The digital media landscape hasn't exactly plateaued in the past few years, as was once predicted. If anything, the ever-expanding proliferation of portable devices and media formats has made it rockier than ever before.
This is a fact that hasn't escaped the attention of numerous software developers, who've busily churned out iPod converters and PSP movie packages like there's no tomorrow.
As befits a company of Roxio's long-standing reputation in the media authoring field, it's attempting to cover as many of these bases as possible in its latest product. As a result Copy and Convert is just as happy burning movie discs as it is preparing media for your iPod.
The interface has a lot in common with Roxio's previous low-level tools. It's blissfully simple and it's almost impossible to go wrong with the menu system, which uses plain language to lead you to the various tools.
In terms of copying, it's just about what you'd expect. You can't rip commercial DVD movies, but you've got the option of either making a direct copy of unprotected CDs and DVDs (on-the-fly, if you've got two drives) or grabbing the video and turning it into any other format.
The interface simplicity continues here, leading you easily towards the appropriate format for your target device. While this might be seen as a turn-off by more technical types, with the impressive range of formats on offer, it should please everyone.
You can go the other way, burning assorted DivX files to a DVD compilation with the help of custom menus. It's missing the obvious ability to burn custom data CDs, but it's up-to-date enough to support HD formats. That doesn't just mean it can manage high-resolution videos - it can competently rip from Blu-ray, too.
That's not all - Roxio really does seem to have dragged in some of the most useful features a mediaphile could desire. It'll catalogue each of your burned discs, for a start. If you're sensible about storing your discs, the catalogue makes searching for and locating that elusive backed-up file a simple, two-step process.
If you're one of the fancy few to buy into it, Lightscribe support means that you can use the reasonably limited labelling tool to generate your own disc etchings. Those without can make do with regular case inserts.
