Q&A;: Microsoft and Sony Team on Digital Entertainment Content Management System: Though rivals in the gaming-console market, both companies find they have much to gain from working closely to integrate the new Sony VAIO XL1 Digital Living System with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005.: Now I’m not sure that I completely understand this new 200 disc machine that represents a collaboration between Sony and Microsoft, but as I get it supposedly you can put 200 audio CDs into the machine at night and then tell the machine to rip them all to your hard drive and go to bed and in the morning have all of your music ripped. It’s part of a new Sony VAIO XL1 MCE machine apparently.
I have ripped my entire CD collection at this point but I’m constantly adding new music to my library. Routinely I will go to Amobea Records here in San Francisco or Berkeley and load up. And when I mean load up, I mean load up. Typically I come out of Amobea with at least 100 new CDs. Once home I rip all of these CDs to my hard drive to get crystal clear fresh DRM free tracks for my mp3 library. At present I have to rip them manually. It sounds as though this new product from Sony, in partnership with Microsoft, would allow me to put all 100 or more CDs in at once and the new 200 disc changer would just rip them all. A pretty cool tool if you ask me.
I looks like this product will be priced at $2,299.99.
What’s more, when your not using your 200 disc CD changer for ripping, you can store your DVDs in there and have them instantly available in MCE. As many Media Center owners are also DVD owners this seems like a nice way to hold your collection and keep your discs from getting scratched when the kids play frisbee with them and have them easily accesible via the familiar MCE interface.
From the Q&A; from Microsoft’s website:
“Its auto-rip feature also allows users to easily archive their entire music CD collection onto their PC hard drive. For instance, they can just fill the changer with 200 CDs and select the command to copy discs before they go to bed or leave the house. The VAIO XL1 saves all of the tracks and attaches the related metadata available through Media Center Edition (artist and album name, song titles, cover artwork, genre) to the My Music folder in Windows. That way, people can play their music directly off the hard drive and use all 200 slots of the VAIO XL1 disc changer for managing their commercial DVDs, which can’t easily be backed up on a hard drive because of digital rights management protections.”
Rip, Mix, Burn baby burn, ummm, but oh yeah, responsibly.
As far as I can tell the PC only stores your DVDs but can actually rip your CDs.
Engadget has more on the PC here. They point out that it’s a single tuner machine which is a negative. Matt Goyer’s post is here.