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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.
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
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.
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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...'
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.
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 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...
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
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*
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
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.
Cache Rules Everything Around Me
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.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
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!
A lot of the people who have iPods with FireWire transfer probably also have a Power Mac, so they have 1000BASE-T ethernet ;)
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
So everyone complains that the iPod is overpriced at $399 but this Rio product is "priced competitively" at $399? This just blows my mind.
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.
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.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
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.
Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
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...
Yeah, it looks big and heavy, it can probably destroy an iPod with one blow.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
- 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?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.
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.
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).
h tml
It's $369 and available Feb. 1
http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_500277.
http://www.archos.com/order_desk_na.html
-z
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
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
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.