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Dave and Chris discuss YouTube as a TV streaming platform and its users, Meta’s billion dollar settlement, digital coupons, and more.
Rob on Block Island, Rhode Island asked: “My computer doesn’t have a disk drive, so I want to buy one that I can plug into the USB port. That’s probably a pretty easy answer for you, and it’s probably pretty inexpensive, but I’d love to hear your recommendation. And question number two is I have a portable audio system with a mini jack for the auxiliary input. I want to use the system to play a long music mix, maybe three or four hours long that I have on a USB drive. Is it possible that you could recommend that outboard disk drive, which itself has a USB input, into which I could plug that music mix USB So that it plays on the audio system or if I’m trying to do too much with too few things. Is there another way to get music from that USB into the mini jack? Is there such a thing as a cord that is a USB female on one end and a mini male on the other? So that my audio system will know just to play the music?”
Rob, external disk drives are standard and compatible across the board, but if youre looking for something that will work as effortlessly as possible then you can get one made by your computers manufacturer.
Every manufacturer from LG, to Lenovo, to Dell, to Apple and everyone in between sell their own external CD/DVD drives. Thats not strictly necessary, they are standard and should be compatible with any device and these drives are a very mature technology (to the point of being largely obsolete) so you cant really go wrong no matter which you choose. Youll see a price range of about $25 to $100, theres no real harm in staying close to the low end unless you plan to use the drive a lot.
In terms of piping audio to a mini audio jack, you can find players on Amazon for as little as $15 that will take a USB input and typically have some awful, tiny built-in speaker and an audio out jack. That may be the way to go. You can ignore the speaker and just use it as an audio passthrough interface.
For example, a Hemobllo Mini Speaker sells for about $17 on Amazon, weve never heard of that brand before and likely never will again, but really its a glorified adapter that lets you press play and decodes the MP3 audio for you before piping it to the speaker.
A compact MP3 player with an FM tuner, literally being sold as Compact MP3 Player With FM Tuner without even a made up brand name goes for about $22 right now.
You can also get a bluetooth to mini audio jack adapter and just stream it from your computer or phone wirelessly. Long term that may be the most versatile and comfortable option and it also wont take up much extra room. For those youre still largely looking at $15 to $20 at any online store.
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