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

"iPod killer" my foot, Michael.....

[EvilStein]

No mp3 player that expects us to deal with USB is an "iPod killer"
Can this thing be used as an external drive?
Battery life?
Interface with iTunes or does it require its own software?

Still USB.... blah.

Notice how...

[nicwolff]

...they avoid giving its dimensions among the specs -- or showing it in a user's hands? If this thing is much bigger than the iPod, then the hell with it. And FireWire is a necessity.

And the Lyra -- hell, the picture in the article makes it look like it's about the size of my head! Kidding, but the article says it weighs twice what the iPod does, so the hell with it too.

That said, when someone ships one of these suckers can copy songs over FireWire unit-to-unit, I'll hock my iPod and switch!

Re:iPod Crusher maybe?

[ApheX]

Actually, the iPod does -NOT- use a Laptop Hard drive. Laptop drives have a 9.5mm spec which corresponds to the 2.5inch profile. The iPod drive has a 5mm spec corresponding to a 1.8 inch profile. Toshiba is the only manufacturer making this drive and the biggest one they have right now is 5GB.

More info on the Toshiba drive here

Re:iPod Crusher maybe?

[thesolo]

well, USB 1 has a max transfer rate of 12 Mbits/sec. 12/8 = ~1.5, so a little more than 1 megabyte per second. Therefore, 1 gig would be rougly 670 seconds, or 11 mins, give or take. Full drive would be over 220 minutes, or 3.6 hours. And that is at theoretical best rate possible. Realistically, closer to 4 hours. I don't know about the rest of you, but I dont have 20 gigs of mp3, or 4 hours to spare transferring them.

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[Geek In Training]

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*.

That's FUD.

It took me 11 hours to put all 34 gigs of my music on an external USB drive for my car.

You've bough into Job's marketing hype. He's managed to convince you that the Firewire interface alone is enough to overlook the price premium.

Yes, the iPod looks cool, and transfers files fast, but it costs way too much compared to what you get with this Rio Riot.

iPod killer?

[sporty]

Man, the size and weight difference is huge! The only way these devices would kill the iPod is if you dropped them on top of an iPod. And even then you'd have to drop the Rio from a very great height since the fringgin' iPod's are durable.