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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
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...'
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?"
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.
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
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.