"American Gods" question

westprog wrote:
"P. Taine" wrote...

Note that the top-of-the-line Subaru car radio will play mp3 CDs. Not
that I have it, but it is described in the manual.
I would imagine that it isn't the only such device.


Car CD players are more and more likely to play MP3's. It makes sense -
having one CD would do for a six hour drive. Portables are starting to get
the ability. It's surprising how many machines don't, though.


Or, you can dispense with CDs altogether if you have a portable MP3
player (iPod, etc). There are a number of devices that allow you to
connect to your existing car stereo--FM modulators, cassette adapters,
and direct jacks into the CD input--and with most of these, you don't
have to worry about the player's battery running out, because it charges
from the car's system.


--Jon Meyers

"Jon Meyers" wrote in message
...
westprog wrote:
"P. Taine" wrote...

Note that the top-of-the-line Subaru car radio will play mp3 CDs. Not
that I have it, but it is described in the manual.
I would imagine that it isn't the only such device.

Car CD players are more and more likely to play MP3's. It makes sense -
having one CD would do for a six hour drive. Portables are starting to
get
the ability. It's surprising how many machines don't, though.

Or, you can dispense with CDs altogether if you have a portable MP3
player (iPod, etc). There are a number of devices that allow you to
connect to your existing car stereo--FM modulators, cassette adapters,
and direct jacks into the CD input--and with most of these, you don't
have to worry about the player's battery running out, because it charges
from the car's system.

I assume you don't mean it charges from the FM modulator or cassette
adaptor; or even the 3.5 jackplug. AFAIK it's only the USB connection that
does charging. It is possible to get a seperate charging attachment which
plugs into the cigar lighter for many MP3 players. They can be a bit
expensive though. I understand that some radios have an iPod specific
socket.

I've also found that it can be difficult to find free airspace for the FM
modulator in the heart of the city - though it should work fine on a long
cross-country run.

Cassette players are disappearing from most car radios now - and a
connection for the external player isn't that common.

J/

Paul Andinach wrote:

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.


Yes, we could fit more books onto microfilm too, but they would not be
easily readable. The last thing I want to spend my time doing is
ripping audio books from MP3 to standard CD format.

I'm not sure what's so shutter-inducing about a big box of audio book
CDs. I've recently listened to unabridged versions of:

DUNE: THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD on 20 CDs
DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE on 22 CDs
THE RULE OF FOUR on 11 CDs

and am currently listening to:

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL on 26 CDs.

I have a long commute, so the more, the merrier for me.

William M. Klimon
http://www.gateofbliss.com

"William M. Klimon" wrote in message
ups.com...
Paul Andinach wrote:

The thing is that one can fit more onto a CD using MP3 encoding than
using standard audio encoding. Or, to put it another way, a long audio
book will fit on fewer CDs. I shudder to think how many CDs an
uncompressed version of 'American Gods' would take up, and perhaps the
publisher did too.

Yes, we could fit more books onto microfilm too, but they would not be
easily readable. The last thing I want to spend my time doing is
ripping audio books from MP3 to standard CD format.

I'm not sure what's so shutter-inducing about a big box of audio book
CDs. I've recently listened to unabridged versions of:

DUNE: THE BUTLERIAN JIHAD on 20 CDs
DUNE: THE MACHINE CRUSADE on 22 CDs
THE RULE OF FOUR on 11 CDs

and am currently listening to:

JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR. NORRELL on 26 CDs.

I have a long commute, so the more, the merrier for me.

I'd certainly prefer to have a single CD with the entire book on it if I
were on a commute. Unless I could guarantee that one CD's worth would last
the trip. I can just imagine reaching into the glove compartment to try to
find #17 and pulling out #7 by mistake. And the sound quality of MP3's for
spoken work is just fine. If one doesn't have MP3 capability in the car
that's another matter.

J/

In article ,
"westprog" said:

Car CD players are more and more likely to play MP3's. It makes
sense - having one CD would do for a six hour drive. Portables
are starting to get the ability. It's surprising how many
machines don't, though.

These days, nothing in the field of field of "this machine can't
handle that format" should ever be surprising to anyone. Ever.

--
William December Starr

"William December Starr" wrote in message
...
In article ,
"westprog" said:

Car CD players are more and more likely to play MP3's. It makes
sense - having one CD would do for a six hour drive. Portables
are starting to get the ability. It's surprising how many
machines don't, though.

These days, nothing in the field of field of "this machine can't
handle that format" should ever be surprising to anyone. Ever.

It's quite impressive that we seem to have standardised on that particular
shape for CD's and DVD's. Compatibility is at least possible, which it isn't
for LP's, Cassettes, digital tape, video discs, VHS, Beta etc. One single
shape of disc will replace all those, which is pretty good, and most of the
different DVD formats have been absorbed, apart from RAM. I understand that
they're trying to break this with the new standards.

We seem to be at the stage that records were at before all record players
would play most formats. Then we got to a stage where there wasn't backward
compatibility for 78's. There was also a problem with different FM standards
as well.

J/

William December Starr wrote:

These days, nothing in the field of field of "this machine
can't handle that format" should ever be surprising to
anyone. Ever.

westprog commented:

It's quite impressive that we seem to have standardised
on that particular shape for CD's and DVD's.

The shape is one thing; the formatting is quite another. When it comes to
that, companies appear to be doing their best to thwart the consumer.

DVDs are formatted in different ways according to their country of origin,
and underlying the DVD formatting is the video encoding, so that even
countries which share the same DVD formatting (such as Japan and the UK) may
not be compatible because the video formatting (UK is PAL, Japan is NTSC).

To get round this, we have a region-free DVD player, which will play DVDs
from any country. Yet now some companies (Warner Bros, New Line, Columbia,
MGM) are beginning to put some kind of encoding into their DVDs so that they
will not be playable on a region-free player. To get past this, one has to
buy a different gadget - a multi-region DVD player. For details, see
http://hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm.

Instead of serving the customers' interests, companies seem to be hell-bent
on making things as difficult as possible. The only advantage seems to be
for the manufacturers of DVD players. But how does it benefit the
manufacturers of the DVDs themselves? Surely it is in their interests to
have as large a consumer base as possible, which would be best achieved by
making sure the wretched things could be played on the widest possible
variety of DVD players.

--
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.org

"John R. Yamamoto-Wilson" wrote in message
...
William December Starr wrote:

These days, nothing in the field of field of "this machine
can't handle that format" should ever be surprising to
anyone. Ever.

It's quite impressive that we seem to have standardised
on that particular shape for CD's and DVD's.

The shape is one thing; the formatting is quite another. When it comes to
that, companies appear to be doing their best to thwart the consumer.

DVDs are formatted in different ways according to their country of origin,
and underlying the DVD formatting is the video encoding, so that even
countries which share the same DVD formatting (such as Japan and the UK)
may
not be compatible because the video formatting (UK is PAL, Japan is NTSC).

Annoying as the PAL/NTSC thing is, it's a legacy issue. There are many
possible explanations as to why it happened, but it certainly did. I believe
the technical reason was that the USA brought in color TV, whereas Europe
standardised on colour. An increasing number of DVD and video players will
play both PAL and NTSC though.

To get round this, we have a region-free DVD player, which will play DVDs
from any country. Yet now some companies (Warner Bros, New Line, Columbia,
MGM) are beginning to put some kind of encoding into their DVDs so that
they
will not be playable on a region-free player. To get past this, one has to
buy a different gadget - a multi-region DVD player. For details, see
http://hometheaterinfo.com/dvd3.htm.

Instead of serving the customers' interests, companies seem to be
hell-bent
on making things as difficult as possible. The only advantage seems to be
for the manufacturers of DVD players. But how does it benefit the
manufacturers of the DVDs themselves? Surely it is in their interests to
have as large a consumer base as possible, which would be best achieved by
making sure the wretched things could be played on the widest possible
variety of DVD players.

It seems to be associated with allowing films to be brought out earlier in
the USA, so they might be getting cinema release in Europe while they are
out on DVD in the USA. It's also possible to buy DVD's much cheaper in the
US market (though I decided to check this on Amazon, and The Matrix is
available for $B!r(B5 on .co.uk, while it's $10 on .com.

There are a few issue with cross-continental purchases. For example, the
ratings systems are different. But they are different between countries in
Europe as well, and that doesn't cause a problem.

An advantage of DVD's is that it's often possible to buy a foreign language
version of a film in English, and just twiddle the settings to get it back
to the original - something that isn't possible with video.

J/