Wednesday
Jun022010
Jun 2 Episode #5: AV After Dark
No technical difficulties this time so you have all three of us for the entire show! We talk a bit about TV past, present, and future. We have some ideas for what to get your home theater lovin father. Can you game Pandora? We talk about our voting strategies. Ara asks, "Is it OK to record the Pandora One Stream"? Best Buy and Tivo team up. Is that a good thing? Finally, we talk low cost receivers. Thanks for listening. You can find AV Rant at their website (AVRant.com). We really enjoy these collaborations and hope you do too. Thanks to listener Ted for both the Intro and Outro music. Check out more of his work at www.thesysmusic.com. You can find both the HT Guys and AV Rant iPhone app in the iTunes music store.
Reader Comments (1)
Pandora -
You don't need any software to capture music from Pandora. Pandora simply sends MP3 files to your PC. They obfusticate the name and move them around frequently. The hard part is finding where they put the files. Software like you mentioned will likely only work until they change something once again (moving target). Having to rename and tag these files is a pain, but it's doable. Ethically / Legally this is not good. Saying it's less bad than bit torrent is a weak argument.
My way out of this dilemma was provided by Zune Pass. $15 per month allows you to download or stream anything in the store plus you get to keep 10 songs (no DRM) per month. I probably wouldn't buy this for just myself, but I still have two children living at home. Zune Pass allows you to share the subscription on up to 3 PCs and Zune devices. Subscribers don't even have to be in the same location or related to share the subscription. Everyone who shares the subscription all have to use the same Zune profile (social features). It doesn't matter unless you are embarrassed by your kids downloads. This is a great way to keep your kids legal if that's important to you.
I saw a story this past week about Microsoft reducing their monthly rate to $9.99 per month in order to compete with the likes of Rhapsody - http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/27/microsoft-considers-a-zune-pass-price-drop/
Thanks guys,
PCH