Crave

During installation, you have to be careful if you don't want to set JetAudio Basic as the default application for audio and video files. However, the freeware application gives you plenty of reasons to make it your only player.

The interface has a modern design that looks like an equalizer. You can customize each section of the program, from CD ripping to format conversion, to your heart's content. The program can convert files among some a number of formats, as well as read and edit MP3 tags. The built-in Cross-fader, Reverb, and Wide-sound modes provide a nice touch not found in most MP3 players. The program becomes truly unique with its clock, however, which features a timer and an alarm. We also appreciate the inclusion of a tool for seeking out song lyrics.

One quibble is it treats a playlist as an album but uses the artist as its primary key field, making it difficult to locate mixes. Still, JetAudio's appealing feature set should attract audiophiles.

Mac users may have it easy with iTunes, but Windows fans should look elsewhere for solid features, a customizable interface, and device syncing support that doesn't devour resources. That's why there's MediaMonkey, which juggles excellent library-management tools with skins, plug-ins, autotagging, links to the Amazon.com MP3 store, track encoding, podcast catching, and more.

Upon first launch, the program scans your drive for supported digital media files to add to the library. Files are sorted based on their ID3 tags, and the helpful Auto-Rename and Auto-Tag From Filename features keep untagged tracks from falling through the cracks. Party mode locks down your library while still allowing people to request songs. Third-party plug-ins are available from the site if you want to tinker with the playback and encoding engine or add additional sound-processing effects. Throw $20 at the Monkey to get advanced features such as sleep, scripting, previewing, and on-the-fly file conversion when syncing with a portable device, but all the best features come in the free version.

At least on the PC, iTunes' performance has been less than stellar. Sure, it set the standard for jukeboxes early on, but most of that was probably tied to its then-exclusive ability to sync with the ubiquitous iPod. Now that device syncing, and especially iPod syncing, is a must-have feature, iTunes' other flaws are standing out like a mohawk in Mecca.

MediaMonkey provides a slick look, deep customization, and excellent playback.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Swinging in to the rescue on one heck of a lengthy vine is MediaMonkey 3. The latest free version of this Windows stalwart, which has been beating its chest since the beginning of the decade, showcases some great new features married to all the solid basics that you expect from your daily-use jukebox. The end result makes it a wonder that more people aren't using the Monkey for their boogie sessions.

iTunes is notorious for being a memory hog, for being a poor podcatcher, for having weak tag support, and for being stodgily uncustomizable. On all four counts, MediaMonkey takes big bites out of Apple.

As a WinAmp user, the feature that most impressed me was the tag support. WinAmp's tag support is overly complicated where MediaMonkey makes it a dead-simple procedure to accurately tag. Once you've selected your track or album, hit CTRL-L and the Monkey searches Amazon.com for album art, track names, and basically every field you could want attached to a song. Check boxes help you easily eliminate songs and discrete attributes from being changed, so it's quite easy to grab just the artwork, for example, without changing your tag for the track titles.

Tagging and downloading album art are easier than strumming an A chord in MediaMonkey.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MediaMonkey's interface is modular and customizable. Users can move around, show or hide, and skin pretty much every aspect of what you look at when you're looking at it. Drag the playback controls around, so that they live above or below any other module, in any of the three columns that make up the UI or across all of them. Hide the Now Playing playlist as you need it, maximize it to your heart's content. Shrink down the album art panel, blow it up to absorb your attention, or hide it completely.

Longtime Windows users especially will appreciate the tree-based navigation, but don't worry about getting lost in your own intricate jungle of folders. Right above it lives a row of quick buttons to help you navigate your way around. Conveniently, they're all linked to hotkeys, and because this is MediaMonkey and not iTunes, you can remap those keys however you like and change the display so you only see the ones you need. These nodes collapse the tree and highlight the Now Playing folder, which great for searching, playing, searching for something else but jumping back to what you are still listening to. Other nodes include one for your Podcasts, and one for Shoutcast and Icecast Internet radio. You can also use the node to focus on Artist, Album, Genre, or any other criteria you've set up.

It should be noted that WinAmp's high level of customization for creating playlists is free, while the more advanced choices, such as beats-per-minute, remain reserved for MediaMonkey Gold, but for the features I use the most, the Monkey was a far better match. The Monkey also supports WinAmp plugins, playlists, and even uses the same audio engine.

MediaMonkey lets you customize how your MP3 player syncs.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

MediaMonkey also supports extracting audio files from your portable devices, great for, backing up your player to a secondary hard drive or transferring your collection onto a new computer. Other features that the Monkey has include multiple device support, so you can sync your MP3 player and your MP3-playing cell phone separately, an extensible visualizer, an Auto-DJ function that works like a "smart" shuffle playlist, and, cliched as it may sound, more. Plug-ins give the Monkey the superpowers, like the ability to videos. DSP audio plugins also boost the not-insignificant built-in audio equalizers, bolstering the Replay Gain and MP3 Gain tech that comes included. Support for scripts and an online database of user-written scripts truly make MediaMonkey extensible enough to satiate even the hungriest of music gorillas.

On Macs, iTunes is still the standard, but MediaMonkey 3's intuitive layout, deep level of customization, device support, and all-out attention to sound quality make it the one you should be going ape over.

Hard disks with 80GB capacity are good only for old people and the terminally decrepit. When used inside central music jukeboxes, that is.

It's a pathetic amount of memory to stick inside something the size of a hi-fi. We've seen them in heaps of music centers from the likes of Sony, Philips, and newcomers Brennan. Always 80GB. Would a 160GB drive break the bank? No. Would 250GB? No. And these larger disks would also mean you could store CDs in lossless format.

(Credit: Crave UK)

How pleased were we to see that at least one company gets it. British manufacturer Naim has put not one but two 400GB drives in its new HDX audiophile music center--one primary disk for use in the day, and one that backs up the primary disk at night. But at 4,500 pounds (about $8,923) you may have to start your own e-mail scam to afford one.

It's not just about storage, of course. The HDX uses a double-pass technique to ensure a bit-for-bit copy of a CD, then stores it in uncompressed WAV format to retain absolute sonic accuracy. Together this will let you store about 600 CDs inside the system. With so much music, it'll need to be easy to navigate--a colour LCD touch-sensitive screen should be just the ticket, or you can hook up a keyboard and monitor for more complex editing.

The HDX can also stream music from any network-attached storage devices or PCs you have lying around, or from USB sticks and iPods. An automatic AMG-powered online system will label your CDs with artist and album info, along with cover art.

For even more passionate audiophiles, Naim's jukebox powerhouse supports DRM-free 24-bit 96KHz and 24-bit 88KHz files for better-than-CD audio reproduction. Music in this format will be available for download from Naim's digital music store later this year. Yes, it will play MP3, WMA, AAC and good ol' FLAC files, should you want to, though we don't yet know whether it'll rip into these formats.

We'll do our best to bring you a slick hands-on report with the HDX in the near future, so watch this space. You can expect to pick up an HDX from June.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: Crave UK)

For those who don't want to spend $1,400 on the Philips WACS7500 or splash out on one of Sony's Giga Jukes, you could try the HDD-based JB7 from market newcomer Brennan. There are no speakers, no Wi-Fi, no radio, no big colorful display, and no lush extra features. Instead, it's a compact unit with a simple purpose: to aggregate your CD collection with minimal fuss.

Technophobes may appreciate its simplicity--we'll know when we've had a play ourselves--and anyone without a computer will undoubtedly find it a convenient way to break into the jukebox market. The JB7 includes a 60-watt amplifier and the Gracenote CD database built-in, so your CD rips are automatically labeled and tagged with artist info. The whole lot can be directly hooked up to a pair of speakers. Unfortunately, it only offers an utterly pathetic 20GB version starting at 250 pounds ($495), 40GB for 300 pounds ($594), and 80GB at a horrific 320 pounds ($634).

We see a major issue here: Why max out with an 80GB hard disk for Silicon Heaven's sake? Would it really break the bank to shove in a 250GB hard disk instead? Those drives are hardly costly these days; plus, it would open the possibility to rip CDs into true lossless quality--offered by the JB7--instead of lossy MP3, which is really the only way you're going to get a massive CD collection into even the top model's space.

But the main thing we take issue with is price. You can pick up a 20GB hard disk for less than 20 pounds ($40). This is what's in Brennan's entry-level model. Hop over to a site such as Scan.co.uk and you can snag 500GB drives for about 60 pounds more. Why, then, does Brennan want 70 pounds more for just 60GB of extra space?

We'll have a full review and a hands-on report for you very soon, as our JB7 has just arrived. Safe to say we're absolutely shocked at the expense of this simple unit.

(Source: Crave UK)

(Credit: TouchTunes)

Ever vigilant for news that might further our pursuit of laziness, Crave featured a French initiative last year for texting-controlled jukeboxes. Now a couple of U.S. companies have partnered for a similar concept with even more ambitious goals.

TouchTunes and LocaModa, which was created by a founder of Symbian, are seeking to linke 30,000 jukeboxes controlled by mobile phones. Beyond the novelty of using the phone as a remote, the companies want to create a social network around the system, displaying all actions as data feeds. "Online users will be able to view and participate in the activity at their favorite locations. For example: They can see who has 'fanned' the location, who is actually there, what music is currently playing, and they can even 'gift' songs to friends at that location," according to Textually.

Let's hope this doesn't inspire ABC to create yet another ill-advised reunion episode for the geriatric cast of Happy Days.

iTunes Control's pop-up track info box.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

For many Windows users, Apple's iTunes is a mixed bag. It offers many of the music and video jukebox services we all want, but it's often sluggish and the polar opposite of customizable. A new freeware plug-in called iTunes Control gives us all a chance to remedy at least part of that situation.

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Folks who are tapping into their tunes via the Yahoo Music Jukebox music player may find themselves at risk of allowing a malicious attacker into their computer, according to a security advisory issued Monday by Secunia.

The "extremely critical" security vulnerabilities are found in Yahoo Music Jukebox version 2.2.2.056 and possibly other versions, according to Secunia. The heightened warning comes as exploit code has been made public, which could give malicious attackers a road map to follow should they want to compromise a user's computer.

According to Secunia, users who have the Yahoo Music Jukebox loaded on their system and visit a malicious Web site could find themselves at risk. The security flaws are found in the way certain ActiveX controls in the Yahoo music player process information, which could cause a buffer overflow problem. An attacker could then exploit the vulnerabilities and execute arbitrary code from a user's computer.

Secunia advises Yahoo Music Jukebox users to set the "kill-bit" for the affected ActiveX controls, as a means to minimize any potential threat to their system.

Yahoo was not immediately available for comment. But stay tuned.

Back in May, Señor Bell wrote about the new RealPlayer, which promised users the ability to download video in a variety of formats (Flash, WMV, Quicktime) from a variety of sites (YouTube, Comedy Central, and so on) using a variety of Web browsers. Somewhat unsurprisingly, I've gotten a variety of results. RealPlayer is fresh out of beta (download Version 11 for Windows from Download.com)--the perfect time to put it to the test, in my book. Personally, I don't find the latest version particularly useful for my video tastes, but you may find it compelling, depending on your preferences, when it comes to online video.

Let me just get this out of the way first: The RealPlayer software interface is...unattractive. Mostly it's just cluttered, but the utilitarian look and feel leave something to be desired, as well. It's relatively easy to get the hang of, at least, but I frankly expected better from the peeps who bring us Rhapsody. All that being said, the inconspicuous, integrated "Download This Video" button is both well-designed and useful, and videos are saved in an obvious spot (under Downloads & Recordings) for future access. Now if they could integrate this button's functionality with another jukebox for media organization (say, Rhapsody), I believe we would have something here.

Of course, simple downloading of Internet video is a compelling feature for some. And the fact that it's free makes it all the more user-friendly. However, if you want to actually take your newly downloaded video "to go" on an iPod, you'll need to plunk down $40 (a one-time fee) for RealPlayer Plus. The Plus version also includes several other advanced features (outlined in the screenshot above) that some users might find handy. I tested both the downloading functionality and the iPod transfer feature, and both were pretty slow. It took about 12 minutes to download a 24-minute video clip from Google Video; RealPlayer then took its sweet time--about an hour--encoding and transferring that video to the iPod. It's definitely an exercise in patience, though--to be fair--the video-grab feature is really intended for short video clips of about 5 minutes or less. More unforgivable is the fact that the app refused to play nice with Outlook, causing the e-mail client to crash when any encoding or transferring was taking place.

So what kinds of video can you expect to work with RealPlayer's download feature? The short answer is "nothing with DRM protection of any kind." So if you're thinking of capturing the latest episode of Heroes to watch on your iPod (an especially enticing idea now that the iTunes store is NBC-less) you can forget about it. I also went after some Bravo, FoodTV, Netflix, and Comedy Central content--all to no avail. For Bravo, FoodTV, and NBC, the "Download This Video" button popped up, but the resulting grab was just the commercial segment. Sadly, while Comedy Central videos worked during the beta period, the site has since switched to streaming flash, with which RealPlayer 11 is incompatible (the button changes to "Video cannot be downloaded," though--somehow--commercials are downloadable). Netflix uses a proprietary format that the software doesn't even recognize as video. In any event, this adherence to DRM is better for RealPlayer in the long run, but it's really too bad about the FoodTV restriction--how handy would it be to have quick and easy recipe clips on your iPod?

There are, naturally, plenty of video sites that work just fine with the software. Google Video, YouTube, Metacafe, and any other site with user-generated content are all fair game. Also, there are some TV network sites that keep their formats open and free of restriction--Cartoon Network, Discovery Channel, and National Geographic, for example--though you often have to sit through a loud, unmutable ad while you wait for the video to come on. Of course, this is dependent on the sites and not RealPlayer, but I can't help complaining here. Also, it's worth noting that you don't actually have to watch the video while it's recording: You can pause, mute, or even move onto another video and cue that up for downloading. That's definitely a big plus.

In the end, the usefulness of this new RealPlayer 11 feature depends largely on the type of content you are interested in saving for offline viewing (if you're into music videos, for example, it's great)--and also how enterprising you are (I came across a couple of questionable sites with plenty of network TV content that was readily compatible with the software). It is free, so there's no harm in trying it out--unless you count the harm to your eyes/brain by having to deal with the RealPlayer interface. If you're an iPod user who wants to take videos on the go, just make sure you test out the free version with your favorite content providers before you dole out the cash for the Plus option.

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