Slashdot Mirror
Sonicblue files for Chap 11
An anonymous reader writes "ReplayTV and Rio maker Sonicblue is a goner, filing for bankruptcy and selling their assets to D&M, the Japanese parent company of Denon and Marantz.
No word what will happen to all those Replay users out there -- that $140 deal on Amazon isn't looking so hot now, is it?"
I loved the way the hard-drive based Sonic players connected to your PC without the need for special drivers. Your PC just saw the Sonic device as another hard drive.
That said, I could not buy one of their players because they would not support WMA files. Over 5gb of my collection is in that format.
I was forced to go the Creative Labs route with their Nomad Jukebox 3 (Which I got with a 40gb hard drive,,,,,, smooooooooooooth).
In one way I'm sort of glad. I never was successful in getting them to stop sending me spam even after repeated calls to their main office.
"from the dept."
Pretty sad. Can't even afford their dept. here on Slashdot.
Hopefully Tivo won't go the same route. Fortunately, if it did, the active Tivo hackers community would probably provide some solutions for replacing the discontinued service portion of the Tivo product.
** The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employers - past, present, or future**
So, what kind of opportunities does this present to the home user? Presumably we're going to see lots of these units showing up on eBay - can't you just use it as a standalone PVR without the service???
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
I wished Matsushita Electric (the parent company of Panasonic) had bought out SonicBlue at least a couple of years ago.
Panasonic could have kept the ReplayTV PVR and Rio players as a viable line of products or at least incorporated its technology into Panasonic products.
This is why I think TiVo will be purchased by Sony fairly soon, given that Sony already is committed to using Linux for consumer product development and also Sony is a TiVo licensee. Given Sony's name recognition, TiVo products could really become popular under Sony's stewardship.
I'm kind of curious why Diamond and its offshoots have such a tough time staying afloat in today's market. Diamond made really good video cards, then got bought S3 (and hasn't been seen since). Now Sonicblue (Diamond Rio) has gone under. I really want to know if they just weren't as popular a brand as I thought or if they were very poorly managed.
I bought the original Rio, I bought the RIO mp3-cd player, and I even had bought stock. I was hoping that they would turn it around after seeing their advisory a few months ago. It's too bad that SonicBlue didn't capture the digital media market, they entered too early.
I guess when the big coporations started selling their mp3 players it was all over. Damn.
--------
Free your mind.
Well, now that SonicBlue seems to be out of the picture, now the only major retailer of PVR technology is TiVO. Unless you count UltimateTV, which I guess is still being sold, but I haven't seen ads or any indication of Microsoft pushing it for a long time.
Tivo COULD do well by this, since if support for ReplayTV drops dead, users of ReplayTV will still want SOME kind of PVR (and I'm not talking about those who are willing to waste days and weeks hacking the box, here)...or, could make it harder on them, since the MPAA and their relatives now only have one big company to focus on.
The next business quarter will probably be a turning point for PVR technology. TiVO has a better chance of surviving if those that are orphaned by ReplayTV move over to it. If they don't, TiVO instead will be 'hanging on' for some time, and its fate (and ability to manage lawsuits like the one ReplayTV got, DMCA-wise) will be a lot more uncertain.
I don't ReplayTV is going to disappear anytime soon. The company may be liquidating it's assets but anything(ReplayTV subscriptions) that has a steady revenue stream is bound to be of interest to someone.
After much research I bought my ReplayTV a month ago. I love the thing. With the commercial skip and the quick advance, I actually enjoy my favorite shows now.
I wonder if D&M will try to maintain the unique value that ReplayTV presents. It is a hackers paradise. I also paid my $299 for lifetime activation. I also got an e-mail asking about a future product that was just a ReplayTV player that would stream video from your recorder to the player in another room. I was really excited about that as well...
SonicBlue did such a great job buying up all these cool gadgets, I wonder what really went to their demise?
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
My brother and I have both owned RioVolt players. Between the way they both just quit working after about a year (as did their replacements) and the way they had this habit of just crashing if you push the volume button too quickly or when they encountered a cooked mp3, I'm not too happy with the quality of their products. To make matters worse, I have tried to use their e-mail tech support several times, and have never been able to get a response.
Just last night I was talking to my girlfriend about getting a ReplayTV.
Guess it's gonna be a Tivo after all. Once someone gets the Series II Tivo/DirecTV (all in one) units in stock.
Think the new parent company will keep making them?
Much like Google. Even if it's not in everyone's homes yet, most people know what it is. ReplayTV was just their unsuccesful competitor.
I think it would benefit the customers if they were to make Replay Open Source. The vast experience and technical know-how of the Open Source developer community would allow the natural evolution of Replay which would introduce a lot of new functionality.
It would be a shame not allow the Open Source developer community complete access to Replay.
Only when we provide a simple way of cracking encrypted PayTV channels can we wrest control away from HBO.
Which is nice.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
It means theyre fucked up, and need some time to gather their maoney and pay off debts. Its not good, but its not the end.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
This is no surprise. I saw this coming months ago. In early December of 2002, I purchased a Sonicblue ReplayTV 5040 as an early Christmas present for myself. I set it up three weeks later, the week of Christmas. It worked fine for about a month, no problems. However, suddenly, while watching a recorded episode of "Enterprise" on Sunday, January 19th, about halfway through the episode, the ReplayTV got stuck, with no movement whatsoever. The unit failed to respond to any remote control-issued commands. I then turned the power off and back on, and it was stuck at the boot-up screen. I tried unplugging it altogether, replugging it, but got the same thing. I called Sonicblue technical support a few days later, and they agreed that the machine was broke, and asked me to send it in and I'd get a new ReplayTV 5040 unit in return ASAP.
:(
I shipped out my broken ReplayTV 5040 unit, waited about two weeks, and did not hear or receive anything from Sonicblue, and noticed that my credit card was still being charged the monthly service fee. I called Sonicblue back up, and asked what was going on, and they said they were out of ReplayTV 5040s, and asked me to be patient while I wait to get mine. I noticed the last week of February, that I was charged another monthly service fee. I called Sonicblue back up for a third time, and they said they would suspend my account temporarily until I got my new ReplayTV, but they would not refund me the two months of service charges that I got no service for. When I asked what the status was of my new ReplayTV 5040 unit, I was told they still have not received any new units, and asked me to continue being patient and wait.
Well, it's a month later, two months after I sent my broken ReplayTV 5040 unit into Sonicblue, and I still haven't received a new or repaired unit. At this point, I doubt I ever will. Oh well, that was $320 wasted.
From what I hear, TiVo has been having similar trouble. It's a shame, DVR was a fantastic idea, but it doesn't appear to have really caught on with the consumers, and being fought by Hollywood and television executives didn't help any. I guess I should just go back to using a VCR and buy a Super VHS VCR in the meantime, heh.
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
(sigh) Another fine US electronics company bites the dust... When are American companies going to learn that overhyping, overmarketing, underdeveloping products just doesn't work? I'm so tired of buying products that look they were beta tested by chimps. Look at the Motorola T720 cell phone released by Verizon... This one passed through Verizon's supposedly rigorous testing process. The software on the first release was so buggy that Verizon actually recalled the hardware, even though a simple software upgrade would've sufficed. The lastest firmware versions aren't much better. It took me five minutes to realize that the software was sh*t, due to the screen being garbled by going through menus.
Even the company that makes Chia pets recently filed for bankruptcy. Apparently there was too much money being spent on "Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia" ads and not enough on quality control. Rumor has it that over 50% of the Chia pets that made it to store shelves were cracked or broken. Of the remaining good ones, 4% had missing seed packets (!) and 8% had dud seeds. Depressing.
In my personal opinion, the only way TiVo will continue to survive is to merge with a larger company.
That company is Sony Corporation. There are two good reasons for this: 1) Sony already has experience using Linux for consumer products, so developing for TiVo will not require a new learning curve for their engineers, and 2) Sony already is a licensee of TiVo technology.
With the recognition of one of the best-known brands in the world and Sony's powerful marketing muscle, Sony could incorporate TiVo technology into HDTV tuner boxes (cable, over-air, and DBS) and even onto projection TV units. It's even possible that Sony could even merge TiVo technology into products derived from the successor to the PlayStation 2.
I purchased a Replay TV 4040 when it was bleeding edge. Now what? Am I screwed? Seems like if they stop providing the guide, with no way to get the software to use another guide they are not providing the service I paid for! Can we sue? I'm sure there will be tons of unhappy people if they just turn it off.
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
In the good ole US of A, chapter 11 is reorganization. This gives a the company protection from creditors to get its house in order. Companies often come out of chapter 11.
Chapter 7 is liquidation. This company, as they say, is no more. This is for companies that are looking for an organized sell-off of assets.
More info at 411bankruptcy.com.
So SonicBlue is not necessarily gone for good. However, if they are selling off their major product lines, I wonder how they plan to achieve profitability.
I was hoping that thie would get better....
I really like the replay, but after seeing MythTV I may just use that, it really looks like a nice solution, but I really wanted that channel skipping.
NOOOOOOO....
moo.
I think a lot of people stayed away from purchasing ReplayTV units due to the company's financial situation. Consumers don't want to fork over $400 for a PVR when there questions as to whether the company will exist in a few months time. I think they also overestimated the market for people looking for broadband enabled PVR's. A year ago, ReplayTV's were ridiculously expensive, not many people are willing pay $1000 for a PVR. Trying to dump them on the market as a last ditch effort to get new customers just increases the speculation as to the viability of the company.
It could simply restate widely held notions, as this one has done.
Maybe he meant "debt" instead of "dept", or maybe just "from the debt dept"?
Now, there's no competition and anyone who is addicted to PVR functionality is basically stuck with TiVo. (MythTV not withstanding.) And TiVo now has little reason to fear the loss of customers, so they have less reason to actually improve the product.
I love my TiVo, but this I think this is a bad thing.
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
These companies have TOP NOTCH "consumer" digital equipment from receivers, dvd players to high end display devices.
I personally think this is a *GOOD* thing as i can't wait to see what comes up and out of this!!
Read it here (free registration required, yadda, yadda):
Mass Rollout of DVR Technology Stuck on 'Pause'
Funny - I just got two Rio 600 MP3 players (32 Mb and 64Mb models) given to me in the last two days by two different people. They don't have enough memory to hold many songs, but they seem to do what they do well enough, and they're automatically recognized by iTunes.
I own a Rio Riot and I feel that I was mercilessly ripped off. Buggy firmware, outstandingly poor support on _WINDOWS_, nonexistent on other OS's, and extremely weak driver updates.
Goodbye, Sonicblue, you steaming pile of dung.
So does this mean that the Sonicblue Frontpath Progears will get even cheaper, or that my current ones have just become collector's items. :)
Ideally the box would compress MPEG-2 or 4, and allow you to interface it to a PC for archiving of old shows onto a SVCD or VCD format / MPEG-2 / DivX.
Wait... what am I saying? Why not just buy a PC with an ATI All-in-wonder card?
PVR will only work if there's enough take up. Sky, in the UK, as well as Canal+ in France, are setting up their next generation to go PVR, as *part* of the regular satellite subscription service. This will work. Sadly, the cable companies were not in on the deal with SonicBlue. If they had been, and could have charged $10 extra per month for it or something, and made a deal on hardware, then it would be workable. You cannot beat the giants, they will be right behind with their products.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
All of those departments. All of that overhead to keep them all in operation. I bet they don't even know how many departments they have. That has got to be an accounting nightmare!
Oh well, others are making good competitive products, so I guess there's no reason really to be sad to see them go.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Former resident: Exodus!
... I haven't sent my rebate form in.
Now only the evil TiVo will have a product, and its a monopoly! Monopolies are evil!
Oh, wait. We like TiVo, don't we?
Yay TiVo!
I have one friend that has a ReplayTV machine and another who has a Tivo, so I have looked at both of them. Personally, I like the Tivo better.
The problem with both of them for me is that they are bundled with a service that you are charged monthly for. I'll admit the service is a good one, but I think people for the most part don't like the idea of paying each month for something they can do manually with a VCR. Tivo and Replay have some nice features, but after all, recording a show is still the primary function and most people don't want to pay for that.
If Tivo and Replay would operate just like a VCR and allow you to use their service if you want to, or just use the system as a regular VCR if you didn't want to pay the monthly fees, then I think both systems would probably catch on a lot more than they have.
People still want a black box that's one stereo rack unit, like the DVD/VCR/CD player/et al, and a user interface easily compatible with a remote control.
The PC based solutions are nowhere near that level of functionality yet.
"That said, I could not buy one of their players because they would not support WMA files. Over 5gb of my collection is in that format."
Well, if any good comes from this, atleast I'm sure you're making Daddy Gates happy by encoding in and refusing to switch from his platform-proprietary format.
*Sigh*
It was really stupid to put your music collection into the WMA format because it's not a standard like MP3 is. It's only supported by Windows. Sure there is good support for WMA across hardware music devices but there is better support for MP3!
It would have been like replacing all your records with 8-track tapes! WMA will be like 8-track tapes, it will just be a fad that will fade away when something better comes along.
Besides, if you stick with WMA you may become shocked if and when DRM starts to restrict what you can do with your own digital copies of your own CD's that you already paid for!
Weird. I bought mine yesterday and walked four miles wearing it last night. Not a bit of trouble. My only desire is to get some headphones that will reproduce bass better.
I would guess your problem is static. That is not an issue here in South Florida because it is like 80 deg. and 115% humidity.
I have a Rio Volt 250 which is perfect for long trips. It's probably the main reason why I haven't converted my CDs into ogg format: it only plays mp3 or wma files. Since the firmware can be upgraded, it would be nice if they opened the specs so hardware like this can be adapted for other file formats. I'm sure the ReplayTV users wouldn't mind being able to switch over to a Tivo subscription and keep the same hardware.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Doesn't look to me like TiVo needs a savior.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Prime example: "First Post" posts are, by your terms, redundant, but that's poor moderation; "First Post" posts are offtopic, not redundant, even though the effect is the same (-1).
They're not trolls or flamebait, either. A troll is a post that is fishing (trolling) for replies, and has nothing to do with creatures who live under bridges. Flamebait is a subset of troll: it's posting a deliberately extreme statement, baiting hotheads to respond with flames. A "First Post" is neither, but I metamoderat such moderation as "fair" even though it's inaccurate.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
So, what will this mean for those of us who get ReplayTV guide service from SonicBlue? Will we find our service vanish suddenly soon and our money sucked into the blackhole of SonicBlue's chapter 11, or will the buying company continue the service transparently for current subscribers?
So it's the Blue Screen of Death for all the ReplayTV's out there?
I've got an S35S too. Haven't had those static bursts you describe, and it's only done a hard reset once (which wiped out its memory). And while it has one of the nicest displays (IMHO) there are some serious shortcomings:
Can't upload from the unit. Must be an anti-sharing 'feature'. Deters illegal file sharing, but impinges on fair/legal use as well.
The non-standard USB cable and proprietary software are an inconvenience. If I'm on the road and want to download some mp3's from a friends collection, I would have to bring my special Rio USB cable and CDROM with their music manager software. I wish you could just plug the thing in with a standard USB cable and read/write files like a 'thumb drive'.
The 1.80 fireware revision sounded like a good deal, but the thing takes about 5 extra seconds to 'boot up' when you switch on the power. Bummer.
Plus, the mp3 decoding doesn't really sound that good. I have a ton of "professionally encoded" eMusic mp3's and they sound much worse on the S35S than on WinAMP or XMMS.
I wonder if I could claim that as a defect in workmanship under the 90-day warranty and exchange this for a solvent company's player?
On the box it states:
"Please note: There is no monthly fee for the Channel Guide service. Local access numbers are available in most areas: however, telephone charges may apply in certain areas. If you have a question, please call the Panasonic Call Center at 1-888-843-9788 or email consumerproducts@panasonic.com"
To me that clearly indicates Panasonic's responsibility to provide the GUIDE? I called the number and they stated that zap2it.com was responsible for the guide data. Sounds like passing the buck to me!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
Having owned 3 SonicBlue products (RioCAR, RIO digital audio reciever, and a portable RIO player) i'm glad they're gone. I bought these products because they were cutting edge devices that, at the time, no one else had. Sadly, all of these items ,at release, had limited software support....and six months later had none.
A company must support its products for longer than six months if it's going to survive. Sure, most of these products have 3rd party support now, but to expect that at the corporate level seems like passing the buck.
-ted
It appears the same thing happened to Chia hair. I was only starting to lose my hair when I saw the commercial one late Saturday night some years back. Now that I'm completely bald, I was hoping they switched from green to brown or black and it had caught on as a common treatment.
And they'll have to sue themselves for producing a product that is only used by dirty, thieving, pirates.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Now the Diamond part seems to have crapped out badly, does anyone know what is going to happen to the alliance?
(Some others will recall Potashner recently got kicked out of the company due to problems with enron-isms in his board. He was more of a ".com era" ceo I suppose).
Replay users will stil be able to set up their recordings manually.
You can use the Replay, at least the 4000 series, as an advanced VCR. You can manually tell your Replay to record channel 5 at 12pm everyday or just on Thursdays. It's slightly kludgy to name the recordings, but not difficult.
not d&m
Another product/service of mine bites the dust; I really hope someone keeps the service up.
Oh well, being an early adopter sucks sometimes.
Now, will someone finally go and buy up Kozmo's IP and get that idea going again? I need a DVD, some bagels and a bottle of milk. Thanks.
I just decided to buy this a few hours ago, and now I hear they're selling that branch.
Say it ain't so!!!
The truth doesn't care what I think.
Too bad, I guess. They lost my attention after three bad rio800 units in a row. Service sucked. See yah Sonicblue and don't bother writing.
/* No Comment
If someone wants a VCR, why wouldn't they by a VCR? It astounds me that someone would buy a PVR if all they were interested in was a VCR.
I can answer that, as I've wanted one, but have no interest in the "we'll find what you like" service.
1) Pause live TV.
By the time we get our daugher to bed, it is almost always 8:15 - 8:20. If I tape the show, I then do something else for 40 minutes, as I don't want to watch the end of the show without seeing the beginning. With a PVR, I could start it at 8:20 and be caught up with live tv by 9:00
2) Random access to shows on tape.
I record mostly to timeshift. I don't need to archive. I'm not horribly worried about quality (as long as it's viewable). So when I tape, I tend to re-use a few tapes over and over until they wear out. If I tape something, but don't get to it right away I may need to tape something else. I'll either put it on the same tape (after the first show) or get a new tape. Now I either have multiple tapes laying around, or I end up watching my shows in "reverse order" so that I can re-use the tape if need be without writing over unwatched programs.
With a PVR I could put stuff in and watch it when I want to watch it.
--
I'd still like one, but they're just expensive, and I have no interest in paying a monthly fee. Until last month, I was only paying for very basic cable. I don't need a service to automatically look at all the programming when I only have 5 channels of anything worthwhile to worry about.
I remember when i bought my first ever 3D accelerator, an S3 Savage3D. It was faster than any other card i'd ever used up until then (but then again, it WAS my first 3d card), and i remember Quake 2 running sooo smoothly in all its hardware-rendered glory.
Over the next few months i started looking around for tweaks that i could perform on the card. I ended up using one program (whose name escapes my memory) that allows you set normally hidden values in the registry to change the Savage3D's core and memory clock speeds, sidebanding, etc. Needless to say i got hooked again on my Savage. Being a regular visitor to S3's website back then, i learned of their next generation chip coming out, the Savage2000, and i thought, this is going to be one helluva chip when it comes out.
Still i wasn't content with the speed i was getting out of my card, and i was still into reading hardware reviews and stuff. I wrote an email to the creator of the hack program i was using, asking him about other tweaks that he knew of. Sadly, he told me that the Savage3D had a hardware flaw right from the start, a very deep-seated bug that essentially crippled the chip, and all future generations of it, starting with the Savage4, and, i realized moments later, the Savage2000 which i had looked forward to. The programmer told me a few details of the flaw, which i can't recall right now, but basically it was a flaw that reduced the (advertised) triangle rate. For example, the Savage3d was touted to be capable of doing 5 million polys/second, but the flaw caused it to do only a quarter of that figure, around 1.25 million polys/sec. In short, a very serious flaw.
It was only a matter of time before the actual Savage2000 chip came out, and floundered miserably against competition from Nvidia, the Geforce 256. Thus began my fascination with Nvidia, and soon after i got my first ever card based on an Nvidia chip.
I think S3 would have been a great graphics chip company if they got the hardware designs down right from the start. Previously, i would insist on using only S3 cards like the Trio32 and the Virge. IMHO they were great cards.
I cannot speak for the ReplayTV but the Rio500 didn't hold up anywhere near as well as I had hoped. If I shake my Rio500 a little, it loses an internal connection and reboots. Furthermore, the customer service for the Rio500 is god-awful. I went looking for drivers one day after I reformatted my machine. That day, they had 'temporarily disabled' access to the drivers, not even posting the old ones on their site. They didn't correct this for almost a week, during which my Rio was useless.
Also, there was always a hassle getting the Rio Audio Manager (the _worst_ designed user-interface for managing large collections of MP3s I have ever seen) to reenable the MP3-ripping functionality I should have had. In the end, I went out and bought a copy of another piece of software to rip MP3s and to transfer to the Rio (I forget its name at the moment, it's the popular Windows one).
Still, I suppose I still use my Rio500. I use it to listen to audible.com audio content and it does a great job of that. For my MP3s, though, I have since upgraded to the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3. I cannot get it to hook up to Linux yet but apart from that, it is great.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
They didn't really target the audience right.
The product cost too much, wasn't easily upgradable, and required a service contract (built into the price) to get the guide even if you didn't want the guide.
Offer me a freakin' digital recorder without a guide, don't push me to buy a service, and don't charge me an arm and a leg, and I'd jump at it.
That's the problem with tivo too. You don't *have* to get the service, but it keeps prompting you to. Even more annoying, you have to buy the service for EACH UNIT. If you have two or more units in your house, they can't share one guide. Yes, you get a discount on service for additional units, but you're already paying for it on the first unit. In fact, I think the discount only applies if you get the dish units anyway.
True, each unit requires a phone call. But the units could be networked to share the one guide. Since tivo stopped offering toll free calls for the guide, it's even worse.
I don't want to have to keep buying blades after I've bought the razor, to steal a phrase. That's why I bought an electric razor.
The company buying Replay will simply cancel the product and try to make money off leveraging its intellectual property. Any company wanting to continue to annoy the MPAA and broadcasters with its sharing of recording programs to other members via the net without the permission of the broadcasters is simply repeating the legal mistake of the website in Canada that simulcast the American broadcast networks without their permission... The ReplayTV is toast and all of you people that bought it over Tivo should've known better that SonicBlue couldn't afford the lawsuits. As for people worried Tivo won't have competition; Tivo will still have to worry about Microsoft jumping back in the field. That should keep them on their toes...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
What will you do if the new "democracy" elects an islamic extremist in Iraq?
Take 'em out, of course.
Greg Ballard as far as I know, is/was CEO of both 3dfx and SonicBlue. See the connection? Sonicblue is going to go the way of 3dfx.
Sure it would benefit the customers, but SonicBlue has an obligation to their shareholders to attempt to make some amount of money off their assets.
Replay will most likely be sold off to D&M like the rest of the company.
My blog
To my understanding of the past articles, the S3's always had 2D graphics engines that outperformed the Matrox and ATI, but sadly so many complex rendering and filtering engines were produced and Matrox simply had better post-filters and ATI had shitty post filters. ATI is the company that bothers alot, from their past Mach32 products. The Mach64-based products were a huge improvment in the 2D image quality, but they still had typical/stupid bugs that hindered. S3 has always been fast and stable and 100% compliant with that ol' IBM VGA.
You can put a S3 into any computer, but ATI's latest is *cough* strange, and Matrox is smoking crack on their graphics engine; Matrox just sux now-days, and nothing was better than Matrox's G200 PCI.
Here in Austin TimeWarner is trying out a PVR with 80GB of disk space and just about all the features of Tivo (a little dumber and doesn't have commerical skip). It's the same deal as the cable box--you only pay $9.95 a month to lease the hardware.
There is no way that Tivo can compete with that. Even though it has a better product the cable company just has it beat here from a price and marketing perspective. It's almost sad...
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
...when it sold itself off to Sonic Blue, and they're still providing service, as they will probably continue to do under new owners.
I just got a Replay last month, and I love the thing. Crap. At least I didn't shell out the $250 'lifetime' fee...
Sony is the king of adopting proprietary formats that no one else uses. Memory Sticks, BETAMAX, and assorted others.....
Shut up and get back to re-encoding all your CDs with Ogg Vorbis.
Ogg Vorbis - Because we want you to.
I really love my RioVolt SP250. The 8 minutes of memory made it utterly skip proof. I use it while jogging, mowing the lawn, anything. I was really hoping that SonicBlue would create one that used DVD disks. Having 4.7 gigs of MP3s would be (near) perfect.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
The latest Archos jukebox products (recorder, FM recorder) work with no special drivers - they are USB storage compliant and work great with usb-storage under Linux.
Even the older jukebox will work under Linux, you just have to add a readily available driver.
The nice thing about having a USB storage compliant device is when you plug it in, it just becomes a drive on your system. You can copy anything to or from it as if it was a local HD (it's just alot slower). Nice not having to use any proprietary software or DRM crap.
Then, put Rockbox, the open source firmware for the Archos on it, and it makes for a very nice solution. On the go, it's a portable MP3 player; plugged into your system, you just play your MP3's with xmms right off the device. Good stuff!
s/Linux/other_OS/ and s/xmms/other_player/ as appropriate.
This post is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Just want to thank the original Empeg team once again. Hope they are doing well. Empeg is #2 device all time IMO, next to TiVo.
For those too young to remember, sonic blue used to be Diamond Multimedia. Some of the best graphics cards around with the Diamond Stealth line, my first performance card after I got off the triton. Long before the Monster line of products.
This was a failure from the very start. its very reminiscent of the 3dfx take over. For me, this was CEOs of a dying company buying another company so they could live another day. The company that bought diamond was already failing and they bought themselves probably 4-5 years with the purchase. Im sure it was devastating to share holders. Diamond was a SOLID company before the purchase.
Diamond was the #1 seller of video cards and they did not make their own chips. Sad.
Just like 3dfx was bought out by CEOs who also sought to extend their CEO life at the expence of the end users and shareholders.
Just plain ugly.
SonicBlue and 3Dfx have somthing else in common...they invented stuff on PC Boards.
We need to invent somthing...like...stuff on air...yeah air boards. FILE CHAPTER 11, Piss on the creditors equally, propogandize our vallue with stock market schills, sell sell sell all our shit!
-Gerg Brallad
The real competition is coming....
r ch_getpro d.php/masterid=602985/search=recorder/ut=c6cfdfee8 9ddea4c
? productId =1181600&cp=1124286.1124353
1 171683&m=1&c at=32&scat=244
6 712&m=1&c at=32&scat=244
_ SessionID =@@@@0576028405.1048273093@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccdfadc hlfhmfkkcfngcfkmdffhdffh.0&upper=head.jsp&lower=fr ame2.jsp&left=leftchildcat.jsp&right=productsearch .jsp&department=TV+Video+and+Camcorders&category=D igital+Video+Recorders
r ch_getpro d.php/masterid=520049/search=recorder/ut=c6cfdfee8 9ddea4c
A basic dvd recorder/dvd player costs just
under $400.00 now. If that drops $100.00 over the next two years, a Tivo/Replay is not feasable.
Here are some of the alternatives:
These are DVD recorders with or without hard disks:
Panasonic DMR-E30 DVD Video Recorder no hard disk $375.00
http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com/sea
Panasonic DMRE30K DVD Recorder no hard disk $499.99
http://www.tweeter.com/product/index.jsp
Panasonic DMR-HS2 - DVD Recorder with 40GB Hard Disk $999.00 ($100 less elsewhere)
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=1
Panasonic DMR-E30S - DVD recorder no hard disk $499.99
http://www.bestbuy.com/detail.asp?e=1116
RCA SCENIUM DVD recorder with 40Gb hard disk $599.99
http://www.circuitcity.com/frame1.jsp?BV
Philips DVDR1500 DVD Recorder $685.00
http://techbargains.pricegrabber.com/sea
I've got one of their CD/VHS players, my father-in-law has a double-deck VCR from them.
Those machines are actually fairly decent, and I think the Go Video was the first consumer-level dual-deck VCR I'd ever seen... I think they cost about 700 bucks when they came out years ago.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
There goes all that SBLU stock I owned. 52 shares now worth a whoppin' .067 each. Maybe with my $3.50 I can buy a beer. No, I can't... sigh....
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
Once again, corporation goes out on a limb, doesn't do well, and decides to put its burden on the rest of the community, and fuck over its shareholders.
I hope that TiVo continues, as people who paid for that box have a right to get the service they paid for -- that, or a refund.
I also hope that the RioVolt line of products doesn't bite the dust, as they are excellent.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
I can second that. I didn't stop getting spam until I started bouncing all of their mail to every corporate address that I could find (and addresses of their upstream).
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
STOP MISUSING APOSTROPHES, YOU MORONS!!!
Anyone who went through the Savage 2000 support debaucle back when SonicBlue was still S3 has probably seen this coming for miles and miles. Same shoddy management. Same poor marketing and end-user support.
Good riddance.
One of my buddies has one of these and it kicks ass. He has software on his computer that allows him to archive the mpeg2 stream off the replay unit. He then makes custom DVD's with menus and the works.
The uncool feature of the Replay unit is that it has to "call home" and get some authorization to continue working (I think every 30 days)
I'm speculating that they'll either continue this feature and your subscription will just transfer to this new company or they'll send down a software update that'll turn off this feature.
I'm on a quest to build my own PVR using an haupauge DVR capture card (with a mpeg2 hardware encoder) that'll allow me to archive content to DVD (but I want to do it so it's all automatic) I don't need menus and all that stuff. I just want to pop in a DVD-R and scroll down choose which shows I want to archive and hit the "archive" button and presto, (after 15 minutes) out pops a DVD.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Seems like a great play to me. No MPEG4 though.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
If you can get a RioVolt 250 or 300 for cheap, do so. I have a 250 and it is one of the best products I have every owned, next to my TiVo. Never skips, plays MP3's, built in recharger and fairly lite.
Linux O Muerte!
Come on Taco,
What does "ReplayTV maker Sonicblue to file for Chapter 11" actually means "ReplayTV and Rio maker Sonicblue is a goner?"
Nothing.. like many other posters commented chapter 11 is not closing it's doors, its reorginization. and any good editor would have know to make that distinction.
Oh and BTW "that $140 deal on Amazon isn't looking so hot now, is it?" Thanks for alienating all the replay users. I for one wont be contributing to ANY of YOUR causes any more. Or reading tacos shitty ass posts either.
Yeah burn my karma I don't care this heats me up.
DP
"(I) have this unfortunate condition that causes me not to believe a single thing any politician says when a mic's on.
He needed the money! Ohh...
Andrew "Dice" Clay
Sorry I could not resist.
I have a Rio PMP300, the very first mp3 player ever made. I love it, even if it has a few drawbacks(32mb card limit, no usb).
And mentioning ReplayTV reminds me of an article from last year saying how Tivo is doomed to fail because they invented the modern PVR.
That might not happen now that SonicBlue is bankrupt.
Funny how ironic it is. SonicBlue died due to other mp3 players, and possibly could have killed Tivo Corp with THEIR PVR.
I'm glad I did my homework before I bought ...
... not made by Sonicblue, but made by iRiver ...
... which is the same source code for all of the MP3/CD Players they make ...
... and faster than Sonicblue released firmwares in the past ...
I own a RioVolt
It's actually not that bad in my case, because iRiver also makes the firmware (Sonicblue is real slow even though all they have to do is change the device ID)
So, I still get new features on my RioVolt
My two 1980s-era non-DRM'd VCRs are still ticking happily along. I don't even remember what company made them, and I couldn't care less. (smile)
I have yet to see a value proposition for a PVR or for a DVD cripple-ware device (aka a DVD "player", give me a break, why would anyone buy a "player", crippled at the outset by not being a recorder?) which would lead me to upgrade my VCRs. Give me as a purchaser what I want, make it a hardware device independent of DRM and "software as a service" and downloaded monthly-fee "program guides", in other words, make it just as easy as my two VCRs, and maybe, just maybe, I'll switch.
I feel sorry for all you young'uns who don't remember when consumer products were manufactured with an interest towards serving the customer rather than some company. One sale - DONE! Relationship with company complete, and ended. Cold hard cash in company's hands, and cold hard product in my hands I could do anything I want with. Man, oh man, I remember when I actually used to buy stuff, when consumer products were actually worth the money...
Oh, yeh, and in other news, the economy is still sluggish, not enough people are buying the new consumer schlock. Hmmm, go figure...
As a former employee that went through the transition from Diamond Multimedia to S3 and eventually to SonicBlue, and being layed off when they decided to close the communications division, I saw this happening two years ago.
Working in the Rio / Comm Division QA labs, I saw that the place to be taking these products was to converge the digital media devices you make with home networking solutions that you also make. There were a few products that made it out the doors that did this (the Dell Digital Audio Receiver and Rio Receiver), and they worked quite well; but soon after, the communications division was to be shut.
In that reorganization, I saw some incredibly talented engineers (who had been around since before Diamond had bought Supra, and were responsible for the incredible SupraFAXModem and SupraSonic lines) laid off and get instantly hired by other companies in the SW Washington / NW Oregon area, such as Sharp Labs, Logitech, and Intel. These people still work there, creating great products.
Now that the age of wireless-in-the-home and broadband networking are upon us, SonicBlue has to buy home networking equipment that they once engineered to incorporate into devices that they once had on the engineering roadmap. Due to incredible mismanagement, along with exorborant costs of moving offices, and newfound competition from the digital audio core market (thanks, Apple!) the strain was too much to bear.
Now I will finally get some form of profit from the Employee Stock Purchase Program, in the form of a failed-investment tax writeoff...
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The network is actually owned and operated by another company. When you signed up for monthly or lifetime memberships, Sonic Blue got a one shot "commission" on the sale. This network also supports the built in TVGuide that my TV has and some of the scrolling menues on sat or cable TV. As I understand it, the Sonic Blue devices will continue to function properly for an indefinate amount of time.
Does this mean that the QuickBasic site can have the URL back?
quickbasic sonicblue
Has the old QB website pages
That sounds like a great idea... bounce spam to the people who spam you... wish it was as simple with the generic spam which hits the procmails..
Winged Power Photography
Look who's in charge: "We have great confidence in our business units, and worked to develop a plan that would permit SONICblue to continue operating within the significant constraints imposed by our debt and legacy liabilities," said Gregory Ballard, Chief Executive Officer, SONICblue. He 0 for 2 now.... batting .000
Dear Customers,
ReplayTV values your business. We are committed to seamlessly transitioning the ReplayTV Service to the product lineâ(TM)s new owners. Everyone on the ReplayTV team will be working closely with the new owners to ensure that our customers continue to receive the award-winning ReplayTV Service without interruption.
We are optimistic about our future and appreciate your support through this transition.
Thank you,
The ReplayTV Team
I know not that many people own one anyway, but I have one of the Rio "MPEG car" players. IMHO, this is one of the coolest products ever sold under the Rio/SonicBlue name - even though it's discontinued and apparently wasn't ever really profitable for them.
Since it's a Linux based player, there is still active support and 3rd. party patches/updates for it. (One guy is even trying to get a working GPS system shoehorned into it!) Still, the "core" code it runs with was provided on SonicBlue's support site, and still received occasional bug-fix updates.
The last rumor I heard was that the developers were coding for a newer in-car music player product, but were doing update support for the old Rio MPEG Car players on the side, and as sort of a test-bed for changes they were thinking of putting in the new unit.
Sounds like "official" support might dry up now.
I've got a replacement P280 from T-Mobile, that is showing some of the same firmware issues as the first one. It hasn't started garbling screens or dialed numbers, yet, like the first one, but it already screws up appointments set in its calendar more than a month in advance. For example, I set some July birthdays into the calendar a couple of weeks ago, and last weekend they went off.
(I know it's not the SIM card, because I got a replacement from a local store before the phone got replaced)
Again, this is the second P280 I've had that has had this problem. Oh, and the first P280 had extremely slow menus, but I just put up with it. This one is much faster (possibly because the new SIM card was a different model, because I was assured by Voicestream and T-Mobile people that they never upgrade the firmware on the phones they sell), but without the calendar being useful, it can't compete with the Samsung I could have bought at the time for less. Now, of course, they're even more of a non-player.
Not to mention that I only "upgraded" to my P280 because my Motorola P7389's speaker died just after Voicestream's (before it turned into T-Mobile) replacement ran out, while I was on a trip. After buying the new phone (I needed the phone for work), I bought a full set of Torx and took the phone apart, re-bent the flat speaker spring-type leads, and it started working again. How those leads could have bent away remains a mystery, but I chalk it down to poor case design since it must have flexed repeatedly.
So, anyway, since I can't get T-Mobile to credit me with the price of the phone so I can get a different brand and model, I've decided that I'll keep calling them for a replacement every time my current phone barfs up another appointment.
(And don't get me started on how crappy T-Mobile is. They can't even keep their billing up-to-the-month on their website. Last month, my November bill was still the latest it showed.
And when I first called support about the phone, they made me drive across town to a store to get the SIM card, instead of sending me one. The guy there said the call center should have sent me one, gave me one, and then told me to go home and call the service number again to get the phone replaced. When I got home, support told me that the store should have processed the replacement, but at least they voluntarily offered to credit me for the $15 UPS fee if I wanted UPS instead of the free postal delivery. On the call I made earlier this week to replace this replacement phone, they refused to do that again, so I opted for the free postal delivery this time. Not a big deal - they will probably be sending me a lot of boxes anyway until my contract (and phone warranty) run out in July.
Get off my launchpad!
I bought a Rio 500. The firmware immediatly corrupted, rendering the device useless. Sonicblue's tools failed.
I'm happy w/ my Nomad IIC now.
Good thing I got my replay unit with lifetime sub from PANASONIC...They are still in business and will have to support or refund
So that's my argument, anyway.
Didn't a bunch of corrupt board members oust Greg Ballard after he revealed they were milking the company with large corporate loans? Serves them right that they go bankrupt. This is what happens when corrupt board members take control. They run the company into the ground. Just my opinion.
I got a Zaurus, it rocks.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
So what's wrong with extracting video? Is that sort of like the crime of making a VHS copy and putting it on the shelf? Or is it more like the real horror of sharing that tape with my friends? God help the fan club! I'm not buying things from people who treat me like a criminal. They can rot if that's their attitude.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
There are several new devices coming out that do exactly what you want, like the Panasonic DMR-E30S DVD Recorder
Right now on the front page of the SonicBlue website under "Important message from ReplayTV." is the posting:
Dear ReplayTV customers,
This morning, we announced the proposed sale of ReplayTV. Rest assured that the ReplayTV service you have come to love will not be affected or interrupted in any way as a result of this process. In fact, we plan to continue to innovate, and believe that the ReplayTV service will only improve through this transition. So relax, enjoy ReplayTV, and rest assured that it will be business as usual.
We are very excited about our future, and we appreciate your continued support and business during this brief transition.
Thank you,
The ReplayTV Team
First off, I don't think anyone is really lamenting the loss of the Rio line. There are now plent of other high quality MP3 players available. In fact, the dying Rio line helped contribute to the failure of SONICBlue.
However, I think that there are reasons to be optimistic about the ReplayTV line.
SONICBlue was invloved in a major lawsuit with the MPAA, etc. over the commercial skip and sharing features of the ReplayTV, this is the same company (then know as Diamond Multimedia) that won the Rio lawsuit against the RIAA, etc. that legitimized MP3 players. During that lawsuit, one definitely got the sense that the the electronics manufacturers (Panasonic, Sony, Sanyo, etc.) were anxiously awaiting the results of the lawsuit so that THEY could get into the business. Ironically, the freedom of other players in the market is what led to the failure of the Rio line.
IMHO, SONICBlue was poised to WIN the ongoing lawsuit, and win decisively. I got the same sense as in the Rio lawsuit that the major electronics manufacturers were waiting for the results of the ReplayTV lawsuit before jumping into the market. Now that ReplayTV has been purchased by a significant electronics manufacturer (Denon/Maranz) we can expect the lawsuit to go forward and new ReplayTVs to sport even better units with innovative (and "contraversial") features.
OTOH, current ReplayTV owners (like me) might still be screwed.
Furthermore -- want to help it succeed on Wall Street?
.33% of a stock isn't enough to nudge it upward, but it is.
Buy some stock. Tivo currently has a marketcap of something like $307 million dollars. If 10,000 Tivo users each bought $100 in stock, that'd be a cool million. You might think that
And consider this -- how many folks can afford to put in $200 or $500? The fact is, you can bump the stock price up. If the price can consistently stay above $7, it will attract far more general investors (who are wary of penny stocks).
I wouldn't do it because I don't care about Tivo. But, I do have 5% of my portfolio in other linux stocks, and don't give a damn about profits. If every ha}{0r or n00b or l3t3 kernal coder would buy up some shares, it would make a difference in price -- and stability -- of our favourite companies, particularly the small ones.
Even in open source, you can still vote with your dollars, both at the register and in the bigger market.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Well, it's happened... An anti-proprietary-software post has been modded down, indicating that it is wrong to support platformless software. The end-times are near....
Ok, so I'm new to the scene and haven't checked all the past posts, but if SonicBlue is going under, why not just open the source for ReplayTV. Someone could easily adapt it to obtain the program schedule from the cable broadcast, just as my television and cable box do. Has this been done? Does anyone know of a hack for ReplayTV? I mean, I coughed up $350 for an 80-hour box, and $250 for a "lifetime" (apparently a fruit-fly's lifetime, not mine) membership fee. I am going to be ticked off if my ReplayTV turns into a paperweight!
The REAL story is TiVo+DVD recorder. The current DVD recorders are for the techies, while a TiVo+DVD recorder would be for the masses and could really gain traction.
TiVo Upgrades
I'D LIKE TO BE BURIED INDIAN-STYLE, where they put you up on a high rack,
above the ground. That way, you could get hit by meteorites and not even
feel it.
-- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.
- this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...