boingboing via Gizmodo: Xbox 360 DRM makes your rip your CDs again — Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 has a dumbass DRM countermeasure: it won’t let you store MP3s on its hard-drive unless you rip your CDs again using your Xbox. My CDs are in a storage locker on a different continent — there goes the whole Xbox-as-Media-Center thing. Thanks, Microsoft, for putting paranoid record execs’ phobias ahead of your customers’ legit needs.
What the hell is he bitching about? That the Xbox 360 isn’t behaving like a server? Duuuuuh.
First there was a whole out cry that “oh, only a 20GB hard drive! Whatever can we do with that?! Boo Hoo Hoo!” and the like. Xbox reminds users that “it’s for games and downloaded content, mostly” and it’s an optional add-on anyway. The world said “Oh”. Now someone is bitching because they can’t put their already ripped music on it…?
Why in the hell would you want to?!
The Xbox 360 is not supposed to be a Media Center. It’s supposed to be the hub of your media center experiences. It’s not geared to store music or video. It’s got a LAN port built into it… it’s got media browsers… it downloads online content… it talks to [almost any] PC and other Media Center PC’s for content. It’s not supposed to be a home server. Want one? A home server, I mean. Get a PC that stores all your music and video on a multi-drive RAID server, because you’re going to need that much storage. Oh and when you do, your 360 will talk to it.
The Xbox 360 is a window – no pun intended – into your home media systems. It can play music from anything I’ve hooked up to it. A USB drive – a portable HD – a home computer that’s on the network. It’s a client device. It’s not a data center. The fact that it can rip CD’s is a “plus”; it can save your fat ass from having to walk to the PC in a pinch, but it’s simply not designed to be a data warehouse.
Simply put, the guy at BoingBoing has got it wrong, mostly from a usage “expectation” point of view. He’s complaining that his microwave oven is making things hot, but that it can’t heat things up in a metal pan. He’s complaining that his Porsche 911 is plenty fast but there’s not enough room for his skis in the trunk. You’ve got a client that you’re expecting to be a server.
And worse, you’re letting your ignorance bad mouth the product. If you’re that concerned about the portability of your media, get a portable MP3 player and take it with you. Get a 2.5″ external HD and take that with you. I do. I take my music with me on a portable HD for my PC’s and I have an iPod for when I don’t have an iPod. Why on earth would I want to manage a music library in four different locations? That’s just plain dumb.
I hate jumps of conclusion that land in puddles of ignorance.
Tosser.
Sometimes a feature is just a feature…
I had the same reaction. Cory’s obviously never used an Xbox 360 himself, or he wouldn’t be ranting about this non-issue.
It’s not just music you can’t copy from your PC to your Xbox 360 — you can’t copy photos, videos, email, or anything else. It’s not because of DRM.
Put another way: EVERYONE I know stores their music on their PC and/or their portable music device. The Xbox 360 will happily stream music off of these. For those poor saps who have to use CDs and don’t already own a PC to rip them on, the Xbox 360 (like the original Xbox) also lets users rip CDs to the console. Although I don’t know anyone who actually does this.
Yeah, EXACTLY my point!
Not that I’m passionate about it or anything… :)
i rip cd’s onto my xbox 360, but thats only because i take it places like my friends houses and stuff. and how the hell is someone going to fill 20 gb of music? if someone has that much music, they cant possibly listen to most of the tracks.
Thank God that I found peope who understand the 360 like I do and don’t just bash the product because their too “GD” ignorant to do otherwise. I have a 4GB Sandisk Sansa and a 30 GB Microsoft Zune. Not to mtion my laptop and PC. Heck 10GBs are enough for the 360. ;)
Why in the hell would they make it possible to rip music to your 360 from a cd but not from a flash drive. Anybody who knows anything about music can transfer songs onto a cd and move it to there 360, it just takes time and more money for every damn cd you use. Its bogus they would make something like this. They aren’t protecting music labels or anything, they’re just making it more inconvenient. An example would be the wireless controllers. They’re not needed but ppl still pay extra money just to be more comfortable. Use some common sense.
What the heck are ya talking about? You rip music from a CD – you can’t rip music from a flash drive because it’s already in MP3 format, which the 360 can read from.
And I can’t even begin to figure out what you’re talking about, with the wireless controllers… looks like common sense isn’t all that common.
Its convenience. It’s convenient to use wireless controllers, not needed. Its convenient to be able to rip music off a flash drive, but not needed. Yikes. For you all being a bunch of nerds some jock is sure smarter than most of ya.
Ah, so you’re saying wireless controllers are simply a matter of convenience. I can agree to that but I don’t understand the babbling about the “cost” or more money from it. As you’ve said it’s convenience. No one makes you BUY the wireless in place of the wires controllers: the 360 offers both for that reason.
As for the rip music off a flash drive, again: you don’t rip music off a flash drive – you play music from a flash drive. You rip music from a CD that you can then put on a flash drive. But again, I don’t understand what you’re problem is with that either.
For a human – jock or nerd – you’re completely confused :)
I can kinda agree with both sides here. I understand that the 360 isnt supposed to be youre media center, hell i think its awesome that as long as stuff on my pc is in the right format the 360 plays and views anything, but i do think that it would be neat if you could copy files from youre pc or flash dive to the 360.
Kind of an old ,but i found this page searching Google for ways to copy music from a flash drive(which i guess is impossible) but what jake was saying is that just about anyone can take their songs and burn them to a cd, so it’s inconvenient that you can’t copy to the HDD. Kind of like having a wired controller is inconvenient. and the cost part is that buying cds costs money.even though its less than a flash drive, especially if you buy cd-rw s so that part does’nt make sense, but i understand where he’s coming from.
ps: that jock-nerd comment was just stupid if you have to bring in narcissistic social classes to defend your point you’ve already lost.
pss: wonder if anyone will actually read this….
I do :)
I want to burn my music from my PC to my XboX 360 so I can just turn on the TV and let her rip. I carry my laptop around, but I dont want to power it up and have to connect it to my 360 just to listen to my library. Those of you that bust on someone just because they want to do this…get lost. Just because you don’t do it, why hassle anyone else? For 400+ dollars, it’s a pretty simple task that the 360 should have as a feature.
I don’t get that. What does price have to do with a feature set? I mean say you want to share music from the 360 as a server – that’s not a supported feature. You could spend $600 on a PS3 and it’s not supported there either. In this case, you CAN store music on the 360, so I don’t get the complaint.
And if I don’t do it and I don’t think it’s a good idea, it’s my opinion so piss off if you don’t like it: I’ll express it, if I want to.
Further, if you want mounds of storage for music get an Elite or get the larger hard drive option. OR get an external HD to store your music and leave that plugged into the 360. The 360 should see that and offer the music from it.
It sounds like you’re complaining about a non-problem here.
huh, you guys are retarded listen to what ppl are saying, anyway i agree with Verminator because i have a pc with say 5 gb of music it is away from my xbox to where i cant have it connected all the time i dont need to stream things from the xbox and use it as a server i just need to put all my music on it so i can play my games while listening to music, burning 5gb worth of music is a lot of cds of which i dont have, what gets me is that you can copy music from a cd and convert it to a format which the xbox can read but you cant just copy the music straight over from your pc
p.s im not rich like you ppl i cant afford flash drives mp3 players portable harddrives or whatever, besides i heard that if you connect to xbox live with a flash drive or portable harddrive pluged in you can get banned
Lemme see if I follow this… I’m retarded yet you believe that if you plug in a portable HDD you get banned from your Xbox? Or do you mean banned from Xbox Live? There’s only two ways you get banned from Xbox Live: Cheating (be it a game or on a modded Xbox) and Complaints (for something offensive, i.e. a bad Gamertag or harassing many users multiple times).
And anyway, a 4GB flash drive is about $30, which at least guess is 1/2 of an Xbox title.
Beyond that I don’t even understand what you’re asking for. If you have a PC with 5GB of music, is it a disconnected PC? I mean, IS there such a thing these days? A PC that doesn’t make use of a network? And if you have that PC, how to you presume to get music to the 360’s hard drive? I mean, I don’t understand the complaint (or the feature request).
It sounds to me like a bunch of DUMB FUCKS!!!
I just wish i could copy music to my 360 via a flash drive or portable hard drive because i love listening to music while playing games and playing music on your 360 does not take away all the sound effects and such of the game youre playing. ive tried copying multiple cds to my 360s hard drive and everytime i do i have to name the cd, album, and every freakin track, PLUS it does not always copy every song successfully. i dont like always having to stick in a flash drive or portable hard drive in my 360 every time i want to listen to music it. would just be more convenient to copy through a flash drive like the ps3 does. thats my take on the situation.
Got me dude – I only ever play music thru my 360 when I’m playing a casual game like Hearts or Spades… and then it’s by streaming from my home PC. I do know that if I plug my Zune or iPod into the 360 it’ll play my MP3 files (since they are all non-DRM’d) so that works too.
I’ve been doing some… testing with that lately, after all.