Rio Riot and Lyra Personal Jukebox 403
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."
Still USB (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, will stick with my iPod.
Re:Still USB (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Still USB (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still USB (Score:3, Informative)
Personally... (Score:2)
I'd rather just take the (proven, existant, and nearly ubiquitous in the DV world) 1394 interface.
C-X C-S
Logic on crapdot? No way!
Re:Still USB (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it is pointless for devices that you might never want to hook up to a computer :-)
I don't know anyone who does that, which doesn't make it useless, but does make it less valuable. In fact everyone I know with a DV cam would much rather put the movie on their computer and edit it in iMovie or something.
In fact the one place I know people wanted to use device-to-device FW it failed them. None of the new high end DSLRs want to look for a hard drive to write files on, they all want to have a computer suck them out. So no using the cute little portable firewire disks to store digital pics in the field, you need a bulky laptop, or a costly "digital wallet", and definitely no expensing the iPod for use as a storage device with your EOS-1D...
Re:DV editing on FireWire… (Score:5, Insightful)
iMovie is also about $900 cheaper (or is it "only" $600 cheaper?), and people have done more then home movies in it. I do admit that FCP3 is far less limited, and if you need 10 video tracks and more then 3 audio tracks, and cuts/fades/effects not in the 80 or so iMovie has, then it is a much better thing to use. iMovie is a lot more then a toy, it's a great starter tool. FCP3 is a lot better, but frequently not needed.
You are not likely to ever get the CD writer in the Mavica as fast as the faster flash cards (or maybe even the microdrives). You want to bust on iMovie for being a toy, and then you talk about the Mavica? The D30's the bomb :-) Or really the EOS-1D, I mean don't you need 8 frames per second and huge image buffer? Doesn't everyone need to have a five stop correction range and ISO 3200? :-)
The 3" CD writere will also always be bigger then CF writers, so you won't see a digital ELPH (PS100/PS110) using one. They are almost as small as the iPod after all...
not pointless at all (Score:2)
How long do you think it will take until someone comes out with a $30 fat cable that does the "arbitration"? It won't work as well as a system designed for it, but that hasn't kept lots of other poor technology from catching on.
Re:Still USB (Score:2)
This is a really bizarre bit of logic.
You're saying that people will wait a year for a technology that they can't distinguish between current technology? The transfer times are immaterially different (anyone frustrated by USB1.1 mp3 devices right now would not care whether they can transfer songs in 6 seconds or 5), the cost of entry is immaterially different (buy a 1394 card, or a USB2.0 card - 1394 cards are cheaper now), but one is available right now. Heck, Creative is even stickin' 'em in their sound cards.
Nice flamebait, though.
Re:Still USB (Score:2)
Re:Still USB (Score:2, Insightful)
3 hours 47 minutes and 33 seconds
How often do you plan to wipe all 20 gigs? I can't see doing this very often.
For my taste, 20, or even 5, gigs is way more than I need. The MXP-100 [edigital-store.com] has up to a gig, and its weight is close to that of the 64 MB players.
The real beauty is that you can buy a unit without memory ($149), pick up a cheap compact flash card and use that until the gigabyte microdrive becomes reasonable or is a "deal of the day" at buy.com.
I don't see how any other player could be the "geek's choice."
Re:Still USB (Score:2)
Yep, that's right, the mere existance of a mouse plugged into the same bus will slow down the transfer a little bit. Probably not much, but some.
- RustyTaco
Re:Still USB (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm using the money I save to build another server.
Re:Still USB (Score:2)
Oh thats right, I forgot that the iPod is so much more expensive
My point was that the difference in price between my Iopener MP3 player ($99) and this portable craze ($399) is signifigant.
I'm currently building a server to replace the "aging" Celeron 533 I put together. I've got 200 gigs of data to stick somewhere, and I found a rackmount ATX case ($89 at compgeeks.com), a dual P3 motherboard for $47 (same URL), so once I add a couple more components, and the two retail P3-1GHz at $140 each
Not to stray too far offtopic, of course.
Re:Your Wife (Score:2, Funny)
Fifth grade called, they want their joke back.
Re:Still USB (Score:3, Insightful)
Recharge via USB? (Score:3, Informative)
Nobody has mentioned the fact that the iPod recharges its battery via FireWire when you plug it into your computer. Is this even possible with USB? I know that USB delivers power, but is it sufficient to recharge this device's 10-hour battery within a reasonable time?
The iPod does come with a power adaptor, but you only need to worry about it if you're travelling, and don't have access to a FireWire-equipped PC.
Re:Still USB (Score:3, Informative)
But the USB will take at least 10 minutes before you can do anything useful, and it'll be as slow or slower than 10BaseT ethernet.
Re:Still USB (Score:2)
iPod Crusher maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:iPod Crusher maybe? (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:iPod Crusher maybe? (Score:2)
Unless you reformat the drive and reload your entire music collection regularly, this really isn't bad. Sure, it could be faster, but the iPod is expensive and has a very small capacity - probably the smallest of the portable hard-drive based players. I think most of them are iPod killers.
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
This thing is no iPod killer. The great thing about the iPod is that I can put it in my pocket, and the firewire interface is so fast that I don't need to put ALL of my MP3s on it: it takes only seconds to load a fresh collection.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
This thing is no iPod killer. The great thing about
I'm sick of hearing this. "Firewire is in many new PCs and sound cards, and it is a zillion times faster!"
I have a 40 gig USB HD for my iOpener-based car MP3 player. It took me about 11 hours to completely upload all 34 gigs of my music to it. When I want to add music, I plug it into my PC (or almost *ANY* PC or Mac, since USB *IS* ubiquitous at this point), it mounts, and I spend 10 minutes putting another couple of albums worth of music onto it.
If the initial load is *THAT* important to you-- that is you want your favorite 5 gigs uploaded in 15 minutes, instead of a couple of hours-- then pay the premium. I personally am willing to let the thing run overnight once to get my favorite 20 gigs onto it.
Fact is, with the Riot you're getting a device with 4 times the storage space, plus an FM tuner, for the same price. Oh, and you get a carrying case, too!
The gee-whiz effect Mr. Jobs used to have on me is gone. I marvel at the products, gasp at the price, then leave some other (more liquid) consumer to pay the premium.
It's bigger though... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess they could have released an iPod at a cheaper price w/more storage, but then it'd be just as large as the other options out there.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
If price were the only feature that people based their decisions on, then why are people driving the new VW bugs? This HDD may be 20GB but if I'm carrying around a 20GB HDD, and I find myself needing to take a couple gigs of photoshop files home from the office or vice versa, I sure as hell wouldn't use this to do it! An iPod would be right on task, though.
Someone could produce a portable player with a 160GB Desktop HDD powered by a lawnmower battery with a small color screen that you could carry around in your backpack (included of course) for the same price as the Rio Riot or the iPod. It could make you download all your files via a 115200 baud serial connection, and then I could dish out the same argument you just did to defend it.
Seriously, it's a different product for a different market. It may be a bit pricey, but then again, it's your choice to buy it or not. If apple could price iPod cheaper and it would increase the demand for it enough that it would benefit them to lower the price -- you know what -- they would. They have smart marketing people setting the price on their stuff. It's not like they just make it more expensive because they want to see who's stupid enough to buy it.
~GoRK
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
What premium? Putting FireWire on a device is dirt cheap. I'm willing to pay and extra $10 to have both USB and FireWire.
The real premium for the iPod is the Apple brand (worthless, but you pay for it), tiny size (and to me this is worth it, I have no use for something that won't fit in my pocket), and a clean UI (this has some value, but also some cost - I would like different EQ settings on the iPod then my desktop because the headphones are different from my speakers). The FireWire doesn't really cost anything.
On the other hand it looks really bulky. I don't want to walk the dog with it let alone run. When would I carry this thing that I couldn't take my laptop?
Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well... for a car stereo, I quite agree with you. Most people don't spend enough time in their cars to need constantly updated 5GB of mp3s, and the beauty of it being in a car is... you don't have to carry it.
The appeal of the iPod is that its drive is big enough that you can have a lot of variety in your music (more than the album 64MB players give you, or the small collection a single CD in a CD player gives you), and its fast enough that if it still doesn't hold all of your music, it can be switched over quickly.
Something like the Riot, or your 40GB car unit, however, can only really be usable with incremental changes in their storage. If your needs ever outgrow it (I do know a few people who can/will overflow 40GB, and you yourself have already topped 20GB), it loses a lot of utility. And, of course, you won't be carrying your iOpener when you go jogging, or this Riot either.
It bears repeating: the iPod isn't revolutionary or neat or interesting because it's completely new, but because it was clearly designed from the ground up to be used the way people would like to use an mp3 player. It's big enough that you could listen to it all day without hearing a repeat, it's small enough that you can carry it with you where ever you go all day, and it's fast enough that it doesn't have to hold all of your music to be useful.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
I dunno, I was just over at Macintouch reading the iPod reader reports, and everyone and their mother is griping about the lack of a carrying case, and pointing to a handful of companies that offer good ones to fit the iPod.
It seems to ME that anybody who's going to invest $400 in a small electronic device that they're going to toss around for (hopefully) a few years, they'd want a cheap and replaceable way to give it a little more ruggedness.
I've had a Visor for two years now, and have gone through two hip-holster padded carrying cases for it. I have no scratches or cracks on my Visor. I know only one person who carries his Palm around with no protection, and his is nicked and dented like sin. It's only a matter of time before he body-checks the wall with it in his pocket and breaks the screen.
Of course, he's not as clumsy as me either.
Re:Huh? (Score:2)
Of corse they are. Seldom does anyone write in about something they love! Bitching about anything they don't like is way way way more fun. So you always get more complaints the positive comments.
Plus it's hard to keep the bright polished metal back clean, so a lot of people want to hide it. Personally I just stick the thing in my shirt (or jacket) pocket and don't worry.
I had mine for what seems like a lot longer (from whenever the pre-orders came in until about six months ago). One small crack on the cover, no big deal. Then I crushed it with my knee when playing with the dog. I doubt most carrying cases would have protected it. Before I had the Visor I had a Palm with the little leather case. The case made it too big and I didn't really like carrying it around. That's why I didn't get one for the Visor.
Then go get an IEEE-1394 interface card! (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anyone bothered to actually go to a computer store and check out the pricing for PCI-slot IEEE-1394 interface cards? They're relatively inexpensive, and best of all drivers are available on the PC platform for Linux and Windows 9X variants (Windows XP supports it natively).
You want to have an IEEE-1394 interface for your computer anyway if you're doing any video editing work with video downloaded from a MiniDV format camcorder; a lot of professional-quality digital still cameras now sport IEEE-1394 interfaces also.
Anyway, most of the Compaq and HP computers you see sold at Best Buy, CompUSA, OfficeMax, Staples, and so on already sport an IEEE-1394 connector, so a portable MP3 player with a small hard drive that exclusively uses the IEEE-1394 interface is not as handicapped in the marketplace as many people think.
Re:Huh? (Score:2, Informative)
But it is still in pre-release mode- looking at it I would say it is almost beta quality. I like the iPod, and might pick one up- but I need access to it, I hear the old style iMacs are going cheap and will run OS 10.1.
Huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny. I had heard that the iPod was lame. [slashdot.org] Why would we need an iPod killer?
(In any case, it's still using USB. That's gotta be painful for moving 20GB of music...)
Re:Huh. (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Huh. (Score:2, Insightful)
Even if it cost, say, $449, early adopters will spend it, justifying the R&D because in a year or so it's a volume product at $249 and they are selling a new, smaller, 20 gig version back to the same early adopters for $449.
Comment removed (Score:3, Offtopic)
Re:make it play vorbis (Score:2, Insightful)
What will it take to get them to support vorbis !?!?!?!
Re:make it play vorbis (Score:3, Informative)
An integer Vorbis decoder. How many times do I have to shout this from the rooftops. Excluding the hardware-decoder players, <SARCASM> which are doomed to failure because they won't play Microsoft's decreed format, </SARCASM> every one of the current crop of players could play Vorbis, if there were an integer decoder. None of these machines have FPUs and they certainly don't have enough horsepower for FPU emulation to keep up with an audio stream.
If the Vorbis team would make an integer-only decoder happen "now" instead of "eventually", they'd see a lot more market adoption. Microsoft figured this out, why can't Vorbis?
Re:make it play vorbis (Score:3, Informative)
Re:make it play vorbis (Score:3, Informative)
Thier New Player [iriver.com] the SlimX [iriver.com] is really quite neat looking, some pictures are provided here [attbi.com].
If you are looking for discussions about MP3/etc players I recoment MP3's Portables [mp3.com] message board.
-OctaneZ
Re:make it play vorbis (Score:2, Informative)
The Soul Player [easybuy2000.com] is firmware-upgradeable, so if they see enough people wanting Ogg Vorbis support, they can write an upgrade to have the thing read (and play!) the format, and all you'd have to do is burn the update to a CD-RW.
Or, alternatively, some ambitious hacker-type person could figure out the firmware format, and write their own Soul Ogg decoder.
"iPod killer" my foot, Michael..... (Score:2, Redundant)
Can this thing be used as an external drive?
Battery life?
Interface with iTunes or does it require its own software?
Still USB.... blah.
Re:"iPod killer" my foot, Michael..... (Score:2)
I can load files onto my MP3 player in a matter of seconds, and I don't need funky software -- just the USB connector and any PC running a recent Windows with a USB port. I have instant expandability via Compact Flash. My MP3 player runs 12 hours on one AA battery, and the USB transfer isn't really that slow (a few minutes to fill up all 128MB.) I don't really listen to my MP3 player except while commuting on the train, so I don't feel the need to cart around a lifetime's worth of MP3s.
The iPod (and all of these huge MP3 players) are cool. But if you need a quick-and-dirty music and file mover, you can't beat the tiny Compact Flash units. USB is quickly becoming the floppy drive of computers -- sure, it may be slow, but everyone has it. For now, until the iPod or similar players are in the $199 range, I'll be staying with the instant compatibility that a lil Compact Flash player gives me.
Re:"iPod killer" my foot, Michael..... (Score:2)
I have a 128mb Rio 500 (2x64mb) and I use it with an older Power Macintosh G3. It's perfect for my many walks around downtown, but for a long drive up to the mountains or a REALLY long hike, I would much prefer the iPod.
Re:"iPod killer" my foot, Michael..... (Score:2)
Why would Apple license iTunes out for this product when it's trying to be a direct competitor to the iPod?
I don't see it happening. Sure, iTunes will probably support it, but I highly doubt that iTunes is shipping with this thing.
Re:"iPod killer" my foot, Michael..... (Score:2)
I guess I was just kind of surprised to see them shipping it with iTunes.
Then again, the Rio products used to ship with SoundJam, and since that's no longer being produced.... iTunes is the next best alternative.
There are plenty of Mac mp3 *players* but none of them seem to communicate with these devices, aside from iTunes (and the original SoundJam)
design (Score:4, Insightful)
[1] noted exeptions: palm's computers and the sony playstation 2
iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
The Riot has a USB interface... the iPod uses FireWire (1394b). End result? You can completely replace the contents on your iPod in less than 15 minutes. Even loading 5gb onto the Rio is going to take something like 10 hours -- 20gb would likely take something like *two days*.
It is unbelievably handy/convenient/cool to be able to reload your entire portable music collection in a matter of minutes. I can get up in the morning and select 500+ tracks -- 50 albums or several playlists (depending on how I have things organized) -- based on my mood, desires, whatever... and the iPod is completely reloaded and ready to go by the time I'm out of the shower and ready to catch the train!
All in a device that slips conveniently into a pocket, is light weight, and incredibly tough. Did you know an iPod bounces when you drop it? Mine does-- and it still works fine.
Not too mention that having a 5gb FireWire hard drive in my pocket has proven to be damned convenient on numerous occasions. My iPod was used as a temporary holding spot for data or for sneaker net transfers no less than 4 times last week simply because it was the fastest and most convenient way to move the data around! USB wouldn't have cut it-- try moving 1gb of data across a USB bus in under a minute. (Sure, USB 2.0 can do it-- but who has USB 2.0 support on their MP3 player?)
Don't get me wrong-- the Riot is *very cool*. But it isn't an iPod killer. They are completely different products.
Personally, I don't need an FM tuner and really don't want a device that doesn't fit in a pocket.
There will be those that will reply with 'but do you *really* swap your entire playlists on a regular basis? I don't and I don't miss it...'
Two DAYS? what crack are you smoking? (Score:4, Informative)
Now, 20 gigabytes is 20,000 megabytes. So it'd take 20,000 seconds to fill the hard drive in the Riot. How long is 20,000 seconds? Well, let's do some math here.
There are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. That makes 3600 seconds in an hour. 3600 goes into 20,000 roughly 5 times.
So it'd take about 5 HOURS to fill the thing, not TWO DAYS! Let's get our math straight first before we make declarative statements about the product.
- A.P.
Re:iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:2)
Re:iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:2)
>>20gb would likely take something like *two days*.
>That's FUD.
>It took me 11 hours to put all 34 gigs of my music on an external USB drive
Oh, so only 22 hours. My bad.
Re:iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:2)
I'll be honest, my personal playlist is about 2500 songs, as a subset of the 9600+ I have total. (That's just the byproduct of buying hundreds of CDs as a dumb kid/teen, for two or three songs that I was willing to listen to.)
A 20gig portable like the Riot would be the perfect walkman-style device for me, since that would be more than my "preferred music" rotation. But trimming it down to 5 gigs would be a little hard, since I like a lot of variety.
My point here is, if my passenger wants more music (like an entire REM album as it appears on CD), he can just punch it up on myflatscreen PC in the car. That's why I put all 34 gigs there.
Re:iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:2)
Not so.
I have legally (and probably blindly) purchased several hundred CDs and boxed sets featuring music that I enjoy over the past 13 years. (In fairness, MANY of these came used from the local CD Warehouse when I was working in a college town.) I have also legally purchased dozens and dozens of cassette tapes and vinyl records.
I spent about six weeks using my two main PCs to rip the CDs to my local hard drives at 128 kbps.
I then used file sharing networks (for over a year now) to collect all the music I had on cassette tape and vinyl. That *IS* fair use, right? I purchased the music, I should be able to listen to it in my home or in my car, right?
Yes, I have previewed music I do not own-- I won't lie. But if I like it enough to listen on a regular basis, I do pay The Cartel their due. (Sadly.)
I'm still waiting for the revolution where the majority of artists direct-market and end up making more money.
That's wacky.
Thanks!
Re:iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:2)
Stop worrying about USB... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Stop worrying about USB... (Score:2, Funny)
When I look at my machines here, and also think about what I've got at work, it's pretty clear: these portable players need SCSI interfaces. ;-)
Re:Stop worrying about USB... (Score:2)
I think people are forgetting how cheap you can get IEEE-1394 interface cards for PC's nowadays. I believe you can get them for around US$40; drivers are available not only for Windows 9x/2000 (Windows XP supports IEEE-1394 natively), but also the latest Linux distributions.
You want to have IEEE-1394 connections anyway if you want to download videos from MiniDV camcorders or download images from professional-quality digital cameras (such as the much-praised Canon EOS-1D). Indeed, IEEE-1394 has become a de facto replacement for the SCSI interface on higher-end image scanners, too.
USB it too slow, wah!!! Wah!! (Score:2)
- A.P.
Re:USB it too slow, wah!!! Wah!! (Score:3, Funny)
A lot of the people who have iPods with FireWire transfer probably also have a Power Mac, so they have 1000BASE-T ethernet ;)
Size/Weight, and iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
I own an iPod, and I prefer having a tiny device, that i can fit in my pocket, or even in the cellphone compartment on my bag. Also, the riot is still USB, i couldnt even imagine how long it would take to fill up the drive. I have a hard time waiting for the three or four minutes it takes to fill up my ipod.
Everyone also says that the 5gb on the ipod is not enough, and i thought that also, until i got one. I can hold around 700 songs encoded at 192k on the hard drive, which is 2 days worth of music. Now when are you going to listen to the complete 8 days worth of music on your Riot?
Didn't Atari make one of these? (Score:3, Flamebait)
Re:Didn't Atari make one of these? (Score:2)
I want a 0gb MP3 player (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember: PC Software for iPod! (Score:2, Informative)
MediaFour had a demo of XPlay at MacWorld, running on XP, and I have to admit it was pretty sexy.
Looks good, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Too bulky, but has an interesting feature (Score:2, Flamebait)
iPod interface (Score:2, Interesting)
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...
Yesss! An iPod Killler! (Score:3, Funny)
old iPod: One Boring Scroll Wheel, 5 buttons
Rio RIOT: Scroll Wheel, Game-Boy Pointer, and five buttons, including two on the left side for volume!
old iPod: IE1394 (what issat?)
Rio RIOT: USB! Everyone has it! Soon it will be five times as fast with USB2 technology!
old iPod: looks like a zippo, sized like pack of cigarrettes
Rio RIOT: ergonomically styled like Game Boy Advance, in sleek charcoal plastique!
old iPod: select by artist, album, or manual playlist
Rio RIOT: intellegent audio wizard detects your favorites and plays them back for you!
old iPod: made by Apple, a company going out of business
Rio RIOT: produced by Sonic Blue, a recognized leader in MP3 technology!
I think the message is clear. Sonic Blue has an iPod killer on it's hands with the Rio RIOT. Thank you Slashdot for letting us know quick!
Re:Yesss! An iPod Killler! (Score:2, Interesting)
Why target Apple. (Score:2)
Way back when the typical slashdotter was still using windows, they made fun of Mac users, to make themselves feel technically superior. Most of this hostility toward Apple is just left over from that time.
And that there's a lack of understanding that Apple is in the business of selling Apple computers, and not supporting i386 Linux community.
Riot (Score:2)
Why are these things still costing 400 dollars? (Score:2)
Look at your hard drive, just grab one, any of them. Turn it over, thats nice.. Now look at the electronics on the other side.
I see a 256k ram buffer chip. I see a microcontroller. I see various other parts and pieces that tell me that with a few changes in the PCB layout, there is NO reason hard drives couldn't be factory shipped with the ability to play MP3's. The hard drive im looking at is an ancient quantum 240 meg drive too. Just add your own battery and case and voila.
If maxtor, seagate, or any other ppl from a hard drive company is reading this post, please pressure you boss into doing this. It would give you a place to sell hard drives other than in computers.
Anger at Apple?!?!?! (Score:2)
Everything has to be compared violently to Apple, eh? Kill the iMac and kill the iPod! :)
What might be a killer product but not an iPod killer is the Jukebox Multimedia - Portable Entertainment Center [archos.com]. Archos makes some interesting products. I have an Archos Jukebox 6000 but now use an iPod -- its nice but the size and firewire device of the iPod make it my choice. The Jukebox Multimedia - Portable Entertainment Center is a handheld entertainment center, which combines an MP3 and WMA music player and recorder, plus built-in microphone, photo album and carousel, still camera and camcorder, plus video player and recorder according to their web site. The player has a 10 Gig hard drive. It uses USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and Firewire for transfering information back and forth. It even has a little LCD window to view pictures and movies on the device. Looks like it is the same size as the Riot. Could be a nice data wallet/purse.
Re:But where is Vorbis support? was Re:Anger at Ap (Score:2)
So, what, you and two of your friends that actually use vorbis can play your music? Face it, Vorbis is a failure in the music compression market. It has not light fire one under anyone's butt yet. I am not about to re-encode my 400 CDs with Vorbis. MP3 does the job.
CF MP3 Player? (Score:2)
Anyone know of a CompactFlash based MP3 player? CF type I is now coming in sizes up to 1GB, and could be used to make an absolutely TINY device. (never mind the power-hungry IBM Microdrives)
Priced Competitively? (Score:5, Interesting)
Look big... (Score:2)
Well, if their pictures are to scale looking at it and the headphones makes me think it is roughly the size of a paperback book, which makes sense if you look at all the crap they cram on the display. If it were iPod sized there would be about four lines of text (they rotated the display).
To me that makes it basically useless. I use the iPod when running, when waling the dog, and sometimes if I have to wait in line. If I'll be somewhere I can lug around that thing I may as well take my laptop which also has all my music, and some other diversions. Maybe other people will have some other focus for the device and like it better, but to me a portable music player should really be portable, not luggable.
The iPod also has a few other nice, but not killer features that this thing seems to lack.
Here's an image with some scale (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently it's from the 2002 International CES. The page [impress.co.jp] it's from is in Japanese, but has several other pics showing front/back/side.
Oh, here's [winsupersite.com] one more, even closer up, from SuperSite.
Sondra (Score:2)
Visit the Sondra website at: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/programs
Sondra can be downloaded and used right now without buying any hardware.
Sondra will create playlists based upon how good the song is (based upon ranking), # of times played, how new it is. i.e. the better a song is the more it will be played.
And anyone can go and re-compile it for windows if they want.
-Benjamin Meyer
iPod killer? (Score:3, Redundant)
patents? (Score:2)
Re:patents? redux (Score:2)
I will buy: (Score:2)
More info... (Score:2, Insightful)
20Gb mp3 player? old news. (Score:2)
Pjbox [pjbox.com] has had a 20Gb mp3 player out for over an year. Why wait for a new player to come, when others use one already?
consider Archos (Score:2)
MP3 CD players (Score:3, Informative)
If you're willing to spend a bit more and don't mind not having Duren686's Personal Seal of Approval, you can try the AVC Soul Player [easybuy2000.com]. I've never used one, but I've heard nothing but good about it, and as an added bonus, the upgradeable firmware gives it the possibility of reading OGG files.
"It looks to me like an iPod killer" (Score:5, Funny)
Hard Drives in MP3 Players (Score:3, Insightful)
- Battery life. A hard drive contains moving parts that need to be spun, and that sucks up battery life. Laptops spin down their hard drives often to lengthen battery life. Thse players may do that as well, storing the current song in memory, but "spinning up" the drive to copy it to memory is still going to take a lot more out of the battery than a flash memory card. One AA battery lasts 30 hours in my Rio PMP300.
- Hard drives fail. I've seen plenty of desktop hard drives fail. I can't imagine the failure rate for drives that bounce around during your morning jog or your morning race to catch the train. My Rio has taken a lot of abuse over the last 3 years, and I've never had a problem.
If you want to carry 4,000 songs with you, it's great that you can do that, but are there companies still providing new options for people who aren't moonlighting DJs?This is not a portable unit (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as firewire concerned, its only useful when you put your collection on the player for the first time. After that, most people will update their player with a few tracks at a time for which the speed of USB is surely enough.
Moodlogic (Score:2, Informative)
http://forums.moodlogic.net/thread.jsp?forum=7&
Why the anti-Apple bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then we have the "iPod killer" from Rio. Eh? The thing looks like it's the size of a brick, and I'm sure just as fun to carry around. And why is the Rio "priced competatively"? They used all cheaper components than the iPod, yet charge the same price? And that's competative? And the iPod is "overpriced" because it uses higer quality components for the same price? What the hell are you people smoking? The iPod uses a brand new high tech hard drive which lets the whole iPod be the size of just the hard drive in the Rio. The Rio is plastic, versus metal for the iPod (can you say more durable?) And what makes the reviewer think the interface is better than Apple's? Has dschuetz actually used either one? I doubt it.
Is it going to show up as a generic USB mass storage device? Or am I going to have to use some half-assed experimental driver to get it to work under Linux? I would say the chance of Linux support is low based upon the support they've given their other products. Sonic Blue might use Linux internally in their products, but have they provided Linux drivers for anything? Ever? Certainly not for their MP3 players. As far as I can tell, any MP3 player which doesn't show up as a generic mass storage device (like the iPod does) is nothing but a Window's centric RIAA-pandering product. I don't know why Slashdot editor would think that was cool. The only reason to not have an MP3 player act as a generic mass storage device is to keep the RIAA happy. And unless the company actually provides Linux drivers (which Sonic Blue does not) you are resigning yourself to half-assed buggy support. Bah.
(Physical) Size matters (Score:2)
Size & Weight.
The SONICblue device looks like it is about 3times the size and weight of the appple product. Hardly something you can carry with you in your shirt pocket.
Kind of Like (Score:3, Insightful)
In this analogy, the iPod is a shiny, brand new 911. A wonderfully and carefully engineered piece of precision machinery. An art form.
The Rio product is heavy, clunky, and ugly. It really only beats the iPod in one area: capacity. So what? Would you rather fill an iPod with six gigs of music in five minutes, or fill the Rio with 20 gigs in five hours? Hmmmm.
The two products being compared cost the same . . . .
And to those who complain about the fact that not every PC has firewire: Anybody with a screwdriver and a spare 10 minutes can add firewire for about $30. Get over it.
Archos Recorder 20 is worth the wait (Score:3, Informative)
It's $369 and available Feb. 1
http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_500277.
http://www.archos.com/order_desk_na.html [archos.com]
-z
Archos Jukebox Recorder 20 (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: iPod killer (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, I'm sorry, you were trolling and looking for l00sers. Carry on.
Re:rio (Score:2)
Better Business Bureau (Score:2)