HyCD's play&record 1.3 - Product Announcement

Emedia Professional, May, 1999 by David Doering

Unlike the competition, however, HyCD doesn't yet provide a UDF reader for distribution to other workstations not using the HyCD driver. So if you want to share this disc with other users, they will need the Play&Record software as well. Also, the UDF portion works with fewer recorders than the MP3 option, though both support a handful of recorders, including Hewlett-Packard's internal 7200 model, Mitsumi's 4801 and 4802, Plextor's PX-R412C and 820, Philips' 3610, and Yamaha's CD-R 4260, 4261, 2216, and 4416 recorders.

One other limitation to the tool affects Windows 95 users. If you use Internet Explorer as your browser, you'll need to have at least version 4.01 (with Service Pack 1.0) to use the full capabilities of Play&Record. Netscape users will unfortunately have to install the full IE4.01 to do the same thing, even if you never use IE. These difficulties aren't HyCD's fault, however. The IE upgrade fixes a number of existing problems within Windows Explorer, which limits using folders with Play&Record. Windows 98 users don't need to worry about this, nor will Windows NT users when HyCD releases its NT version of Play&Record later this year.

Working in Play&Record's favor is its significant help section. With more than 42MB of multimedia video/audio help files available, you might not want to keep all of it on-hand all the time; for novice users, however, it's must-have training. And since the help section is interactive, watching the onscreen simulations makes it dead-easy to run the program in real life. Kudos to HyCD for this one. One caveat: You'll need a browser with an AVI-plug-in to view the video files.

a dream come true (for the most part)

If granted one wish for Play&Record, it would be file system support for ISO 9660 so I'd only have to use one tool for basic CD-R recording. HyCD states that there are already good utilities available for this--including its own HyCD Publisher. Still, it would be nice to reduce those utilities to this level of simplicity.

The HyCD Play&Record suite is not a perfect product, but it is a true innovation that's worth its weight in gold for mainstream users. Although Play&Record doesn't support ISO 9660 recording, its abundant help section, transparent integration with Windows Explorer, and ease-of-use will certainly help transform CD-R and CD-RW recording from a technician's trick to a mainstream treat. For network users, its unique Windows ACL support makes it the only recording package to choose, and music lovers will find it incredibly addictive. At less than $60 for both MP3 and UDF recording (a price some other vendors charge just for UDF support), this is a Grammy winner.

RELATED ARTICLE: HyCD's play&record 1.3

Synopsis: HyCD's Play&Record 1.3 is an integrated suite of CD recording tools that supports CD copying and recording, audio extraction, MP3 encoding and decoding, and audio resampling. What makes Play&Record the picture of simplicity is its basic user interface. At the heart of Play&Record is its MP3 and music CD recording capability, which includes the FX program for converting LP, tape, and audio files to CD format; a Sampler to convert MP3 to CD format; and an Encoder for converting WAV files to MP3 format. Although Play&Record doesn't support ISO 9660 recording or allow you to encode a UDF reader for playback on systems without the HyCD driver, its abundant help section, transparent integration with Windows Explorer, and ease-of-use will certainly help transform CD-R and CD-RW recording from a technician's trick to a mainstream treat.