Sony may offer standalone 200CD changer for Media Center PCs

January 23, 2006

We
already heard about the Sony 200 CD changer that is a component in the Sony XL 1 Media
Center PC. What's cool about this changer is that it can read and play the
Cd's and the word on the street is you can load it up and it will rip all 200 to
the hard disc unattended! Not only that, you can place some blanks in there and
it will burn TV shows etc., to the blanks and free up disc space. But, this
doesn't do anybody any good that likes to piece together their own rigs. Well,
somebody got smart and asked at the CES about the chance of a standalone model
and got us some good news!

According to Jason Alinen (user name,
soundintegration on Remotetly Cool), he spoke with someone from Sony at
CES who said that they would be offering their DVD changer on a standalone
basis when the XL2 lauches:

From his post: "I spoke with some of the Sony people at CES this year
and they mentioned that their CD/DVD changer will be available for
purchase seperately for any MCE PC when the XL2 is launched. They said the
cost would be around $600 or so. It uses firewire so as long as the dell
mce has firewire you should be good to go."

This is definitely good news and at $600 I'd buy one for sure if it
really worked and could in fact mass rip my CDs for me. It's such a pain
having to rip them one by one right now and being able to do big batch
jobs would be tremendously helpful. (Of course watch out for resistence
from the RIAA on this product as I doubt they want you to be able to
easily rip 200 CDs at once).

Well, the price is right and this will become a hot
commodity if it pans out. In addition, if it sells well, hopefully it will spawn
some competition from other vendors/manufacturers.

Source: ehomeupgrade