Personal "CD" player that plays off burned DVDs
Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 8:41 am
My MP3-capable CD/CD-RW player has bit the dust. It was $30 at Best Buy, cheapest model, so I'm surprised it even lasted a year and a half with all my travels & abuse.
Since I have hundreds of gigs worth of music, and since sometimes I just want to listen to a prepackaged CD the moment someone hands it to me, not wait until I get home so I can rip it to MP3 and put it on a hard drive or flash-based MP3 player, I'm going to go for another discman. My concern is not being able to play "everything;" my concern is being able to play "anything" at a moment's notice. That's just the way I roll--I'd rather grab 3 data discs & go than spend 20 minutes making sure the music I might want is on my player. I need something that can read widespread, cheap, changeable media--like CDs & DVDs.
So far I've only found 1 thing that fits the bill, and it's a little annoying, because it has a remote attached. I do prefer my buttons on the machine itself--one less part to break--but I can live with it. Still, it's pricey and hardly sold anywhere, so I want to keep looking. What I found is a DVD reader + CD burner meant for plugging into a laptop that also works on a charge (wish it took batteries). Sony MPD-AP20U, and it runs about $200, or at best on Ebay, perhaps $100 used.
A Google search came up w/ a Nick Jr. DVD player that looks about twice as thick as a Discman, and square. I sent off an inquiry to find out if it's meant to plug into a TV or stand alone.
That got me thinking--if it had "random" playback and were user-friendly enough as a music player (fast forward/rewwind like a CD player, not a DVD player), why not just get a portable DVD player and never use the screen? I might just do that, but that's a whole new can of worms with time spent searching for the right price, size, quality, functions, etc.
It can't be that hardware executives never thought of DVDs as simply a "bigger CD."
There are lots of car stereo models that won't play video off a DVD but can read MP3s off a DVD, so the idea is out there.
Suggestions?
Since I have hundreds of gigs worth of music, and since sometimes I just want to listen to a prepackaged CD the moment someone hands it to me, not wait until I get home so I can rip it to MP3 and put it on a hard drive or flash-based MP3 player, I'm going to go for another discman. My concern is not being able to play "everything;" my concern is being able to play "anything" at a moment's notice. That's just the way I roll--I'd rather grab 3 data discs & go than spend 20 minutes making sure the music I might want is on my player. I need something that can read widespread, cheap, changeable media--like CDs & DVDs.
So far I've only found 1 thing that fits the bill, and it's a little annoying, because it has a remote attached. I do prefer my buttons on the machine itself--one less part to break--but I can live with it. Still, it's pricey and hardly sold anywhere, so I want to keep looking. What I found is a DVD reader + CD burner meant for plugging into a laptop that also works on a charge (wish it took batteries). Sony MPD-AP20U, and it runs about $200, or at best on Ebay, perhaps $100 used.
A Google search came up w/ a Nick Jr. DVD player that looks about twice as thick as a Discman, and square. I sent off an inquiry to find out if it's meant to plug into a TV or stand alone.
That got me thinking--if it had "random" playback and were user-friendly enough as a music player (fast forward/rewwind like a CD player, not a DVD player), why not just get a portable DVD player and never use the screen? I might just do that, but that's a whole new can of worms with time spent searching for the right price, size, quality, functions, etc.
It can't be that hardware executives never thought of DVDs as simply a "bigger CD."
There are lots of car stereo models that won't play video off a DVD but can read MP3s off a DVD, so the idea is out there.
Suggestions?