Sonicblue Releases Home Music Hub

from the wasn't-that-supposed-to-be-Apple's-job? dept

Sonicblue must love lawsuits. They're already being sued by the networks for their Replay digital video recorder, while at the same time they're suing Tivo for patent infringement, and now they're releasing a home music hub device which is almost guaranteed to come with its own personal lawsuit. The device lets your rip CDs into MP3s, as well as burn CDs. At the same time it has a 40 gig hard drive to store all those MP3s. Add to that a modem for CDDB lookups, and eventually the ability to share and trade music with others who have the "Advanced Digital Audio Center" - and you have a magnet for RIAA lawyers. The system does sound pretty cool, though. It will also let users stream music directly from the device if you wanted to broadcast your own radio station. In other words, they've made a device (which is too expensive at $1,500) that does just about everything you would want a MP3/CD audio player to do. Of course, thanks to Universal, you won't be able to play a number of "copy protected" CDs on your new $1,500 CD player. That should make for happy customers.

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