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."

Comments

Stop worrying about USB...

[jarodss]

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

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

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

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

Re:Huh.

[SpookyFish]

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

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

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

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

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

/comment

Priced Competitively?

[SuperMacNinja]

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

Archos Jukebox Recorder 20

[Namarrgon]

This is more like it.

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

Cons:
- 350g

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