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Music Media

Diamond spins off Rio 106

Posted by CmdrTaco from the things-get-nutty dept.
mykey2k writes "This story tells that Diamond is going to spin off Rio as a new company and the new Rio will have anti-piracy built-in. "
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Diamond spins off Rio More

Diamond spins off Rio

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  • I don't really see MP3 players really taking off until broadband becomes common. While you or I would LOVE one (I know I would), the average Joe will either need to a) Download multi-megs using a dial-up or- b)MP3 their current music, a task beyond most users.

    I'm doing B). Still trying to find the best quality encoder (my bro is using Blade I think but I can definately tell the difference between mp3 and original with his strategy (it has artifacts that sound like what vocal removal sounds like with XMMS or WinAmp).

    If anyone can suggest a good Linux encoder (cost or not) please email me.
  • You go jogging? ;)
    Seriously, I like my walkman and discman because I can take them to work and listen to music while I'm in front of a computer. I don't need a lot of fancy skip protection, so a little hard drive will work just fine by me. Also, since I tend to sit in front of a computer for hours at a time, I want lots of storage...
    I'm waiting for the hard drives.

  • $35-$45 DVD's? Now thats overpriced. All the stores here have DVD's for $10-$30, with only a few special ones going for more. New CD's at the same stores are typicially $10-$15. (The stores I am thinking of are Media Play, Best Buy, and the DVD's at CompUSA)

    -----
  • Remember though - these systems are total solutions - i.e. they include idiot-proof software to make MP3's out of audio CD's and cram them into the device.

    I still can't see the piracy issues with these things. They're basically one-way devices- i.e. you can't easily extract the MP3's back out of them (AFAIK). Try putting a palmpilot-like IR port so you can beam songs to your friends and *then* watch the RIAA scream ;)
  • Are there any cdrom drives that would actually stand up to the abuse of in-car use?

    Come to think of it, a robust hard disk would help too..

  • Yeah, it has to be said - Minidisc kicks ass over hardware MP3 players right now.

    Neat little media (that's $2 a pop), fantastically well built players & recorders, reasonably priced in-car units, support from all the major audio companies, and no worries for the future - any audio signal you can send down a wire you can put onto a minidisc.

    OK cons - you can't put audio onto a disc at more than realtime, plus the SCMS system (there to keep RIAA happy) can be a pain, but nowhere near as much as their vision of MP3 will be..

    Hardware MP3 playback seems to be an expensive, impractical way of doing things.
  • how bout GNUsic ?
  • I too have a wiz bang tape deck, and let me tell you, with the new Dolby S algorithm, there is absolutely *no* discernable difference between a tape and CD. I can record from my CD player using optical digital output into my tape deck using Dolby S and wouldn't be able to tell the difference if the CD/tape hit me in the face. The cool part too is that Dolby S is somewhat backwards compatibly with Dolby C, so most older stereos (and most car stereos) can enjoy many of the same benefits. Nevertheless, I still have a CD-R which I tend to use exclusively for burning audio CDs, but if anyone out there is strapped for cash I suggest trying out tapes with Dolby S. Aside from the liner issue, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
  • Off the SDK page:

    >With the MP3Plus Authoring Kit, your content is
    >never 'in the clear' (unless you want it to be),
    >and it's protected against rippers. Your music
    >remains your music.

    Sorry, charlie, but if I can hear it, I can record it almost losslessly, set up my stereo on my front porch, and play it on repeat all day for my whole neighborhood to hear if I feel like it.

    The moral of the story?
    1. Thank goodness no matter how hard the RIAA tries, they can never control my entire signal path, from source to speakers

    2. Even though programmers should know better, the claim is pretty misleading. Perhaps they used the work "rippers" to imply protection from perfect digital copy, which would be even worse, because they realize they can't really protect the music and they try to make it sound like they can.
  • would be kewl if it came with a protable DVDRAM drive. 5GB+ storage and pretty fast (DVD drives are 5x the speed of the comparable CD drive)
  • but flashcard space isnt. and the IBM drive isnt a flash based product. just try jogging with the ibm microdrive and bad sectors can be guaranteed.
  • What amazes me is how a big-screen two-hour movie, with a budget of several million dollars at least, can sell on a $35-45 DVD, while a 60 minute album that only cost a few percent of the cost of the movie to make still sells for 50% of the price to the consumer.

    Yes, but people don't flock to concerts the way they do to movie theatres. The profits in the movie industry are not made from the video/DVD release, but from moviegoers. You can show your movie every night in hundreds of cities, for weeks on end. I'd like to see the first band or artist do that :-)
  • Sounds like Diamond wants to kill the Rio.

    The whole concept sounds more like DIVX than an mp3-player and, to make a weird story true, I don`t need such a thing anyway.

    There will be true mp3-players from other sources, so dig Rio (or get one, while they are cool(Rio300) and not after they get lame(Rio500) ).

    In some months or years every pda will do the same and I can use x11amp (or whatever they call it), amp, winamp, ce-amp and so on and simply forget about RIAA and Diamond.
  • If M$ made cold fusion it wouldn't work. You know that.
    As for a conspiracy in everything, are yo9u that unread? M$ *DOES* conspire about alot of things, most of which it has no business being a part of.
    Go read up, then repost.
  • I had plans to build one of those based on the motorola ColdFire micro, with 64 megs upgradable to 256, ethernet, serial, an LCD screen & a sound port. No one was interested. At least, no one was interested enough to help me design it.

    I think the figure I came up with was about $250 US for the base model. I know I'd use one.

  • While any attempt to restrict making digital copies of audio will be cracked eventually, there is always the possibility of using analog recording. If it's done with a decent soundcard, the recording will be almost perfect. While some people will notice a difference, the average music pirate won't. AFAIK there is no technology that can prevent users from making an analog copy.

    All these useless "security" features are probably going to increase the cost of a unit quite a bit. If diamond doesn't realize that their potential customers don't want this, then it will only open up the market for competition. If diamond fails to deliver what the people want, then the people will go elsewhere.

    I think SGS/Thompson makes an MP3 decoder IC. While it isn't easy for the average hobbyist to put together an MP3 player, a company willing to throw some money at it could develop a player with a little bit of effort.

    There is already competition in the MP3 player market. There is the RIO, the Yepp, the Nomad, and the MPMan (the first portable MP3 player. is that still out there?).

    The RIO is not the only choice.
  • Anybody seen RealJukebox? When you install it it asks if you want copyright protection built in to the mp3's you rip with it. Basicly it makes it only able to play the mp3s you make yourself. I assume they would do something like that.
  • If a Rio is too expensive, yet you push the MicroDrive, how much do you want to pay TOTAL
    for an MP3 player? How long must is the minimum
    128Kbps play time before you would buy it?
    How much were you going to pay?

    X-mas will tell...
  • Hmmm, 98% of $15 means that the record company makes $14.70? Sorry, not true. As far as I know, the artist makes about $1.00 to $1.50 per CD. The rest is for the recording company, the distributor, the distributor, and the record store. Why do these make 90% of the cost? Because they bear 100% of the cost? Who pays for media, advertising, recording, promoting, selling, returns? Not the artist. Members of a group probably make a couple hundred thousand at most off the CD if it goes platinum, but this doesn't matter. An artist makes most of the money off the concerts and other things. Of all parties involved, the artist probably makes the most profit.

    And why does a $100,000,000 movie cost $19.95 on tape and a $500,000 album cost $14.95? Because the movie made a bunch of money at the MOVIE THEATER. Most good movies will cover thier cost at the box office, and profit off the par-per-view, video sales and royalties.

    For a bunch of people that are all caught up in how smart and progressive they think they are, there is very little research done here at /. Its pretty easy to tell who got a computer from thier parents when they left for thier all-expenses paid trip to school, and those that built it out of spare parts and duct tape between going to school and working to pay for school.
  • Go to your room and gimme them gadgets, you want end up a train robber like your uncle Hood?

    justsaynotosmartcards.mp3
  • So.. a full *hour* of music can be stored on this mp3, eh? Well, i suppose that's *okay*, but frankly it's still excessively obnoxious to have to erase everything stored in it if I want to bring different music with me.


    What i would like is a device which can store over an hour of music digitally, at a high sampling rate, on small units which can be swapped out of the device at my discretion... Something that would be able to store mp3s, copies of CDs, even live recordings, on swappable media.. like discs.. little ... discs... smaller than compact discs, "mini" discs if you will...


    yeah. minidiscs.
  • You can get blank CD-R media for less than 50 cents USD each. You can buy a cheap CD-R for $150 USD, and a good one for under $300 USD. And they can also read music CDs. They can write music CDs. They can read data CDs. They can write data CDs. Many can read DVDs.

    Tapes? Linear access? Analog media? Rewinding? No thanks.

  • Copy-protection is Just a Cover (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Think about it. Rio just will support whatever copy protected the RIAA comes up with and continue to play regular mp3s. Lusers get tricked into using the new format and everybody else just uses mp3. RIAA fumes as Rio's ass is covered.
  • Perhaps the folks turning Rios into red boxes [wired.com] gave Diamond a little extra incentive to further disassociate themselves from their product?

    (The article also mentions the various PalmPilot hacks like opening electronic car door locks.)

  • Flash cards are expensive as all hell. A mere 4 meg smart media card is $35. So, I would guess it's the storage on the rio that's so expensive.
  • bladeenc is quite good if you use 160k/sec+
    Better than l3enc/mp3enc at any rate.

  • Sounds like AudioDIVX (Score:3)

    by Rocket Boy ( 34136 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @01:30PM (#1834079)
    From the site...
    Enable pass-along distribution between fans, know who they are, and get paid by new listeners.

    Create powerful merchandising, promotion, direct response marketing, and affinity groups.
    Receive timely financial payments and usage information for your music.
    Enable your MP3 player for rights management.
    Support and respect music label policies.


    And now let's see Divx's "Features"

    Enable pass-along distribution between fans, know who they are, and get paid by new listeners.
    Receive timely financial payments and usage information for your movies.
    Enable your DIVX player for rights management.
    Support and respect movie studio policies. (Moratoriums...)


    Hmm...
  • You know what IOMEGA stands for don't you?
    Incredibly
    Overpriced
    Media
    Every
    Guy
    Abhors

    IOmega seems to have trouble with the concept of reasonably priced media. Maybe after this new restructuring they'll finally get their prices out of the stratosphere and get some of the market back.

  • Anyone intersted in fast, high-quality mp3 encoding should check out LAME [roadrunner.com]. It has better encoding quality than bladeenc and is similar in speed. It also supports variable bitrate (VBR) encoding. It is an open source project.

    --

  • Translation: I want to be able to play music I downloaded that I have no right to. Do not musicians deserve to be compensated? Don't give me that "record companies just steal all the revenue". Stealing is stealing. There is nothing inherently wrong with anti-piracy.. as long as the implementation is done correctly.
  • If you can't tell the difference between 128Kb/s MP3 and an original CD, you aren't a true audiophile. I can easily tell the difference on a 5.1 speaker system. Hell, even ATRAC 3-encoded MDs sound better than MP3 at only 128Kb/s.
  • Wow.. amazing how people can work in some sort of Microsoft conspiracy into everything from cold fusion to digital music distribution. Grow up people.
  • Ah, because the record company makes the lion's share of the profits gives you the right to rip of not only the record company (a legitimate business, regardless of their practicies), but also the artist! You truely are a music fan! *dripping sarcasm*
  • Eh, they don't sound particularly well copied to MD (ATRAC 3 or later encoding) unless the MP3 was encoded at 168Kb/s or faster. Otherwise, it sounds good. I use a Vortex-2 based sound card with digital optical out to copy Timidity output (among other things) to my portable MD recorder.
  • The price of the Rio has finally dropped into play-toy-money range, thanks to a $50 rebate from Diamond. Follow these three easy steps:
    1. Got to www.shopper.com [shopper.com] and search for "Rio" to find the lowest pre-rebate price; last time I checked it was $124 from shopping.com .
    2. Order it!
    3. Mail the rebate form from Diamond [diamondmm.com] along with the UPC from the Rio box, and wait for your $50.
    I bought one, and while it hasn't replaced my component stereo and collection of polka 8-tracks it is great for jogging, roller blading, and playing through my car stereo. The 32M version holds over 70 minutes of audio at 56Kbps.
  • I don't really see MP3 players really taking off until broadband becomes common. While you or I would LOVE one (I know I would), the average Joe will either need to
    a) Download multi-megs using a dial-up or-
    b)MP3 their current music, a task beyond most users.

    I think this is the future of portables, but I think it's probably a few years off yet.
  • Did S3 already buy them and jettison the Rio, or is it that the buyout hasn't happened yet and Diamond is dropping the Rio to look more profitable?
  • How is that going to work, technically? Afaic, the only way to prevent current pirated mp3s from being played is to simply not play regular mp3s. Obviously, this would render thousands of legit mp3s unplayable.

    This should be interesting...

    Why are they doing it, by the way? After the trial you'd think they hate the RIAA =).
  • Well, considering what you pay for a Rio, if you can put a HD in a laptop, you'd think they could put a tiny one in a Rio and have a decent enough design to absorb your average shocks...

    Of course you realize that tape players and CD players have moving parts too, this is just a design issue. We could still store mp3's on tape too, if we wanted to, we'd just lose the random access capabilities... And ZIP and JAZ disks are pretty robust, I guess we'd just want something to absorb shocks, and some RAM for read-ahead.
  • Does anyone have an idea of a way that Diamond could take normal Mp3's and make them so you can't copy them allover the place, that won't be cracked within a matter of days? With my limited experience, I don't think it can be done.

    just my thoughts on the subject. And it would be nice to find a way to upgrade the RIO, without those damn smartcards.
  • Don't forget that creative lab's nomad has no protection and can hold more mp3. There are also 128mb flash cards coming for it as well!!! 160mb of mp3's on one portable!

  • Re:Anti piracy? How? (Score:4)

    by substrate ( 2628 ) on Thursday June 24, 1999 @11:04AM (#1834097)
    Whether they hate the RIAA or not really isn't an issue. As one poster pointed out portable MP3 players won't really take off till Joe Average has access to bandwidth. I'd amend that with they won't take off till Joe Average has convenient access to music. One way to get this music is by downloading it as a lot of us do now. Another way would be if you could go to a music store and upload it from their server. This is where Joe Average normally gets his music. Getting downloadable digital media into record stores across the country would be a big win for RIO. This won't happen unless record companies feel secure in releasing mainstream music through this means. Anti-piracy measures would be one means to help this.

    The Sony Walkman succeeded because it was a portable device that enabled the user to listen to music of their choosing, and their was a wide range of music readily available. Of course a lot of this music wasn't bought and payed for, this annoys the RIAA. Now they've got a jihad against anything that is capable of recording or deploying user recorded music. It's dumb and pointless, but its there, witness the backlash against CD recorders etc.

    If RIO is smart they'll make sure it can still play ordinary MP3. If not they'll be in the running for the shortest time from IPO to Chapter 11 protection. Let the RIAA bandwagon deploy music in their protected format, which Joe Average will eat up, but make sure that the device is happy playing regular MP3.

    Also make sure that any competing company can build compatible players for a reasonable fee, otherwise you'll have a format fight which will kill the technology.
  • Why not make mix tapes? It's cheaper, less work, more music, and skip-proof. Silly people.

    I agree with most of what you said, especially the fact that 64MB is insufficient. I would KILL for a CD-R based MP3 portable, okay maybe not kill but definitely Maim.

    1. Mix tapes cheaper
    Maybe? hard to tell - what specifically are we comparing? Tape -> FlashCard (tape wins), Tape -> HD/CD-R (HD/CD-R wins)

    2. Less work?
    It's a lot easier for me to select a bunch of files and copy them to the RIO than sit around mixing different tapes/CD's to a single tape, what a hassle.

    3. More music
    Indubitably.

    4. Skip-proof
    So is the Rio, what's you're point?

    I'm not convinced the rio is a good value, I'm still waiting for MP3-CDR players. I already have the disks burned, that's what I'm listening to at work right now. But my MP3Jukeboxen is a pretty good value, 160 Albums storage (expandable of course), infinitely configurable for about $300. Plus it has serious toy value, as well as serving as a Samba file server (incredibly useful). I think I'll be needing to buy another HD for it in a couple months.
  • I don't see how they can offer copy protection features. How do they know how an mp3 was copied? Maybe they mean they don't want people copying mp3's from the Rio. But who cares?

    Also, 64MB is pitiful. Give me a little HD any day, like those ones IBM had... :) Even a ZIP-disk would be better.

    No, they're neat little devices, but I'm not convinced that the Rio is a good value. Why not make mix tapes? It's cheaper, less work, more music, and skip-proof. Silly people.
  • > Also, 64MB is pitiful. Give me a little HD any
    > day, like those ones IBM had... :) Even a ZIP-
    > disk would be better.
    But by using FlashRAM (like the rio) you get the advantage of having a device with no moving parts. Personally I'd be a little hesitant to go jogging with a HD hanging on my side.

    -harry
  • You're right, it's not a good value, it's a good geek toy. :) But seriously, It's taking the good qualities of CD players and Tape players, mixing them, and giving them to the consumer. It's nice, but not neccesary.

    But I've always wondered what made the unit so expensive. Is it the Mp3 Decoder chip, the RAM, the LCD, what?

  • Re:Anti piracy? How? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This mp3 anti-piracy stuff is a great example of how not to succeed in business by really trying. Copy protection ultimately ends up penalizing only the legitimate users. We end up jumping thru hoops to get products to work properly, and are treated suspiciously when we need support.

    The best I can figure as to why Diamond would add some kind of anti-piracy mechanism is to fend off alternate formats that are currently only in the development stage. I know M$ is attempting to generate a secure method (as if they properly understood security). This might be a preemtive strike to ensure mp3 will continue as a useable standard.

    I still can't figure out how they would "protect" the music though. At this point it is all 1s and 0s. If there is a "legitimate" way to transport and unencrypt the music, then there must be an "illegitimate" way to do so. Meanwhile, the cost of this added junk will be added onto the price of the unit. Man, I hope the RIAA dies a slow, painful death.

  • rio/palm-pilot/itsy in one.
    Think about it!

    It plays music.
    It stores contact/calendar info.
    It runs linux.
    How hard can the underlining stuff be?
    The UI whould be though though.
  • I had (HAD) wanted one of these things.. but on seeing that they are going to make MP3's not MP3's anymore (the only way they can anti-piraticize) I have done a 180. Now I believe they can eat it, to put it mildly.
    Future of portable music, soon M$ will buy them (if they didn't already) and make it a Windows CE based thing.. future my ass. Back to 198x for us folks.
  • mix tapes:

    Cheaper:

    I don't have a CD-R drive. Even if I didn't have a tape recorder, I can tell you right now it's cheaper, and it's especially cheaper than buying a Rio, which is what I'm talking about...

    Less work:

    Well, making a mix tape might take more time, but once you're done with it, you have it forever. Swapping out music on a Rio doesn't sound as easy. I guess there are trade-offs in both cases, but getting music onto a tape is far easier for the average person than getting mp3's would be. (or, if you have .mp3's, schedule a playlist, hit record on the tape, and record what you want... :)

    Skip-proof is just a bonus tapes intrinsically have. So does the Rio, but remember that low-tech is sometimes better. Tapes are far simpler, and I'd love to see another easy solution to skipping that *doesn't* involve a small amount of static ram.

    ...and if I already had discs burned, I'd love a CD-based .mp3 player, that would be *far* better. :)

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by twit ( 60210 )
    They're probably going to do an IPO for the new Rio company, which will (hopefully) partially finance the acquisition of Diamond. Of course, S3 is supposed to be cash-rich, but with the current nuts-about-the-net stock market, they may get a lot more out of selling off Rio Inc. than it's really worth as a division of Diamond.
  • #include "earlier_slashdot_thread.h"
    #include "my_hp_48s_ir_port.h"
    #include "security_by_obscurity_is_bad.h"
  • I've used Bladeenc (0.72 btw) at 128kb/s and I've had no problems at all with reproduction, even when I tried Pachibelle's 'Canon' to try out this idea that 'classical music in mp3 format sucks' and playing through a reasonable hifi I cannot tell any difference with the CD version and the mp3 version, at whatever bitrate (I tried 256 but the only difference was that the file was twice as big :D). Btw, I play mp3s with XMMS, dunno if that makes a difference... also on an AMD K6-2/300 .. not sure if computer horsepower makes a difference either?

    Each to their own, I guess. If you find something that works for you, then that's what you should use :)

  • Most of the Supra stuff I've seen on store shelves are simply branded Rockwell "Win"Modems anyway. Nothing special. :) (If I was to grab a -Modem for a Windozer (95/98 or NT) I'd get a Lucent PCI anyway.)

  • all attempts have failed and will always fail, i.m.h.o.

    i.m.h.o.?! In my humble opinion? generic-man has always secretly admired daveo's liberal use of the third person. generic-man is puzzled by the neglect exhibited in the use of this acronym.
  • If you stop shopping at major chains (HMV, Tower, Sam Goody, etc) and start frequenting smaller, local stores and small internet-based mail order stores CDs become incredibly cheap. (ie: I was able to order four German discs from Soleilmoon [soleilmoon.com] for about $60 after shipping. That's $15 a disc for stuff which normally costs about $22-$25 a piece in stores. Domestic stuff is especially cheap, often under $10. Take a look around and don't just give in to the big names and I'm sure you and your wallet will be alot happier.
  • Right on! And Windows users should check out CDex [surf.to], which might soon become an open-source project and incorporates the LAME code! The sound is VERY close to the FhG encoder.
  • But I've always wondered what made the unit so expensive. Is it the Mp3 Decoder chip, the RAM, the LCD, what?

    The name and the idea.

    Actual parts are probaly 40-50 $US
  • People, I wonder what they are thinking at Diamond. The popularity of MP3's is so obviously not the MP3 format but the idea that high quality recordings are obtained for free. The only reason people like them is because they don't cost a cent. Anyone who really thinks people would pay for MP3's is naive. There really isin't a way around it. Get a grip on reality.
  • Zurk would be greatful if daveo would drop the DAMN CAPS in his email address. Zurk would be happy. Everyone would be happy.
  • Um... probably a shell script. :)

    Yeah, that's true, and that's an advantage. But if you're into buying tapes, I'd get a 120 min. tape, make the mix once, and enjoy far more of my favorite music at no extra cost every morning.

    My point is, once you've made your tapes, you're done. No extra time to spend, and you just saved a lot of money...

    Of course, if I could just have *all* my .mp3's on one portable device, I'd ditch tapes and CD's in a heartbeat.....
  • I *think* the Empeg car player has CD.. if it doesn't it'd be a good simple addition. http://www.empeg.com/home.html
  • If any of this music ever touches a general purpose computer, it will no longer have copy protection. Winamp has it's disk-writer plugin, but face it: at some point between the file and the speakers there is going to be a 44.1 16-bit data stream that can be easily written to disk. Capturing data going to the sound device is trivial in any operating system if you have root/Administrator access.

    The only possible way to get around that would be for sound cards to have built-in decryption so there isn't ever a decrypted audio stream. So much for backward compatibility!
  • As far as the cheaper goes, I can fit 13 hours of audio on 1 CD for $2.50. But that isn't necessarily useful. Like I said this ones debatable.

    Well, making a mix tape might take more time, but once you're done with it, you have it forever.

    Actually, I find the tape degradation is rather unacceptable in my opinion. I have some tapes that are kinda bad now. Sure there a couple of years old, but I have a couple CD's that are older than that and they're fine. Optical storage methods (generally) have a longer lifespan FWIW (I know this only applies to use weasels with CD-R's).

    Mainly I'm sitting by the sidelines waiting till someone makes some HW so awe-inspiring I have no choice but to walk into a store with zombie-like glazed eyes, holding my credit card out in front of me like the eucharist chanting "gimme one, gimme one, I'll die if I don't have it".
  • So build one. With these new MP3 decoder chips, a microcontroller, a CD-ROM drive, and a smattering of glue logic, you should be able to put together one of these for less than $200 easily. And you can customize it to suit your own sense of aesthetics and usability.
  • Posted by Fatz2001:

    Music should be GPL. That way I can have the source to the music, change it, and recompile it as music-2.3.8 and let other people download and use the changes I have made. Then we can package it and call it Music 6.0, oh wait, never mind about the Music 6.0 thing, let's just call it music. :)

    BTW, Slashdot this:
    http://www.linuxhaven.com [linuxhaven.com]

  • Here's a URL containing the info-sheet on the technology the new Rio purports to use:


    http://www.intertrust.com/prod ucts/mp3plussheet.html [intertrust.com]

    Some points of note:


    • It's not entirely clear whether the extensions to MP3 make files using the extensions unplayable on ordinary MP3 players
    • The SDK is (sigh) only available on Windows platforms
  • All SDMI players must play MP3 from now on!
    Ordinary MP3 playback is REQUIRED for a device to be SDMI compliant, and get the logo. This is good,
    because that way audio archives can be retrieved in the future. From Ice-T to Top-40, Tori Amos to Time capsules: future generations will be _allowed_ to hear the archives of "information that wants to be free" if we dont jealously encrypt and key-manage it into silence.

    No matter how many layers of decryption or more complicated the audio codec becomes. No matter how many times _thier_ music dosent play. No matter how many long stares at the LCD screen, or button fumbling with expired or missing crypto keys. Plain MP3 will play everywhere thiers might have. Archive away folks! MP3 is IN everything futuristic.

    It's good so many people helped MS learn a lesson after the London incident that revealed thier devious delete-and-conquor Y2K code bomb.

    I'll be happy to look for the logo because it only means it's a cheaper MP3 player thanx to
    volume. The logo also means "MP3 inside" to the smart consumer. It had better STAY inside too.

    Now that they've been punished, and as long as they behave, and obey the will of information,
    we wont have to brand SDMI the "Satanic Demonic Music Initiatve" with Slashdot like omnipotence.

    "It's over: It's MP3!"

    JoeT (Amiga A-256 & Michy evangelist)


  • I was thinking that Iomega Clik disks would be perfect for portable MP3 players (the discs are 40 megs a pop, and tiny) but Iomega, in their infinite wisdom, priced the suckers at $10 each. :P They're still cheaper than Flash cards though, and Iomega has a Clik drive that's completely contained in a Type II PCMCIA card, so there may be some hack potential there. :)
    --

  • Piracy controls? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 24, 1999 @11:40AM (#1834137)
    Then I guess I'd either buy a Rio now or get something else. That's the whole point of MP3 as far as I'm concerned - there is no way I will continue to pay $17+ per CD new - and nearly that much used nowadays - as long as I can find the songs on the 'net or borrow a CD from a friend and rip/encode it.

    If the recording industry drops CD prices to a reasonable amount (reasonable in my case being around $8) instead of increasing CD prices as they have done over the last year or so, even beyond the prices at which they originally debuted and I will start buying CDs again.

    Until then, call me a music pirate and proud of it.

    Hopefully new artists will embrace MP3 and we can forget that there was ever a bloodsucking recording industry to begin with. Use the same techniques as the Open Source Software movement - give away the songs for free to get people's attention so you can sell things like merchandise and concert tickets. (Since the bands make next-to-zero on albums anyway, it shouldn't make that much difference to their bottom line and at least this way they can try to get a larger cut of the merchandise/concert profits since there's no record company to siphon away 95% right off the top.)

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by Why2K ( 29813 )
    The summary wasn't quite accurate... Diamond isn't spinning the Rio off (into an independant company), they just moved it into an "independent subsidiary" still owned by Diamond.
  • They're basically one-way devices- i.e. you can't easily extract the MP3's back out of them (AFAIK)

    This is actually a fairly trivial task, and nearly all of the third-party file management utilities for the Rio support doing so.

    Nonetheless, I somehow doubt that people are buying $150 worth of Rio to transport 32M of lossily-compressed contraband. 8" floppy would be more convenient for MP3 piracy.
  • Try Xing... bar none the best quality, and it's blidingly fast. (The Linux version is CLI, but it works well with grip.)
  • Wait! Am I correct in inferring that the anti-piracy stuff will not work with the Mac version? All I have to say is OH HELL YEAH. Not that I actually do pirate anything...
  • Just my offtopic 2 cents. There seems to be a lot of bantering back and forth about which format is better, tape, solid state (RIO), cd, cdr(w). People seem to latch on to their favorite and defend it relegiously without much real "reason".

    So here are my "reasons" for liking or disliking various media and some thoughts on all of them:

    Tape is good quality, fairly cheap and probably most important a lot of people have tape decks. I have a nice deck and I like the potential of blank tapes. They can be anything, they can be rerecorded (though at a loss, the same loss as occurs over generations of copies of analog tape and related to the simple degradation over time of the signal).

    The time to make a good mixtape is about the same as making a good mix cd though you can just shovel junk onto a cdr a bit quicker if you have a good setup.

    As far as more music, tape definately wins on a cost per minute basis and is roughly on par with recordable CDs. Solid state is far higher than either right now but I think that it is going to come down much quicker in the next few years, there isn't much more of a bottom in tape or cdr media. So while it is a "whatever works best for you" situation right now, I don't think there is any argument that solid state is the future as it will quickly outstrip capacity of both tape and cd and has a couple of other important benifits, one of which I feel is largely overlooked:

    Battery Life. Both tape and CD have to spin discs or pull wheels where a solid state device should only have to power the amp and not much else. A well designed solid state portable is going to far outstrip play time of either tape or CD and this includes CDR/MP3 format players. The thing people seem to forget in that pipe dream very fast is there isn't a single portable CD player (that I have seen anyway) that would even play through the 13 hours of 128kbit mp3s on a CDR once. I fully believe in a few years that a solid state portable will be capable of this many times over and in a much smaller form factor.

    Anyway, just some thoughts - jason
  • I got a rio in december, the 32mb model. It was alright for sticking sound clips on and maybe some songs for my friends to listen to, but I'm sick of it now. Any portable MP3 player needs to be able to hold at least 1GB of mp3s and record and encode on the fly too, and be able to play CDs and MP3 CDs and have a built-in AM/FM radio and a back-lit 3" color LCD display that you can watch TV on, and which shows the artist, song name, genre, etc, its gotta support ID3v2 and be able to play wavs and midi files and all other formats including text files using text to speech hardware.. must be flash upgradable too.
  • ... it has 64 megs, just like the PMP500 will have, and it doesn't have anti-piracy stuff. I don't see why everyone's deciding not to get the Rio when you can still buy the ones without anti-piracy software with the same amount of storage.

    Oh, and I doubt that the anti-piracy stuff will last. I've already seen sites working on an ext2 filesystem for the Rio. I think it will be quite easy just to use different software and initialize the flash cards differently.

  • GNU/music (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It should be only refered to as GNU/music because you developed the idea while Linux was in close proximity and Linux is really only here because of the GNU toolset.
  • Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, they provide virtually no information about how it actually works, just what they claim to provide.

    To be acceptable to consumers, I think you should be able to (1) make use of the content even while offline, (2) transfer content between various devices you own, (3) transfer ownership of the content to somebody else. CDs, tapes, and MP3s all satisfy these contraints. I'm not sure consumers are willing to go for something that doesn't--- and I'm not convinced any anti-piracy scheme can satisfy them.

  • At least according to the article at www.news.com

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