Not Thinking Clearly.

June 21, 2001
NYT
By#ROY#FURCHGOTT

Motorola and SimpleDevices are joining to do for the car what TiVo has done for the television set, and connect the home stereo to the Internet at the same time.

The companies plan to release a system in September that will wirelessly link a computer with home and car stereos, allowing all three to share music files.

Louis S. Hughes, president and chief executive of SimpleDevices Inc., based in Burlingame, Calif., said that people want their favorite music on their home and car stereos, not on a computer. "People have spent thousands on a hi-fi," he said, "They don't want to replace it; they want to connect it."

As now envisaged, the system will require a transmitter costing about $79 that is attached to the computer; SimpleFi, a $249 receiver attached to the home stereo, and SimpleAuto, either a $399 receiver with 10-gigabyte memory or a $499 receiver with a 20-gigabyte memory for the car.

One advantage, Mr. Hughes said, is that people need not fear leaving a favorite CD at home because all audio files can be shared by the devices.

Users will be able to choose their own radio programming, for example, by instructing the computer to record the shows they want to hear. An enterprising user might record "All Things Considered" from National Public Radio, Wall Street news from a New York radio station, and then a radio broadcast from a distant city that is also available on the Internet. (The home stereo can play streaming broadcasts from radio stations far beyond antenna range because of the connection with the home computer.)

For now it could take a long time to download files. An hour of music in compressed format takes about a half-hour to load through the current Home RF transmitter. A 10-gigabyte disk can hold about 3,300 three-minute songs: that's 165 hours of tunes and an 83-hour download to SimpleAuto. The manufacturers anticipate using a new, faster standard for the car transmitter that may speed that download to about 22 hours.

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OK raise your hands if you'll spend 165 HOURS loading your player! Oh wait, soon to be ONLY 22? Where do I sign? Geez, CDs now come in near 800 meg length. That's 13 1/2 hours of playback at 128. They take a second to pop in...a couple of minutes to burn and you can swap 'em from car to car.

Who's nuts enough to buy that player, but more importantly how did it get out of RND w/out a patch cord? (200' ought to do nicely...) Actually they just need a removable HD for the car player. Every couple of weeks you bring it inside and load it, or you load it in your car from your laptop.

Geez, if you're going to spend that kind of money get a Nomad with a car kit. These guys are morons.

But they're playing the odds. In the future all cars will have 128Kbps internet connections. That means it will take about 4 1/2 hours to transfer a 74 minute CD. The SimpleFi will be way faster than that. If people decide that they prefer wireless transfers over physically connecting the player (and tha't a pretty big if) then the SimpleFi would be the way to go. But I think by that time most personal computers will be extremly portable and they'll interface with car stereos, or any stereo for that matter.

[mike4947]

I wonder if this was a "idea" by the person that thought up the "hits equal money on the net"?
Or possibly it came out of Germany, they love making a simple idea as complicated as possible.