so what are they playing the cd's on their pc ? if you can't play the disks on an existing cd player then why bother recording them ?

am I wrong that is article is talking about pressplay allowing users to record their music downloaded from pressplay onto cd's in some format that won't be playable in standard cd players

also just to clarify pressplay is going to be a service from sony similar to emusic except they are planning on using some garbage to restrict what you do with the music you purchase from their service right ?

In reply to:

---

...decent advertising campaign (never seen it advertised), ...

---

I have seen it advertised on the back cover of a magazine here in the UK. I can't remember which mag it was now but I did see it in more than one issue. It was also being advertised as the Empeg Car Player even after it had become the Rio Car.

...and don't forget you'd have to sit down and face the sun at dawn with a glass of Sake and a short sword straight afterwards.

Actually, I think that was empeg advertising, just with the magazine time delay the advert was also current after we were acquired.

hugo

I'm not familiar with the term Curate's Eggs. Somebody explain?

Calvin

Having read the other posts about the PressPlay announcement and having thought about the likely design of Project ICE AXE [or whatever the code name is for the as-yet-unreleasedTM box will be that runs(or is based on) the same v2.0 empeg software as the empegs do].

My suggestion is that SB should do to the music industry with this new product precisely what they are doing to the TV industry with the ReplayTV 4000.

I think this is best done by a merging of the Rio Receiver technology with a inbuilt hard disk [to act as a buffer during the burning stage and possibly for music playback ala the empeg], and a recordable media device [like CD-R and CD-RW].

This should be able to work stand alone using analogue or digital [e.g. coax or optical inputs] and also have network interfaces [Ethernet and USB2.0 and possibly FireWire] so that you can download and burn your music to the removeable storage element, and when its not burning CDs it can be used to play back content from the hard disk and/or the removable stroage device - getting around the problem of needing a PC to listen to your MP3s.

And of course, like the ReplayTV4000 it shouldn't bother too much with worrying what the RIAA, MPAA or anyone else thinks about this device.

Let consumers and those who buy the music be the judge of whats acceptable in this area.

Whether this device will be linked to a on-line downloading service to provide content I'm not sure - it would certainly have the capability of being internet connected.
Coupled with always on internet links [cable/DSL etc], it could certainly be used to rip your current CD collection to MP3 or whatever format you want and/or download new music on a subscription basis from online providers.

Being able to copy the content to removeable storage devices would allow you to take YOUR music to your friends house.

Thats my pick for what SB should be doing in this area.

Of course maybe after CES we will all know what the actual device does.

I'd never heard it before, either: curate's egg

That's a good spec, I'll mention it to the powers that be.

Rob

Good thinking, Number6. As far as interface goes, WIBNI you could build a playlist (or running order) on the empeg and send it to Redbook CDR?
I know you can do this with a PC, but the idea is to let the PC do true Computer work, and leave anything accociated with music, like ripping, downloading, sending to portables, backing up, etc to the "music appliances".

this feature set strongly resembles the mythical ARQ2 from AudioRequest.

i bought an ARQ1 a year and a half ago, with promises of many great features that would be implemented Real Soon Now(tm). Essentially no new features were added before the product was discontinued in april, and the company has now turned their focus to the high-end custom installation market (translation: quadruple the price).

it's a feature set i'd still like to see at a price affordable by mortals.

--dan.

Thanks, theres a few additional features i'd love you to include as well.

1. Make the recordable drive upgradeable to a DVD-RW drive so we can use it as a large removeable filesystem - even if we can only read it from other DVD drives. A DVD-RW can burn CD-Rs and CD-RWs as well.

2. Add the Video interface for both Composite/S-Video and VGA type output, meaning we can plug it into our TV sets or spare VGA monitor to use as a display device for large playlists and other operations that require lots of screen real-estate.

3. Make the LCD display on the front a touch-screen panel as well so we don't need to use the front-panel buttons to operate it.

4. Make it have a remote control as well so we can operate it from our couches and/or beds.

5. Make the inevitable large cooling Fan outlet a Real QuietTM model.

6. Make it run Linux and have plenty of spare CPU resources so we can hack the display and add all our wonderful userland applications.

7. With the DVD-RW drive fitted allow it to play DVDs as well.

8. GIve it a digital IO out so we can plug into our high end stereos that take Optical [or coaxial] digital signals in.

And make it available real-soon-now - I'm not fussed about the price as this stuff doesn't come cheap - since this replaces a lot of existing hi-fi kit I don't expect it for $1000.

Well, 4 out of 8 on an ultimate wishlist isn't bad.... :)

Hugo

That would be, 4,5,6 and 8, right?

Don't know 2 would be a damn good idea and empeg are good at good ideas but they only did the software guess we will find out real soon

That would be about right, yes.

Let's wait for Monday before we discuss this in any more detail.

Rob