CD

This week AOL reported their Q1 2015 earnings, and with it, notified the planet of 2.1 million subscribers to their internet service with dial-up speeds. Welcome back to the age of installing the internet on your computer with a CD you got in the mail. This is a reminder that hardship exists. This is a reminder that, while there are people who are homeless on the streets of Brooklyn but still have a smartphone that can access the internet at 3G speeds, there are people living in the country connecting at 56 kilobits-per-second.

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One of the many things that has irked people who spend their hard-earned money on CDs and DVDs through legitimate means is that the movie and music studios wanted it to be illegal to make a copy or rip your own content for personal use as a backup. The UK government has announced that it will be stepping in and this summer it will legalize the ripping of CDs and DVDs.

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The technology behind 3D printing is being used for a vast range of activities -- printing eye cells to help develop a future without blindness, to create firearms, casts and prosthesis, and more. Added to the list is a small printer made out of CD-ROM drives that, using a needle and type of ink, prints 3D designs inside of JELLO.

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In the weeks leading up to the release of the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4, little tidbits here and there about their abilities have been cropping up, today’s including a bit more information on the media server features on the Microsoft machine. Straight from the folks at Penny Arcade comes word - official word at that - on the streaming features of the Xbox One first and foremost. Then there’s the (hopefully) obvious: this device can also play Audio CDs - classic!

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Exactly 30 years ago, the first commercially-released CD album hit store shelves. On October 1, 1982, Billy Joel's sixth studio album, 52nd Street, was re-released to the public. The album was originally launched in 1978, but it was selected for re-launch on the all-new digital compact disc to coincide with the release of the first CD player, the Sony CDP-101.

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This week it's been announced that the musical artist known as Beck will be releasing an album comprised of 20 pieces of sheet music called "Beck Hansen's Song Reader". This is 20 pieces of music that are not recorded by the artist, instead intended by the artist to be played and recorded by whoever so wishes to do so. Licensing issues and future recordings by associated artists aside, we applaud Beck's ability to have so much cash on hand that he experiments with each new release.

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If you were sad that Borders closed this July, and with it all of the data on which books you purchased when, you may be in luck, because Barnes & Noble owns that data now. During the bankruptcy court which saw the sales of Borders assets across the board, personal data (preferences in reading material, DVDs, music, etc) of some 45 million Borders customers included, Barnes & Noble saw the opportunity and grabbed for it, and just this last week, that court approved such a sale. What does that mean, exactly? Will they now know everything about my LIFE? Not exactly.

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This Wednesday, Britain will signal its intent to legalize copying of CDs or DVDs onto computers and/or digital music players for personal use. This word comes from a government source speaking with Rueters this Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011. This move will be on a recommendation made to review Britian's intellectual property framework as carried out by Professor Ian Hargreaves earlier this year at the request of Prime Minister David Cameron. Digital music converters around the country realize it's been illegal all this time, say "oh dear me," and continue on with their day.

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If you have a massive collection of CDs, DVDs, and Blu-Ray discs that you'd like to have automatically stored and archived for easy access, then you might consider a robotic disc loader like the new Kaleidescape M700 Disc Vault. The M700 Disc Vault is a movie server that swallows your discs into a precision carousel, copies the content onto the Kaleidescape System, and easily plays back what you want when you want it---no more wasting time rummaging through your collection.

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Feeling retro? JVC has dug deep into the archives and pulled out something of a classic, the JVC Kaboom! boombox, though they've wisely given it an update to suit the 2011 market. The distinctive pipe-bomb shape is still there, and the love-it-or-hate-it design, but you now get an iPod/iPhone docking station along with the integrated CD player.

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This past week, I did something I haven’t done in years. I bought a CD. I bought the Beastie Boys "Hot Sauce Committee Part 2." And I bought it at Best Buy. It's not that I'm against digital downloads. Quite the contrary. Not only am I a huge fan of digital music, but I also pay for every single track I download. I haven't downloaded songs illegally in years, and a hard drive crash a few years ago ensured that all of the music in my collection was either ripped from CDs I own, or downloaded legally.

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Philips has outed a three-strong lineup of new music entertainment systems, including a multiroom audio HiFi, a component HiFi system, and an AirPlay-compatible wireless speaker system that looks like the eggs from Alien. The Philips WiFi Multiroom HiFi kicks things off, with wireless support, USB access for digital tracks on a hard-drive, and a choice of the integrated color LCD touchscreen or iOS/Android remote apps for controlling it all.

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