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

Still USB

[S-prime]

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.

Re:Still USB

[Shuh]

Yeah... but Apple better get its iPod out there cheaper because it's only a matter of time before USB-mp3-player buyers realize the USB connection technology is too slow for 6Gb and now 20Gb drives. When that happens, will they pay $400 for the *only* IEEE-1394 version? Hell no. They will wait around for the USB2 versions to come out in a year and then buy them by the gazillions -- thereby marginalizing IEEE-1394 and helping that bus technology bust into wide acceptance. This in turn will be the springboard USB2 would need to make a stab at the already-established IEEE-1394-based DV camera/editing market.

Re:Still USB

[Anonymous Coward]

For 20GB and maximum USB throughput (1.5MBytes/sec) it would take approx. 3 hours 47 minutes and 33 seconds. Ouch.

Re:Still USB

[Jeffrey Baker]

USB2 is pretty pointless for non-computer devices. IEEE1394 devices can talk to each other, point-to-point. For example, you can have a 1394 camera interfacing directly with a 1394 editing console which in turn interfaces with a 1394 VTR. USB and USB2 devices require a computer to run the show. Thus you would plug your USB2 camera, if there will be such a thing, into your computer and your VTR into your computer, and use them. If you don't have a computer arbitrating USB traffic, the USB devices are useless.

Re:Still USB

[Geek In Training]

If you can't afford a couple of hours to initially load your music, but would rather pay $400 for something with 25% of the HD space and no carrying case, have at it!

I'm using the money I save to build another server.

Re:Still USB

[eggz128]

If thats what you want, check the USB On the go extention to USB2.

Re:Still USB

[aka-ed]

3 hours 47 minutes and 33 seconds

How often do you plan to wipe all 20 gigs? I can't see doing this very often.

For my taste, 20, or even 5, gigs is way more than I need. The MXP-100 has up to a gig, and its weight is close to that of the 64 MB players.

The real beauty is that you can buy a unit without memory ($149), pick up a cheap compact flash card and use that until the gigabyte microdrive becomes reasonable or is a "deal of the day" at buy.com.

I don't see how any other player could be the "geek's choice."

Re:Still USB

[mr100percent]

What if I wanted to boot off the drive? you can do this with them. The firewire lets you boot exrtremely quickly, almost as fast as the Internal HD.

But the USB will take at least 10 minutes before you can do anything useful, and it'll be as slow or slower than 10BaseT ethernet.

Re:Still USB

[harlows_monkeys]

The intent with these large jukeboxes is that you put all your music on them and keep it there. Hence, you only transfer a given song once. The initial loading might take a few hours. After that, you can load new songs faster than you can rip them or download them from the net, so USB is fine for that.

Re:Still USB

[stripes]

USB2 is pretty pointless for non-computer devices.

No, it is pointless for devices that you might never want to hook up to a computer :-)

IEEE1394 devices can talk to each other, point-to-point. For example, you can have a 1394 camera interfacing directly with a 1394 editing console which in turn interfaces with a 1394 VTR.

I don't know anyone who does that, which doesn't make it useless, but does make it less valuable. In fact everyone I know with a DV cam would much rather put the movie on their computer and edit it in iMovie or something.

In fact the one place I know people wanted to use device-to-device FW it failed them. None of the new high end DSLRs want to look for a hard drive to write files on, they all want to have a computer suck them out. So no using the cute little portable firewire disks to store digital pics in the field, you need a bulky laptop, or a costly "digital wallet", and definitely no expensing the iPod for use as a storage device with your EOS-1D...

Re:Still USB

[Geek In Training]

I'm using the money I save to build another server."
Oh thats right, I forgot that the iPod is so much more expensive

My point was that the difference in price between my Iopener MP3 player ($99) and this portable craze ($399) is signifigant.

I'm currently building a server to replace the "aging" Celeron 533 I put together. I've got 200 gigs of data to stick somewhere, and I found a rackmount ATX case ($89 at compgeeks.com), a dual P3 motherboard for $47 (same URL), so once I add a couple more components, and the two retail P3-1GHz at $140 each ... I've got a complete server for less than $600.

Not to stray too far offtopic, of course.

Re:Still USB

[RustyTaco]

For 20GB and maximum USB throughput (1.5MBytes/sec) it would take approx. 3 hours 47 minutes and 33 seconds. Ouch.

I have to step in here and remind everybody that that is a very raw speed. USB has an extreamly heavy protocol which limits your actual transfer rates to 600-800kps, IF, and only IF, there is nothing else connected to the bus.
Yep, that's right, the mere existance of a mouse plugged into the same bus will slow down the transfer a little bit. Probably not much, but some.
- RustyTaco

Re:Still USB

[penguinboy]

This thing's supposed to be an MP3 player. I don't think using it as a boot device is really a major, critical feature. If you need to boot from an external drive, get a Firewire case.

Re:Still USB

[Matthew Weigel]

This is a really bizarre bit of logic.

You're saying that people will wait a year for a technology that they can't distinguish between current technology? The transfer times are immaterially different (anyone frustrated by USB1.1 mp3 devices right now would not care whether they can transfer songs in 6 seconds or 5), the cost of entry is immaterially different (buy a 1394 card, or a USB2.0 card - 1394 cards are cheaper now), but one is available right now. Heck, Creative is even stickin' 'em in their sound cards.

Nice flamebait, though.

iPod Crusher maybe?

[SirDrinksAlot]

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.

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 Crusher maybe?

[krogoth]

Lets look at that another way: an averga MP3 is 128Kbps, or 16KB/s. One hour would be approximately 56.25MB. In other words, you can transfer one hour of music in under a minute (at max speed, but that's assumed everywhere else). I've seen a post on this story saying "I can wake up and choose 500 songs to put on my iPod and have them there in no time" - how many of you do this every morning? Transfering enough music to listen to for a week straight (assuming you have the space) would take 157 minutes - under 3 hours. You could set it up in the afternoon and not have to stay up late to shut down the computer. But, most people don't listen to music all the time. If you only use it 3 hours per day, divide that by 8 - 20 minutes to transfer enough music to last you a week.

Unless you reformat the drive and reload your entire music collection regularly, this really isn't bad. Sure, it could be faster, but the iPod is expensive and has a very small capacity - probably the smallest of the portable hard-drive based players. I think most of them are iPod killers.

Re:iPod Crusher maybe?

[krogoth]

Most people buy these devices to listen to music (at least I did). If you want a portable hard drive, then get one. Don't complain when an MP3 player doesn't work like a portable hard drive - it isn't one.

Re:Close

[jcr]

Close, but not firewire. It's reasonable to assume that Apple will release a bigger iPod sometime soon, if so, then this is moot.

I concur. Firewire makes a *vast* difference in the product's usability.

Also, I find the claim of a better UI than the iPod rather difficult to credit.

-jcr (I work for Apple, adjust salinity as required.)

Huh?

[Jeffrey Baker]

It looks like it has approximately the same interface as the iPod, is as big as a paperback book, and interfaces over USB. USB is 12Mbps. It would take 3.9 hours to populate a 20GB disk.

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.

Re:Huh?

[Geek In Training]

USB is 12Mbps. It would take 3.9 hours to populate a 20GB disk.
This thing is no iPod killer. The great thing about

I'm sick of hearing this. "Firewire is in many new PCs and sound cards, and it is a zillion times faster!"

I have a 40 gig USB HD for my iOpener-based car MP3 player. It took me about 11 hours to completely upload all 34 gigs of my music to it. When I want to add music, I plug it into my PC (or almost *ANY* PC or Mac, since USB *IS* ubiquitous at this point), it mounts, and I spend 10 minutes putting another couple of albums worth of music onto it.

If the initial load is *THAT* important to you-- that is you want your favorite 5 gigs uploaded in 15 minutes, instead of a couple of hours-- then pay the premium. I personally am willing to let the thing run overnight once to get my favorite 20 gigs onto it.

Fact is, with the Riot you're getting a device with 4 times the storage space, plus an FM tuner, for the same price. Oh, and you get a carrying case, too!

The gee-whiz effect Mr. Jobs used to have on me is gone. I marvel at the products, gasp at the price, then leave some other (more liquid) consumer to pay the premium.

Re:Huh?

[GoRK]

Well that's because you need a carrying case for it! Not only does it have four times the capacity. it's four times the size!

If price were the only feature that people based their decisions on, then why are people driving the new VW bugs? This HDD may be 20GB but if I'm carrying around a 20GB HDD, and I find myself needing to take a couple gigs of photoshop files home from the office or vice versa, I sure as hell wouldn't use this to do it! An iPod would be right on task, though.

Someone could produce a portable player with a 160GB Desktop HDD powered by a lawnmower battery with a small color screen that you could carry around in your backpack (included of course) for the same price as the Rio Riot or the iPod. It could make you download all your files via a 115200 baud serial connection, and then I could dish out the same argument you just did to defend it.

Seriously, it's a different product for a different market. It may be a bit pricey, but then again, it's your choice to buy it or not. If apple could price iPod cheaper and it would increase the demand for it enough that it would benefit them to lower the price -- you know what -- they would. They have smart marketing people setting the price on their stuff. It's not like they just make it more expensive because they want to see who's stupid enough to buy it.

~GoRK

Re:Huh?

[Geek In Training]

Seems to me that if something is big and fragile enough to need a carrying case it would be just a bit of a PITA to deal with.

I dunno, I was just over at Macintouch reading the iPod reader reports, and everyone and their mother is griping about the lack of a carrying case, and pointing to a handful of companies that offer good ones to fit the iPod.

It seems to ME that anybody who's going to invest $400 in a small electronic device that they're going to toss around for (hopefully) a few years, they'd want a cheap and replaceable way to give it a little more ruggedness.

I've had a Visor for two years now, and have gone through two hip-holster padded carrying cases for it. I have no scratches or cracks on my Visor. I know only one person who carries his Palm around with no protection, and his is nicked and dented like sin. It's only a matter of time before he body-checks the wall with it in his pocket and breaks the screen.

Of course, he's not as clumsy as me either. ;)

Re:Huh?

[sct]

Actually they changed the name to apease Apple. The new name is XPlay. It can be found at http://www.mediafour.com/products/xplay/.

But it is still in pre-release mode- looking at it I would say it is almost beta quality. I like the iPod, and might pick one up- but I need access to it, I hear the old style iMacs are going cheap and will run OS 10.1.

Re:Huh?

[stripes]

If the initial load is *THAT* important to you-- that is you want your favorite 5 gigs uploaded in 15 minutes, instead of a couple of hours-- then pay the premium

What premium? Putting FireWire on a device is dirt cheap. I'm willing to pay and extra $10 to have both USB and FireWire.

The real premium for the iPod is the Apple brand (worthless, but you pay for it), tiny size (and to me this is worth it, I have no use for something that won't fit in my pocket), and a clean UI (this has some value, but also some cost - I would like different EQ settings on the iPod then my desktop because the headphones are different from my speakers). The FireWire doesn't really cost anything.

Fact is, with the Riot you're getting a device with 4 times the storage space, plus an FM tuner, for the same price. Oh, and you get a carrying case, too!

On the other hand it looks really bulky. I don't want to walk the dog with it let alone run. When would I carry this thing that I couldn't take my laptop?

Re:Huh?

[stripes]

I dunno, I was just over at Macintouch reading the iPod reader reports, and everyone and their mother is griping about the lack of a carrying case, and pointing to a handful of companies that offer good ones to fit the iPod.

Of corse they are. Seldom does anyone write in about something they love! Bitching about anything they don't like is way way way more fun. So you always get more complaints the positive comments.

Plus it's hard to keep the bright polished metal back clean, so a lot of people want to hide it. Personally I just stick the thing in my shirt (or jacket) pocket and don't worry.

I've had a Visor for two years now, and have gone through two hip-holster padded carrying cases for it. I have no scratches or cracks on my Visor.

I had mine for what seems like a lot longer (from whenever the pre-orders came in until about six months ago). One small crack on the cover, no big deal. Then I crushed it with my knee when playing with the dog. I doubt most carrying cases would have protected it. Before I had the Visor I had a Palm with the little leather case. The case made it too big and I didn't really like carrying it around. That's why I didn't get one for the Visor.

Re:Huh?

[Matthew Weigel]

I have a 40 gig USB HD for my iOpener-based car MP3 player.

If the initial load is *THAT* important to you-- that is you want your favorite 5 gigs uploaded in 15 minutes, instead of a couple of hours-- then pay the premium. I personally am willing to let the thing run overnight once to get my favorite 20 gigs onto it.

Well... for a car stereo, I quite agree with you. Most people don't spend enough time in their cars to need constantly updated 5GB of mp3s, and the beauty of it being in a car is... you don't have to carry it.

The appeal of the iPod is that its drive is big enough that you can have a lot of variety in your music (more than the album 64MB players give you, or the small collection a single CD in a CD player gives you), and its fast enough that if it still doesn't hold all of your music, it can be switched over quickly.

Something like the Riot, or your 40GB car unit, however, can only really be usable with incremental changes in their storage. If your needs ever outgrow it (I do know a few people who can/will overflow 40GB, and you yourself have already topped 20GB), it loses a lot of utility. And, of course, you won't be carrying your iOpener when you go jogging, or this Riot either.

It bears repeating: the iPod isn't revolutionary or neat or interesting because it's completely new, but because it was clearly designed from the ground up to be used the way people would like to use an mp3 player. It's big enough that you could listen to it all day without hearing a repeat, it's small enough that you can carry it with you where ever you go all day, and it's fast enough that it doesn't have to hold all of your music to be useful.

Re:Huh?

[Geek In Training]

A carrying case is going to save you from hip checking a wall?

Mine has, on multiple occaisions. I paid bucks for mine at handspring.com, the neoprene hip belt-loop thingy. It has plastic inserts and good foam padding.

Re:Huh?

[Jeffrey Baker]

The iPod comes with a wall brick that can charge the computer directly, and most Apple computers have deep sleep modes which aare very nearly off but the FireWire ports still have power. Apple users don't tend to actually turn their machines OFF.

Huh.

[American AC in Paris]

It looks to me like an iPod killer

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...)

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

Re:Huh.

[SpookyFish]

Nonsense. A USB -> IDE interface chip and a mini PCB mounted USB port would cost like $10 in volume. iPod is $399 and the vast majority of the cost is in the 1.8" drive. As ultraportable laptops, PDAs, etc. start using 1.8", capacity will go up and cost will come down. In a few years 1.8" drives will probably be as common as 2.5" are today.

Even if it cost, say, $449, early adopters will spend it, justifying the R&D because in a year or so it's a volume product at $249 and they are selling a new, smaller, 20 gig version back to the same early adopters for $449.

Re:Huh.

[Cryptnotic]

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

Obviously, you didn't get the joke.

Cryptnotic

Re:Huh.

[SilentChris]

The only thing lame about is it is the price. Why couldn't they lower it down to a more consumer-oriented $299?

My argument is, if it costs more than most home entertainment devices (DVD players, consoles) then it's overpriced.

make it play vorbis

[austad]

Once someone releases one that will play my Vorbis files, I'll buy one. I re-encoded my whole collection into Vorbis, and now I'm much happier (re-encoded from the CD, not from mp3's).

Until then, I'll do without one.

Re:make it play vorbis

[emptybody]

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 !?!?!?!

Re:make it play vorbis

[Jeffrey Baker]

The problem is that these portable players all use ASIC MP3 decoders. They do the job accurately and without drawing much power. There are no existing Ogg Vorbis ASIC decoders, so you would need to do it in software with a relatively beefy CPU, which in turn means significantly reduced battery life.

Re:make it play vorbis

[OctaneZ]

Not all MP3 player companies are using the ASIC MP3 decoders. iRiver the company that produces the CD MP3 players that Rio rebrands as their own is using ARM processors and is actively developing Ogg support for their players.

Thier New Player the SlimX is really quite neat looking, some pictures are provided here.

If you are looking for discussions about MP3/etc players I recoment MP3's Portables message board.

-OctaneZ

Re:make it play vorbis

[duren686]

I know it's slightly redundant, but I figure in this thread it'll get more OGG-related attention.

The Soul Player is firmware-upgradeable, so if they see enough people wanting Ogg Vorbis support, they can write an upgrade to have the thing read (and play!) the format, and all you'd have to do is burn the update to a CD-RW.

Or, alternatively, some ambitious hacker-type person could figure out the firmware format, and write their own Soul Ogg decoder.

Re:make it play vorbis

[n6mod]

What will it take to get them to support vorbis !?!?!?!

An integer Vorbis decoder. How many times do I have to shout this from the rooftops. Excluding the hardware-decoder players, <SARCASM> which are doomed to failure because they won't play Microsoft's decreed format, </SARCASM> every one of the current crop of players could play Vorbis, if there were an integer decoder. None of these machines have FPUs and they certainly don't have enough horsepower for FPU emulation to keep up with an audio stream.

If the Vorbis team would make an integer-only decoder happen "now" instead of "eventually", they'd see a lot more market adoption. Microsoft figured this out, why can't Vorbis?

"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.

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

[EvilStein]

hmm.. I don't see iTunes listed anywhere on that page.

Why would Apple license iTunes out for this product when it's trying to be a direct competitor to the iPod?
I don't see it happening. Sure, iTunes will probably support it, but I highly doubt that iTunes is shipping with this thing.

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

[SlashChick]

I have a 128MB (base) CompactFlash MP3 player that does USB. What is really cool about the USB-based players is that in Windows ME, 2000, and XP, you don't need drivers or special software to interface with the MP3 player. You just plug it into the USB port and voila! Instant drive letter. It's due to a "USB Mass Storage Device" specification that all of these OSes use.

I can load files onto my MP3 player in a matter of seconds, and I don't need funky software -- just the USB connector and any PC running a recent Windows with a USB port. I have instant expandability via Compact Flash. My MP3 player runs 12 hours on one AA battery, and the USB transfer isn't really that slow (a few minutes to fill up all 128MB.) I don't really listen to my MP3 player except while commuting on the train, so I don't feel the need to cart around a lifetime's worth of MP3s.

The iPod (and all of these huge MP3 players) are cool. But if you need a quick-and-dirty music and file mover, you can't beat the tiny Compact Flash units. USB is quickly becoming the floppy drive of computers -- sure, it may be slow, but everyone has it. For now, until the iPod or similar players are in the $199 range, I'll be staying with the instant compatibility that a lil Compact Flash player gives me.

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

[EvilStein]

Same with the Mac, basically... but around here what you'll see are people saying that it sucks because it doesn't ship with Linux software, despite the fact that a search on Sourceforge will probably come up with many acceptable results. ;)

I have a 128mb Rio 500 (2x64mb) and I use it with an older Power Macintosh G3. It's perfect for my many walks around downtown, but for a long drive up to the mountains or a REALLY long hike, I would much prefer the iPod. :-)

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

[EvilStein]

Actually, it's the 4th link. :P~

I guess I was just kind of surprised to see them shipping it with iTunes.
Then again, the Rio products used to ship with SoundJam, and since that's no longer being produced.... iTunes is the next best alternative.
There are plenty of Mac mp3 *players* but none of them seem to communicate with these devices, aside from iTunes (and the original SoundJam)

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

[hearingaid]

the Rio products used to ship with SoundJam, and since that's no longer being produced.... iTunes is the next best alternative.

It could be because most of the SoundJam design team went to work on iTunes... ;)

Rio shipped with a stripped-down version of SoundJam, complete with mildly annoying ads. Yes, I like iTunes much better.

design

[jrs 1]

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

iPod killer? Hardly.

[bbum]

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...'

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:Stop worrying about USB...

[Sloppy]

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

When I look at my machines here, and also think about what I've got at work, it's pretty clear: these portable players need SCSI interfaces. ;-)

Re:Stop worrying about USB...

[MtViewGuy]

Firewire is cheap these days, and pretty fast (50Mbyte/second) even it its first generation.

I think people are forgetting how cheap you can get IEEE-1394 interface cards for PC's nowadays. I believe you can get them for around US$40; drivers are available not only for Windows 9x/2000 (Windows XP supports IEEE-1394 natively), but also the latest Linux distributions.

You want to have IEEE-1394 connections anyway if you want to download videos from MiniDV camcorders or download images from professional-quality digital cameras (such as the much-praised Canon EOS-1D). Indeed, IEEE-1394 has become a de facto replacement for the SCSI interface on higher-end image scanners, too.

USB it too slow, wah!!! Wah!!

[Wakko Warner]

Um, geez, guys, the first time you copy over ALL your mp3s, why not do it overnight? I mean, this isn't exactly rocket science. How many of you who are complaining about the USB interface on the Rio Riot still use 10 megabit ethernet?

- A.P.

Re:USB it too slow, wah!!! Wah!!

[90XDoubleSide]

How many of you who are complaining about the USB interface on the Rio Riot still use 10 megabit ethernet

A lot of the people who have iPods with FireWire transfer probably also have a Power Mac, so they have 1000BASE-T ethernet ;)

Size/Weight, and iPod

[pneuma_66]

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?

Re:Size/Weight, and iPod

[Namarrgon]

...2 days worth of music. Now when are you going to listen to the complete 8 days worth of music...?

Hell, you're right! What did I buy all these hundreds of CDs for? Wait right there - I'm going to throw most of them in the bin right now! I never have more than an hour or two at a time to listen to music, so one or two CDs should be all I need...

Didn't Atari make one of these?

[Lally Singh]

I swear I've seen this device before. My younger brother used to play video games on it. It had the thinnest cartridges... And as everyone's pointed out, iPod killer my hairy ass...

Re:Didn't Atari make one of these?

[pneuma_66]

You are thinking of the atari lynx. I had one also, it was the best portable out at the time, it blew away the gameboy, and game gear. too bad atari ruined it with their fabulous marketing.

I want a 0gb MP3 player

[KILNA]

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*

Remember: PC Software for iPod!

[rbruels]

Everyone says the iPod is only Mac-compatible... you need XPlay by MediaFour. Then you can use your iPod on a PC -- under Windows, anyhow. No Linux support yet, but I know some enterprising programmer will release software soon.

MediaFour had a demo of XPlay at MacWorld, running on XP, and I have to admit it was pretty sexy.

Looks good, but...

[cosmicg]

I'm holding out for the inclusion of "Amplitude Modulation" technology. I read a preview of it in the July 1899 issue of American Electrician-- it looks like it will be *the* format for christian and sports talk broadcasts.

Two DAYS? what crack are you smoking?

[Wakko Warner]

Let's see. USB is 12 megabits per second. Let's say that's 1 megabyte per second.

Now, 20 gigabytes is 20,000 megabytes. So it'd take 20,000 seconds to fill the hard drive in the Riot. How long is 20,000 seconds? Well, let's do some math here.

There are 60 seconds in a minute, and 60 minutes in an hour. That makes 3600 seconds in an hour. 3600 goes into 20,000 roughly 5 times.

So it'd take about 5 HOURS to fill the thing, not TWO DAYS! Let's get our math straight first before we make declarative statements about the product.

- A.P.

Too bulky, but has an interesting feature

[John Jorsett]

I saw a picture of this being handled on TechTV, and it's much bulkier than the iPod. The iPod is a far more convenient form-factor for a portable player, IMO, and I predict that the Rio Riot's sales will suffer for that reason. That said, it has an interesting feature that the iPod lacks: it will create a favorites list based on your usage, which the TechTV guy loved.

iPod interface

[elchulopadre]

In terms of interface, I find it hard to believe that the iPod can be easily topped. I've had mine since thanksgiving, and have been fascinated by it.

Not only is it awesome as an mp3 player (excellent sound quality, great battery life, fast connection, high capacity), or as an external hd (I've used it to fix broken macs by booting off it). What I find most impressive of all is the fact that its ui is unbelievably efficient at getting you to the song, playlist, artist, album, etc. you want to hear.

In terms of usability and 'learning curve', my grandfather figured out how to use it in about 3 minutes, without my telling him anything about it. Granted, he limited himself to the gigabyte-or-so that I have of classical music, but still, he was impressed at how easy it was to use.

The Riot seems to be a slick little machine, and its 20 gb are very impressive. But, as people have already mentioned, 20 gb over USB are worth more than a few coffee breaks' wait...

Not to discredit the Riot's interface, but the jog dial doesn't let you go all the way around, which wouldn't let you really speed up (crucial element of iPod's navigation), and the buttons aren't in the center of the dial, but off to the side, so you'd have to take your thumb off the dial, move it up or down and push accordingly, as opposed to having the main button right there and the others right around the dial. In addition, the Riot seems to require 2-handed operation. On the other hand, though, the larger screen is impressive, and the hints at a graphical interface as opposed to a text-driven one make me quite curious.

The fact that I can do everything I could possibly want to with one hand on my iPod (with one finger, mind you) is one of the most fascinating aspects of the interface. And FireWire makes it all manageable. As soon as I get a new CD and rip it, I update my playlists and within seconds I'm good to go, new music and all. I'm very happy with my iPod, as you could have guessed. But it would be stupid to say that it's unsurpassable. It's just very difficult, but my eyes are open...

Yesss! An iPod Killler!

[phloda]

I did a quick comparison of the old iPod to Sonic Blue's new Rio RIOT. Although tech specs are still forthcoming, the Flash technology tour of the Rio RIOT made it easy to tell that this is absolutely an iPod killer.

old iPod: One Boring Scroll Wheel, 5 buttons

Rio RIOT: Scroll Wheel, Game-Boy Pointer, and five buttons, including two on the left side for volume!

old iPod: IE1394 (what issat?)

Rio RIOT: USB! Everyone has it! Soon it will be five times as fast with USB2 technology!

old iPod: looks like a zippo, sized like pack of cigarrettes

Rio RIOT: ergonomically styled like Game Boy Advance, in sleek charcoal plastique!

old iPod: select by artist, album, or manual playlist

Rio RIOT: intellegent audio wizard detects your favorites and plays them back for you!

old iPod: made by Apple, a company going out of business

Rio RIOT: produced by Sonic Blue, a recognized leader in MP3 technology!

I think the message is clear. Sonic Blue has an iPod killer on it's hands with the Rio RIOT. Thank you Slashdot for letting us know quick!

Re:Yesss! An iPod Killler!

[smack_attack]

I have IE1394 (firewire) on my Compaq laptop. It's not as uncommon as you think, it's just been slow to be adopted.

Re:rio

[SuiteSisterMary]

Me too, but I'm living it large with 64 megs. And all because of Audible.com.

Riot

[lavaforge]

The Rio Riot seems like a good idea, but I'd personally like to see a wireless NIC and some P2P software built in. Imagine sharing files automatically by just walking around...

Why are these things still costing 400 dollars?

[t0qer]

400 dollars is a lot to pay for a 20 gig hard drive and some electronics. I got a solution to the price problem.

Look at your hard drive, just grab one, any of them. Turn it over, thats nice.. Now look at the electronics on the other side.

I see a 256k ram buffer chip. I see a microcontroller. I see various other parts and pieces that tell me that with a few changes in the PCB layout, there is NO reason hard drives couldn't be factory shipped with the ability to play MP3's. The hard drive im looking at is an ancient quantum 240 meg drive too. Just add your own battery and case and voila.

If maxtor, seagate, or any other ppl from a hard drive company is reading this post, please pressure you boss into doing this. It would give you a place to sell hard drives other than in computers.

Anger at Apple?!?!?!

[toupsie]

It looks to me like an iPod killer

Everything has to be compared violently to Apple, eh? Kill the iMac and kill the iPod! :)

What might be a killer product but not an iPod killer is the Jukebox Multimedia - Portable Entertainment Center. Archos makes some interesting products. I have an Archos Jukebox 6000 but now use an iPod -- its nice but the size and firewire device of the iPod make it my choice. The Jukebox Multimedia - Portable Entertainment Center is a handheld entertainment center, which combines an MP3 and WMA music player and recorder, plus built-in microphone, photo album and carousel, still camera and camcorder, plus video player and recorder according to their web site. The player has a 10 Gig hard drive. It uses USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and Firewire for transfering information back and forth. It even has a little LCD window to view pictures and movies on the device. Looks like it is the same size as the Riot. Could be a nice data wallet/purse.

CF MP3 Player?

[jonbrewer]

Neither of these impressed me much. They're hideous next to an iPod.

Anyone know of a CompactFlash based MP3 player? CF type I is now coming in sizes up to 1GB, and could be used to make an absolutely TINY device. (never mind the power-hungry IBM Microdrives)

Re:CF MP3 Player?

[jonbrewer]

Thanks man. I do think I'll buy one. At $109 it would be silly not to. Especially since I've extra CF cards around, having upgraded my camera's primary CF card several times.

Too bad they're sold out 'till March...

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.

Re:But where is Vorbis support? was Re:Anger at Ap

[toupsie]

So where is the vorbis support in this wonder box?

So, what, you and two of your friends that actually use vorbis can play your music? Face it, Vorbis is a failure in the music compression market. It has not light fire one under anyone's butt yet. I am not about to re-encode my 400 CDs with Vorbis. MP3 does the job.

It's bigger though...

[denjin]

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.

Look big...

[stripes]

The only question is -- how big is this thing?

Well, if their pictures are to scale looking at it and the headphones makes me think it is roughly the size of a paperback book, which makes sense if you look at all the crap they cram on the display. If it were iPod sized there would be about four lines of text (they rotated the display).

To me that makes it basically useless. I use the iPod when running, when waling the dog, and sometimes if I have to wait in line. If I'll be somewhere I can lug around that thing I may as well take my laptop which also has all my music, and some other diversions. Maybe other people will have some other focus for the device and like it better, but to me a portable music player should really be portable, not luggable.

The iPod also has a few other nice, but not killer features that this thing seems to lack.

Here's an image with some scale

[mike_lynn]

Find it here.
Apparently it's from the 2002 International CES. The page it's from is in Japanese, but has several other pics showing front/back/side.

Oh, here's one more, even closer up, from SuperSite.

Sondra

[IceFox]

Their DJ functionality is vagly similar to my application Sondra that I made this last summer.

Visit the Sondra website at: http://www.csh.rit.edu/~benjamin/desktop/programs/ sondra/.

Sondra can be downloaded and used right now without buying any hardware.

Sondra will create playlists based upon how good the song is (based upon ranking), # of times played, how new it is. i.e. the better a song is the more it will be played.

And anyone can go and re-compile it for windows if they want.

-Benjamin Meyer

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.

Personally...

[Pope Slackman]

If thats what you want, check the USB On the go extention to USB2.

I'd rather just take the (proven, existant, and nearly ubiquitous in the DV world) 1394 interface.

C-X C-S
Logic on crapdot? No way!

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[harlows_monkeys]

How the hell does something whose math is off by over an order of magnitude get moderated up as insightful?

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[Geek In Training]

For one, how many people are like you and have 34gb of music in MP3s?

I'll be honest, my personal playlist is about 2500 songs, as a subset of the 9600+ I have total. (That's just the byproduct of buying hundreds of CDs as a dumb kid/teen, for two or three songs that I was willing to listen to.)

A 20gig portable like the Riot would be the perfect walkman-style device for me, since that would be more than my "preferred music" rotation. But trimming it down to 5 gigs would be a little hard, since I like a lot of variety.

My point here is, if my passenger wants more music (like an entire REM album as it appears on CD), he can just punch it up on myflatscreen PC in the car. That's why I put all 34 gigs there.

patents?

[markj02]

Isn't SonicBlue the company that has been causing problems with their patents on digital video recorders? I don't think it's good to support them.

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[Geek In Training]

34 gigs of music? You've either got far too much time on your hands, no life, have never bought a CD - ever, and just download everything.

Not so.

I have legally (and probably blindly) purchased several hundred CDs and boxed sets featuring music that I enjoy over the past 13 years. (In fairness, MANY of these came used from the local CD Warehouse when I was working in a college town.) I have also legally purchased dozens and dozens of cassette tapes and vinyl records.

I spent about six weeks using my two main PCs to rip the CDs to my local hard drives at 128 kbps.

I then used file sharing networks (for over a year now) to collect all the music I had on cassette tape and vinyl. That *IS* fair use, right? I purchased the music, I should be able to listen to it in my home or in my car, right?

Yes, I have previewed music I do not own-- I won't lie. But if I like it enough to listen on a regular basis, I do pay The Cartel their due. (Sadly.)

I'm still waiting for the revolution where the majority of artists direct-market and end up making more money.

That's wacky.

Thanks! :)

I will buy:

[SomeOtherGuy]

The first portable jukebox that will funtion flawlessly under Linux using standard run of the mill: "insmod usb-storage".

More info...

[vukv]

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?

20Gb mp3 player? old news.

[nchip]

Pjbox has had a 20Gb mp3 player out for over an year. Why wait for a new player to come, when others use one already?

consider Archos

[markj02]

Their latest gadget is really neat: high speed transfers via USB2.0 (I'd prefer FireWire, but...), and it can do MP3 music quality recording and encoding right in the box. They are a bit bigger than the iPod, but so is the Rio probably.

MP3 CD players

[duren686]

Personally, in terms of money per storage space, I like my MPTrip clone.. I rarely ever listen to more than 11 hours of music at a time, and this thing works wonderfully. Despite the warning on the page, it actually does read CD-RW's, and when I have to change it, it takes about 9 minutes and I'm done. Best of all, this thing is er.. competitively priced, and it's a very high-quality first-gen mp3/cd player.

If you're willing to spend a bit more and don't mind not having Duren686's Personal Seal of Approval, you can try the AVC Soul Player. I've never used one, but I've heard nothing but good about it, and as an added bonus, the upgradeable firmware gives it the possibility of reading OGG files.

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[mbourgon]

The AC won't be modded up enough, so let me repeat.

>>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

Oh, so only 22 hours. My bad.

Re:DV editing on FireWire�

[stripes]

iMovie is just a toy for home movies, Final Cut Pro 3 is the bomb for computer editing.

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.

Digital Cameras might be able to use USB2 better, but I still prefer those 3" CD Sony Mavica uses. I just they would take pictures faster, drop into memory first, then write to disc.

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...

Re:Your Wife

[Geek In Training]

Mrs Palmer? and her 5 daughters?

Fifth grade called, they want their joke back. :)

Re: iPod killer

[Geek In Training]

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.

"It looks to me like an iPod killer"

[Lars T.]

Yeah, it looks big and heavy, it can probably destroy an iPod with one blow.

Hard Drives in MP3 Players

[guttentag]

It seems like all the new portable MP3 players achieve huge capacities by using hard drives for storage, but I'm not sure this is a great thing.

• 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? :oP

This is not a portable unit

[asv108]

This is not an ipod killer, its a nomad jukebox killer. I don't think this is designed to be a "pocket player." That being said, I think this device has a lot of potential.

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.

Re:patents? redux

[discovercomics]

Isn't SonicBlue the company that has been producing interesting products with their patents on digital video recorders? I do think it's good to support them.

Moodlogic

[elrond1999]

Rio now uses Moodlogic to sort mp3s automagicaly into genres and moods ;) I think moodlogic is excelent ;) More users should try it..

http://forums.moodlogic.net/thread.jsp?forum=7&t hr ead=52

Why target Apple.

[J.C.B.]

It's probably because:

Way back when the typical slashdotter was still using windows, they made fun of Mac users, to make themselves feel technically superior. Most of this hostility toward Apple is just left over from that time.

And that there's a lack of understanding that Apple is in the business of selling Apple computers, and not supporting i386 Linux community.

Why the anti-Apple bias?

[BeBoxer]

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.

Better Business Bureau

[J.C.B.]

That sounds a questionable way of doing business, I'd report them to the Better Business Bureau if I were you.

Re:iPod killer? Hardly.

[Wesley Felter]

I doubt that tiny Toshiba drive in the iPod can write 50MB/s.

Then go get an IEEE-1394 interface card!

[MtViewGuy]

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.

(Physical) Size matters

[Gumber]

People get so hung up on tech specs that they ignore the most important for a portable device:
Size & Weight.

The SONICblue device looks like it is about 3times the size and weight of the appple product. Hardly something you can carry with you in your shirt pocket.

not pointless at all

[markj02]

If you don't have a computer arbitrating USB traffic, the USB devices are useless.

How long do you think it will take until someone comes out with a $30 fat cable that does the "arbitration"? It won't work as well as a system designed for it, but that hasn't kept lots of other poor technology from catching on.

Re:But where is Vorbis support? was Re:Anger at Ap

[markj02]

Well, are you paying the MP3 licensing fees or using a commercial encoder? If not then you, like millions of other users, are infringing the MP3 patents and saying "to hell with it".

Furthermore, transcoding MP3 into Vorbis is not hard. You could probably do it with a simple Perl script running in the background and not even notice it.

Re:patents? redux

[markj02]

Come on--PVR and the surrounding ideas (automatic download of programming information, automatic selection of programs according to keywords or preferences, etc.) are pretty obvious. The price for components drops to the point that companies can build a PVR for the home market and one company tries to corner the market by applying for some obvious patents. That is not nice.

There are plenty of alternatives. Get yourself a PC with PVR software, preferably free and open source. You'll get something that's more flexible and useful than a PVR to boot.

SMDI and everything else people seem to forget

[abe1x]

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...

Mmm, yeah. $9 expensive..

[ivan256]

See subject. The local computer store near me has a 4 port firewire PCI card for $9

Re:Two DAYS? what crack are you smoking?

[Phork]

no, not 12 bits in a byte. But the fastest usb ever really get sin real world situations is 1 megabbyte per second, and frequently it doesnt get that much.

i pod killer hahahaha

[linuxbert]

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

Re: Yes, let's get our math straight.

[Cryptnotic]

Your assumptions are wrong. With the USB framing and formatting overhead, the best you can get out of USB->IDE "mass storage" adapters (which is what the device probably is) is about 600-700kB/s. 20GB (on a hard drive) is 20,000,000,000 bytes. Assume we actually get 700kB/s, which is unlikely, but let's assume that anyway. I get 27901 seconds, or 465 minutes or about 7 hours and 45 minutes.

Cryptnotic

Re:iPod is not an MP3 player

[rob.eberhardt]

Apparently it's hackable in some surprising ways - found this article about a device introduced at MacWorld SF that turns your iPod into a smart IR remote control.

Kind of Like

[spacefrog]

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.

Re:Kind of Like

[Namarrgon]

Anybody with a screwdriver and a spare 10 minutes can add firewire...

... and a spare PCI slot.

Archos Recorder 20 is worth the wait

[Zarnoff]

Archos has a 20GB mp3 player/recorder (analog and digital hardware mp3 encoding on the fly), it's only slightly larger than the iPod and uses USB2.0 (about 12MB/sec, not firewire but a vast improvement over USB1.0).

It's $369 and available Feb. 1

http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_500277.h tml
http://www.archos.com/order_desk_na.html

-z

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 :-)

Recharge via USB?

[Ryano]

Nobody has mentioned the fact that the iPod recharges its battery via FireWire when you plug it into your computer. Is this even possible with USB? I know that USB delivers power, but is it sufficient to recharge this device's 10-hour battery within a reasonable time?

The iPod does come with a power adaptor, but you only need to worry about it if you're travelling, and don't have access to a FireWire-equipped PC.

Re:Recharge via USB?

[Ryano]

"Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's ludicrous to have to leave ones computer turned on just to charge the battery of a portable device?"

Very many Mac users keep their computers turned on all the time, as fanless iMacs and iBooks run silently in sleep mode. In fact, the "power" button on my iMac drops it into sleep mode by default, rather than shutting it down. So if the machine is going to be on anyway, why not use it to recharge an external device? It saves socket space, at least.

"I think they were either corner-cutting to avoid the cost of including a $2 power lump, or just thought they were so dang smart that they failed to see the obvious drawback of charge-via-firewire."

A power adaptor is included, so you can't accuse them of cutting corners. So if you don't like leaving your computer on, you can simply plug your iPod into the wall.

hard drive players are crippled by battery life

[Luke_A_P]

Both the iPod and Rio Riot use Li-Ion batteries and have a life of about 10hours. As I see it this gives them very little advantage over MP3 CD players. A CD will hold more than ten hours of MP3's. A good MP3 CD-Player will run for 15hours on a pair of AA's, and you can easily carry more with you. I travel around a lot and that feature is very important to me. Until they produce one that runs on fuel cells (which can't be that far off) I don't see myself wanting a hard drive based music player. A CD based player may be larger but its lighter, less fragile and a hell of a lot cheaper. With the money you save you could even buy a solid state player to take running. The hard drive players may work while you're running but I bet it makes them fail a lot sooner than they would otherwise. One thing I have to say in Rio's favour is that their firmware support for the Rio Volt has been superb. I would not be surprised to see ogg and/or mp3pro support there soon.

Don't forget about...

[mblase]

The Treo 10, which has already gone here.

Re:iPod is not an MP3 player

[biglig2]

Did you notice it has an easter egg in it? It plays breakout ;-)

Re:Too bad it can't get cheaper right now

[Lars T.]

Tell me how to fit a 2.5" HD into the iPod, that is only 2.43" wide? Could you at least check the most basic information before you post?

USB2?

[hearingaid]

More people have FireWire than USB2, right now.

Given that state of things, why would people switch? FireWire is technologically superior to USB2, faster, and has far more products available for it.

In the PC world, you need a recent micro to make either reasonably useful, so there's no legacy advantage to USB2 either. It's not like you can use USB2 devices on USB1. Sure, you can upgrade to a USB2 controller and keep all your USB1 devices, but you can do that if you plug in a FireWire card too.

Re:USB2?

[hearingaid]

You haven't been reading my posts. :)

I use the word micro to distinguish the computers I actually own from the ones I miss dearly. ;)

Obligitory Ogg post

[drew_kime]

Yeah, but does it play Vorbis files?