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