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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."
Sure, it's got a 20gig drive and an FM radio, but given the fact that it still uses a USB connection, how long is it gonna take me to transfer all my fmp3's?
I, for one, will stick with my iPod.
-- Your local friendly mad scientist-in-training
The iPod is so popular because of the size. This thing uses a laptop harddrive like all the others. The iPod it self could fit inside these mp3 players that use laptop drives. It also uses USB. Please, do the math on how long it would take to transfer 20 gigs on USB.
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.
With 20gb of storage and a $400 price tag why aren't these machines pda's as well as mp3 players. Even if they didn't have a screen you could use a touch pen on that would be nice...
That's funny. I had heard that the iPod was lame. 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...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
what is it with all this non-mac hardware? it's like apple have hired *all* the good minimalist product designers in the world and every other product has to be designed with virtually no sense of style[1]. it's the same for all the iMac-a-like computers and even mobile phones. can someone please design an mp3 player with reasonable specs (which this seems to have) and doesn't look like a NURBS experiment gone wrong?
[1] noted exeptions: palm's computers and the sony playstation 2
free (as in mp3s) electronic music
That it uses a 20GB hard drive means that it is at least twice the size. The 5gb hard drive used in the iPod is significantly smaller than the 2.5inch form factor required by the 20gb drive.
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...'
When you have the iPod, which is so small and so easy to use, and you have 50 albums on it, you notice. You don't think, "which CDs am I gonna take with me in the car" you don't wrassle with jewel cases or CaseLogic sleeves, you don't stuff an extra disc here and there into your book bag heading to the library or laptop case. You just take the tiny little iPod, and when you get a CD you know you're gonna wanna listen to in the next few weeks you put it on there. It's total one-hand operation. I leave it in the center console of my car and I never bring CDs anywhere. Too fragile. I rip them on iTunes (takes about 10 mins), and import them to iPod (couple seconds) and go. Having 5gb makes it so you don't really have to plan and are rarely disappointed.
After reading the article, and reading sonicblue's page, i still couldnt find two key specs for this machine, size and weight. I really think that this is because that the iPod is much smaller and weighs much less.
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?
I'd much rather have a wireless network connected device capable of streaming the music off of my home machine and various other places on the net based off of my listening preferences. The thing I like about the radio is its ability to introduce me to new music. The thing I hate about the radio is its complete inability to know my preferences. Freeamp is a step in the right direction, but I still haven't managed to get any decent recommendations from it. Music Match makes an attempt as well, but their interface is practically unusable to me. And neither recommendation system is in the form of a net-enabled portable unit yet. *sigh*
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Why the hell arre the personal digital audio players all skipping vorbis? Don't they need to pay royalties to Germany for the ability to do MP3?
What will it take to get them to support vorbis !?!?!?!
comment directly in my journal
Still, they're using a laptop hard drive. The HD used by the iPod costs (to a normal end-user) about the same price as the iPod itself...
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.
As I can see, many ppl seem to have wrong info about rio riot... so here is some: - It fits palm of your hand - It has lithium ion battery for 10-12 hours of playback (charges 5 hours) - includes fm tuner - big screen (240x160) - every real reviewer who saw it so far said it was the easiest to manage, including ipod - ships with itunes & real jukebox... keep in mind, for ipod, you need to pay extra for Win software - it plays mp3 and wma, no copy protection (sonicblue is known for that anyway) - awesome headphones (for bundled hp) - every reviewer (Cnet, forbes, techtv) said it looked super sleek and was nicely designed overal USB only is a bit of a let down but people please, how many of you are going to upload 20 GB of mp3's every day?
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...
Wrong. iPod uses a 1.8 inch drive, and nobody else makes them. And none are bigger than 5 gig.
Oh, I'm sorry, you were trolling and looking for l00sers. Carry on.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
- 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?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.
I don't understand why there is such an unreasonable anti-Apple bias around here. First we have the story about the Shuttle where poster feels compelled to compare it to the iMac. "I find these little gems cuter than any iMac I've ever seen!" What kind of crap is that? Do you know what cute means? The shuttle case looks just like any other case, only smaller. It's not cute. It's not cool. It's just a small case that is just as ugly as a regular ATX case. At least the iMac and iMac2 had innovative designs. And they both would qualify as "cute" by most people's definition. The Shuttle is certainly not cute.
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.
Sheesh.
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.
first off as many have said, iPod killer my ass, its not even innovative, there have been 20GB players on the market for over a year now. Big issue #1 though is whether this thing has SMDI or not, if I can't seemlessly move my MP3s around its worthless. No mention of how big it is, nor how much it weighs. From the looks of it its vastly inferior to the Archos line of players, and the iPod is even smaller or lighter.
As for this whole firewire vs usb, the issue is not the speed, its the fact that you can use firewire to power up the player. That's what makes me want an iPod over my Archos. However 20GB is way better then 5GB, as it stands I can only fit 20% of my cd collection on a 20GB drive, I want the whole collection on my player. Back to the powering up though, take anything but the iPod on the road and you either are spending a fortune on batteries or you are carrying some bulky ass charger with you. Not to mention the fact that the iPod has a better battery then just about anything out there...
Abstract Dynamics
Welcome to /., oddly everyone can afford a $399 mp3 player but not a $40 firewire card.
Why not, let me count the ways;
1. iPod is the size of a deck of cards, the Riot is bigger
2. iPod uses firewire, Riot uses usb. can you say slow
3.The iPod also acts as a portable hard drive
4. It doesnt auto synch with anything
5. Doesnt work with iTunes.
iPod killer, no f$#@ing way, its the same as every other mp3 player only with more storage space. Sorry Rio, please try again
Saying this device is an iPod killer reminds me of the people driving souped-up Camero's who rattle on and on about how they "toasted that Porsche at the stop light" and feel that is an accomplishment. Dragstrip performance is important, well, at the track. You can't compare that to a well-rounded package and expect me not to laugh.
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.