Rio Announces Networked Ogg Vorbis Player 356
Alexander writes "Rio has announced several players, among them the Karma 20GB Ogg Vorbis music player, which also sports Ethernet as the preferred connection method. Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptance?" There's more information on the new Rio line-up via an article at The Register.
Finally (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti SCO T-Shirt. [anti-tshirts.com] $1 donated to OSI Fund on each shirt.
Ethernet connection method, long overdue? (Score:5, Insightful)
Although with the advent of firewire and usb2.1, it doesn't seem that big anymore
Re:40GB, too! (Score:5, Insightful)
For those of you more unfortunate poor people (like myself), perhaps this [amazon.com] player would better suit your needs.
Re:Give to xiph if you use these. (Score:4, Insightful)
If Xiph wants to make money off Ogg, they should sell it. If I want to donate money, I'll donate it to cancer research or something.
The RIO people are really cool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I suffer from Linux user mentality (Score:4, Insightful)
I know I am definiately less likely to purchase something if can't easily access information on their products.
Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sounds good... (Score:3, Insightful)
Is Ethernet a good idea? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:music length (Score:3, Insightful)
15 hours in fact - c'mon, it's a very small gadget and hard disks suck current! A certain other well known player only manages 8 hours.
Rob
Re:first post! (Score:2, Insightful)
AAC+ (Score:1, Insightful)
Vorbis can't compete.
Ethernet dock; USB 2.0 actually (Score:3, Insightful)
If you can just use standard file server protocols (NFS or SMB, I don't care) to put files on the Karma, I will buy one. If you have to run some modified jukebox app to move the files, so it can wrap your files in DRM junk, I won't buy one.
steveha
Re:Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptan (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptan (Score:5, Insightful)
I would sooner take an ogg than an mp3 anyday though
Re:Sounds good... (Score:3, Insightful)
I always transcode to WMA when transferring files to my 64MB Nomad II MG. Since it only supports MP3, WAV and WMA, the best quality at low bitrate of those three is WMA. Of course my originals are in FLAC or OGG. So basically I'm saying that WMA is generally there because it has better low bitrate performance than MP3. Of course OGG blows all that away so they probably included it 'by tradition' in the karma player.
As to encoding to WMA, it's very common if you're using windows. Most major rip/encode programs will let you encode to it if you look through the options. I just use WinAMP's WMA output plugin myself.
Re:Sounds good... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why oh why is base 2 so hard??? (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe they should re-market the Karmas as 18.62GB and 37.25GB units respectively. Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?
And that wouldn't exactly make price comparisons with any other manufacturers easy - Apple, Creative and Neuros all use the drive manufacturers definitions too. Why should Rio be expected to get it right at the expense of sales?
At least they are being honest and letting people know that the definition isn't strictly correct. I bet that Apple etc. don't.
Re:Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptan (Score:3, Insightful)
You would think that is how it should work but (un?)fortunately it doesn't. If a ogg is going to be accepted by the consumer that means the industry has to support it first because they control the vast majority of the infrastructure used to play music. Consumers other than us geeks aren't going to use ogg unless the big media players allow you to play it and rip to it and it becomes available in download services. I can say I never even heard of ACC until the Apple Music Store. Industry leads and the consumers may or may not choose to follow, that's how it works.
Context Sensitive Meaning (Score:3, Insightful)
The label of being "hackable" makes the device more desirable for a lot of us.
"Hackable"
A definite good thing in this forum, where the difference between a hacker and a cracker is appreciated. And someone who deliberately makes hardware that is flexible is appreciated, not scorned.
But in the world at large, hackable is regarded as a negative attribute, something that allows vague unknown bad people to do bad things to MyComputer.
It's sad that there is such a large gap in understanding what "hackable" means between the inside expert press and the world at large.
Someone with a loud voice ought to educate the masses with some kind of analogy to cars with locked hoods being unhackable.
Re:Competition rocks (Score:4, Insightful)
Peter
Re:Tradeoffs... (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, I see your point but your criticism of this device as overpriced may be undeserved because you're considering using it only in a limited way, and it's capable of much more than playing an hour or two of music. For the applications you've described, a $100 device may be more appropriate, but this item is targeted at a different audience. We're talking about 40 GIGS of storage -- approximately 400 CD's worth of music (12 tracks each), or approx. 250 hours of sound!
Imagine it as the center of your music listening experience -- a device you take with and plug into a home/office stereo or car audio system, or simply listen to it as a portable device. Plus, of course, it's a portable hard drive for moving data from one system to another.
Re:To gain acceptance it needs a better name. (Score:5, Insightful)
Marketing folks must hate putting "Ogg Vorbis" on things.
Do we need this one every time?
Names do not matter. If they did, MP3 and MS-DOS would hardly have caught on. At least you can sort-of pronounce Ogg Vorbis, rather than having to spell it.
Re:Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptan (Score:1, Insightful)
No it's not. The manufacturers are the ones who (I think) will be mostly responsible for introducing Ogg to the masses. The reason is that the money they don't have to pay to Fraunhofer for the MP3 license goes right in their pockets. If they can sell a $200 music player that does everything in Ogg rather than MP3, they can save themselves $4 a pop (or whatever) on every unit sold. Do you think Diamond would be putting Vorbis playback in this new unit if it wasn't free?
Of course, this player does MP3 too, so they are paying anyway. But in a year or so I think we may start seeing Vorbis-only players.
Re:Pshhh... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? It can play FLAC, which is lossless.
Josh
Re:iPod comparison (Score:1, Insightful)
You also forgot the most important aspect of a portable music player... how it sounds. The iPod has been well-regarded by audiophiles and produces very clean signals. In fact, it drives my Sennheiser HD580s extremely well without an external headphone amp.
Personally, the Karma looks very promising, but I'll wait until the reviews are in and I have an opportunity to hear one before replacing my iPod with one.
Re:Context Sensitive Meaning (Score:2, Insightful)
But my second thought was that we're in part to blame. No doctor, lawyer, engineer, dentist, vet, activist, politician, soldier, plumber, electrician, or telephone-handset-sanitizer in the world would let lay people corrupt their jargon. My dentist still calls that shit on my teeth calculus, despite my knowing he had to take a couple semesters of that math subject to get into grad school to become a dentist. My lawyer doesn't refer to his peers as sharks and money-grubbin' ambulance chasers. He says "Counsellor". So, I'm officially going to go back to tilting at windmills. A cracker, an intruder, an assailant of networks... but never a Hacker. I'm a Hacker. A damn good one. Don't use the term unless you know what it means!
Oh, and I'm puttin' my white hat away. Never liked the damn thing...
ob-sig: yeah yeah yeah, Off-topic, but at least I knew enough to click the 'no bonus' boxes.
Re:Run, Slashdotters, run! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that it's ligher, cheaper, smaller, plays OGG/FLAC, and has ethernet built in. Oh, and it's compatible with Linux too.
Now, I agree that outselling the iPod is an unrealistic goal. But that has to do with the fact that the iPod has become a very strong brand, not the design of the device.
Remember, Rio is a well known brand too.
Re:HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD (Score:2, Insightful)
A small donation to cancer research is unlikely to make much of a difference to one's quality of life, given the millions already spent by governments and private foundations.
A donation to the Xiph foundation does not look good in comparison to a donation to a more altruistic cause like cancer research. However, a donation to the Xiph foundation is probably more cost effective than buying a product that contains an mp3 or MS codec paying a hidden license fee.
Re:HOLY SWEET MOTHER OF GOD (Score:2, Insightful)
Ideally, of course, you'd give to both causes, as well as reducing world hunger, curing AIDS, and whatever other good causes you can think of. However, if you don't have that much money, you have to prioritize based on where you think your money would do the most good. Personally, I'd give the money to feeding the poor, or somewhere else where it'd have an immediate tangible effect, and then donate my time to Xiph. However, just because there are potentially nobler causes doesn't mean you have to give every spare cent to them, or that you can't put your money where you see a greater benefit. A dollar for Xiph will do much more good than a dollar for the Boy Scouts, the Republican Party, Slashdot, or any of a number of other causes people give to quite readily.