Rio Riot and Lyra Personal Jukebox

dschuetz writes: "SONICblue has the new Rio Riot up on their home page. It looks to me like an iPod killer -- 20 GB hard drive, very nice interface (better than Apple's), built-in FM tuner, powerful "DJ" functions, Lithium Ion batteries. And, at $399, it's priced competitively. The only question is -- how big is this thing? SONICblue has lots of other great systems out there, like the ReplayTV and Rio Receiver (which runs Linux), so the possibilities for hacking and otherwise extending this device are very good." Another submitter sends: "MP3 Newswire has a story on the RCA LYRA Personal Jukebox, a 20GB MP3/mp3PRO player that is the first portable to use the updated digital music compression scheme co-developed by its parent company Thompson. The new Lyra sells for $299. In related news, SonicBlue has released its first jukebox style player, also a 20GB unit called the Rio Riot that sells for $399. Both articles have pictures of the new players."

Stop worrying about USB...

[jarodss]

Reading the early comments and seeing everyone complaining about it being USB.

Take a look at most "pee-cee"s today, how many have Firewire? Most people don't have Firewire, they do have usb though.

So stop saying that everything needs to be firewire, yes it will take a while to fill a 20gig mp3 player with a usb connection, but how many times are you going to need to reload 20 gigs of music, if your like me you get a few cds a month and rip them at the same time, at that point I have between 2 and 4 hundred megs, and that doesn't take long to transfer with a usb connection when I only have to do it once or twice a month.

And on a side note, does this thing act as a portable hard drive? I know some of the harddrive/mp3 players do and that would make it even more useful, with my 11 or 12 gigs of mp3 and a divx video or 6 in the rest of the space i'd be set, even my parents have usb on their pc.

iPod interface

[elchulopadre]

In terms of interface, I find it hard to believe that the iPod can be easily topped. I've had mine since thanksgiving, and have been fascinated by it.

Not only is it awesome as an mp3 player (excellent sound quality, great battery life, fast connection, high capacity), or as an external hd (I've used it to fix broken macs by booting off it). What I find most impressive of all is the fact that its ui is unbelievably efficient at getting you to the song, playlist, artist, album, etc. you want to hear.

In terms of usability and 'learning curve', my grandfather figured out how to use it in about 3 minutes, without my telling him anything about it. Granted, he limited himself to the gigabyte-or-so that I have of classical music, but still, he was impressed at how easy it was to use.

The Riot seems to be a slick little machine, and its 20 gb are very impressive. But, as people have already mentioned, 20 gb over USB are worth more than a few coffee breaks' wait...

Not to discredit the Riot's interface, but the jog dial doesn't let you go all the way around, which wouldn't let you really speed up (crucial element of iPod's navigation), and the buttons aren't in the center of the dial, but off to the side, so you'd have to take your thumb off the dial, move it up or down and push accordingly, as opposed to having the main button right there and the others right around the dial. In addition, the Riot seems to require 2-handed operation. On the other hand, though, the larger screen is impressive, and the hints at a graphical interface as opposed to a text-driven one make me quite curious.

The fact that I can do everything I could possibly want to with one hand on my iPod (with one finger, mind you) is one of the most fascinating aspects of the interface. And FireWire makes it all manageable. As soon as I get a new CD and rip it, I update my playlists and within seconds I'm good to go, new music and all. I'm very happy with my iPod, as you could have guessed. But it would be stupid to say that it's unsurpassable. It's just very difficult, but my eyes are open...

Re:Huh.

[SpookyFish]

I am not a big Apple fan, but the iPod is FAR from lame!

Besides Firewire, it has 32 meg of ram, more than any other HD based player -- more buffering, less HD access. It uses the memory to store the file database as well, so there is no wait for the hard drive to spin up to navigate through files/folders.

The 1.8" HD allows it to be much smaller & lighter -- about half the weight and size of the next-smallest HD based player. 5 gig is the largest 1.8" drive available right now AFAIK, but that will change soon, I am sure.

The only way to get a smaller/lighter fairly large capacity player is to use the 1GB Microdrive + a CF2 compatible memory player (with questionable battery life).

Instead of these oversized behemoths, why won't someone else use the 1.8" drive and make a player that is Win/Mac compatible (natively) that has Firewire AND USB?!

/comment

Re:Yesss! An iPod Killler!

[smack_attack]

I have IE1394 (firewire) on my Compaq laptop [compaqfactoryoutlet.com]. It's not as uncommon as you think, it's just been slow to be adopted.

Priced Competitively?

[SuperMacNinja]

So everyone complains that the iPod is overpriced at $399 but this Rio product is "priced competitively" at $399? This just blows my mind.

Re:iPod is not an MP3 player

[rob.eberhardt]

Apparently it's hackable in some surprising ways - found this [ipodding.com] article about a device introduced at MacWorld SF that turns your iPod into a smart IR remote control.

Archos Jukebox Recorder 20

[Namarrgon]

This [archos.com] is more like it.

Pros:
- 20 GB drive
- USB2 (i.e. Firewire speeds, but still backwards compatible with ubiquitous USB1 when you need it)
- Records :-)
- 10 hour life
- Usable as portable harddrive; you can put non-MP3 files on there and get them off again (unlike iPod)
- Cheaper: US$369

Cons:
- 350g

Summary:
It ain't as small & sexy as an iPod, but it's undoubtably more useful. ALL your music on tap (OK, a lot of it at least), a portable drive that plugs anywhere and is usably fast, and it records too :-)

hard drive players are crippled by battery life

[Luke_A_P]

Both the iPod and Rio Riot use Li-Ion batteries and have a life of about 10hours. As I see it this gives them very little advantage over MP3 CD players. A CD will hold more than ten hours of MP3's. A good MP3 CD-Player will run for 15hours on a pair of AA's, and you can easily carry more with you. I travel around a lot and that feature is very important to me. Until they produce one that runs on fuel cells (which can't be that far off) I don't see myself wanting a hard drive based music player. A CD based player may be larger but its lighter, less fragile and a hell of a lot cheaper. With the money you save you could even buy a solid state player to take running. The hard drive players may work while you're running but I bet it makes them fail a lot sooner than they would otherwise. One thing I have to say in Rio's favour is that their firmware support for the Rio Volt has been superb. I would not be surprised to see ogg and/or mp3pro support there soon.

iPod Killer

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the two important points are 1) form factor and 2) firewire. They neglect to mentioned form factor (so we assume it would be larger) and 2) it doesn't have firewire so misses out on some of the benefits of the iPod (recharging/faster transfers).

However, there are some good things here that Apple could use with iPod.

I'm sure there will be an updated iPod in the future (hopefully with Line Out/Microphone/FM Tuner/10 Gb+ Hdd) which will deal with this product (and hopefully a price reduction in the current model).

I like Sonic Blue's other products though (I think they are making more of an impact on the "digital lifestyle" than Apple). I hope Apple teams up with another company (like Pioneer) and extends their range to Home Entertainment devices (ala Tivo/Sonic Blue) and Car Stereos. The iPod would also then become a "transport" device for transfering songs between these devices and your PC; And Apple is better poised than Sonic Blue in the overall "Integration" of such devices. However, Apple best not snooze in releasing these things to the market!