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Hardware Review: Rio Central
I'll be frank- I was excited to see this box. A 40 gig drive makes this thing on the right side of the space curve since it means I can store a large enough portion of my CDs to make it useful. Of course as anyone who has designed or even used a large scale MP3 player knows, with great gobs of disk space comes the burden of attempting to create a UI to do manage great gobs of music.
What's the first thing you do with a 40 gig MP3 player? You plug it in and start ripping CDs. The unit is physically nice looking- it seems a bit big, but most of that is the large screen (which is unfortunately kind of dim). It has USB ports on the front and back. Optical audio connection is available but I tested it with standard RCAs plugged into the stereo in my office since I was familiar with the audio quality of this system having been listening to both CDs and MP3s for a long time here.
The box has a copy of a big chunk of CDDB on it, so it doesn't really need net access to rip a lot of CDs. However it does have a modem port, and an HPNA network connection for people using phone lines in their house as a sort of poor mans ethernet. I'm seeing a lot of consumer electronics with HPNA connections and it looks like a good compromise. Unfortunately the unit doesn't have a built in ethernet adapter, and it only supports a handful of USB ethernet adapters, so I had to order one in order to get this thing on my office network (to review the Rio Reciever which is a seperate device: review forthcoming).
Allright with all of that out of the way, it was time to rip a CD. The drive tray is white which is a minor nitpick, but it really is a sore thumb on the smooth looking black case. But hey, thats just my anal retentive side. Ripping CDs is trivially easy: stick it in and confirm the title. I ripped several discs without trouble (Gorillaz, Daft Punk, Ben Folds), but one had a problem (Blink 182's Dude Ranch). It just hung and there wasn't much I could do about it except eject.
Playback and navigation is a mixed bag. Doing common operations is pretty easy but constructing elaborate playlists is obviously going to be more work. Several nifty random options exist, like playing your most played tracks, or your least played tracks instead of going purely random. Very cool. I will say that this has the best UI of any stereo component MP3 player I've seen, but you need to get up close to do complicated stuff just to read the screen.
The audiotron allows a web interface. The ZapStation lets you use the TV to control playlists. Both devices have shortcomings, but at least there are ways to control your playlist without pulling your ass out of the recliner. The Rio's Remote and screen just don't cut it from more than 6-8 feet away.
The gee whiz stuff that is worth mentioning- having a hard drive in your stereo adds that plesant whirring sound. I'm sure that bugs people besides me. You probably won't notice it at a reasonable distance, but its there. The audio fidelity on the whole is as good as can be expected. We all know what MP3 encoding does to your tunes if you have a reasonable speakers. There are also silly little visualization things on the screen if you are into that. Its fun, but obviously its not the reason someone would buy this thing ;) But I know people who buy an EQ just to have the fancy lights in their stereo, so obviously some people dig it.
For those of you who are interested in getting under the hood, throwing in larger hard drives should be relatively easy. And with 100 gig drives at $200, you could really make this thing sing. If you plug a USB keyboard in, you can ease navigation in the UI... or hit ctrl-alt-delete, and suddenly the Rio Central's screen gives you an honest to god Linux Shell Prompt. There are a few games too, but thats just a nifty bonus, you won't be spending any quality time on them.
Getting audio onto the box through methods other than ripping CDs (or letting it read MP3s off a CDR) is tougher. The box has FTP, so getting MP3s onto the hard drive is easy... a little command line program to import a directory of MP3s would be swell. There's also an open source java application under development called jempeg which should eventually support the Central since it is based on the Empeg car player. That will Greatly ease the annoying process of getting your gigs of existing tracks onto the box.
There are a few other features that I didnt' really test. You can burn CDs or feed a few different MP3 portables. The UI to do this is pretty simple but I didn't have any CDRs or a portable MP3 player to test it out with.
Summary: Ethernet should be built in. Buying a $40 adapter for a $1500 unit is just silly considering the target audience for this thing. At $500-$750 the Rio Central would be a much easier recommendation. Maybe $500, and you add your own hard drive. But I know full well that such a thing currently isn't economically possible for a vendor. I still feel like the home MP3 player is over priced and can't imagine it catching on until it gets a bit closer to the price of big CD changer. But in terms of usability, this is the best one I've tested yet, and the standard 40G hard drive is probably enough for most people.
Coming Soon: the review of the Rio Reciever- this little baby connects over your network to the Rio Central and brings audio to any room you have an ethernet connection. This is what makes the Rio Central stand out. But you'll have to wait a few days to read about it here ;)
but does it run SETI??
It saddens me greatly to see these huge ads on Slashdot comments pages now. I've been here for a long time, and this is something I've never expected. I am extremely disappointed in Rob and Jeff's handling of the content-vs-revenue problem, and I can only assume that they are mishandling it because they truly wish for Slashdot to fail.
http://unxmaal.com