I understand the concept that you can record a store bought Audio CD to the Z1's internal hard drive. Cool. I've also read the forums here and am lead to believe that the Z1 will not record mp3's to the hard drive from a burned audio CD. No big deal there. So my question is this.

If I take a data cd or data DVD loaded with mp3's that I have made on my computer - will it give me the option to load/copy those to the internal hard drive? (Not audio tracks, but actual MP3's like on an IPod or MP3 Player) from a direct MP3 CD or DVD.

I just ordered my Z1/Pac steering wheel adapter/dvd-nav safety mod/ sirius adapter/ and all the hardware I needed for our Infiniti G35.

Total bill was about 2100.00 and that is my only question. :)

If anyone who has done this or attempted this can share their information with me - that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!
Sncboom2k

the simple answer is - NO.... There is no provision for you to copy/load things onto the harddrive other than what is privided - Audio CD or pictures (for background or address)

Just to make it very clear, if your music collections are only in MP3 and you want to transfer them onto the harddrive, you would have to burn them into audio CD, then it will record into the library. Yes, that could be a lot of work but it's the only way....

Well that's a bummer. I may need to work on that "hard drive" hack that was mentioned in another thread. I assume it's a laptop style IDE hard drive. I definitely have the means to explore that.

Although it was my understanding that if you burned an audio cd - it would not allow you to rip that to the drive? I was under the assumption it would have to be a store bought original.

I guess I'll just have to test all this funcionality when I receive and install the unit.

I appreciate the information.

Regards,
Sncboom2k

If think you can contribute to hacking the drive, go for it, I don't think anyone has any luck yet, may be you can get the Windows Mobile SDK and start from there.

As for audio CD, what makes you think it knows it's orginal or copy? It does not know the difference.

guest said:

As for audio CD, what makes you think it knows it's orginal or copy? It does not know the difference.

It looks for the SCMS (Serial Copy Management System) that stand-alone consumer audio CD recorders are required by law to encode on the disc when it records from a digital source. But CDs recorded using computer-based CD-R drives should work fine. I had a version of Corel CD Creator (now Roxio Easy CD Creator) back around '96-'97 that wrote the SCMS bit to audio CDs, but I'm not aware of any other computer software today that does.

Don't be confused about this issue. This unit will rip original CDs and CD-Rs. The CD-Rs do not have to be copies of an original. You can make your own mix or whatever you'd like just as long as it is burned and finalized as an Audio CD. I don't know for sure but from what I read, when you make an exact replica of a CD that is SCMS protected, that's when the SCMS bit gets encoded onto the CD-R. Like I said, don't take this for gospel but I believe that's how it work. If you need to make an exact copy, extract the songs into MP3 first and then burn them. That should remove the SCMS bit. I've only burned MP3s with Nero and they've always worked. Good Luck.

Can the Z1 read MP3's burned to a Data DVD? I assume it can do the same from a Data CD.