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Rio Riot and Lyra Personal Jukebox
Posted by
michael
on Sun Jan 13, 2002 04:19 PM
from the nylon-cd-case-seems-more-cost-effective dept.
from the nylon-cd-case-seems-more-cost-effective dept.
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."
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Rio Riot and Lyra Personal Jukebox
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Still USB (Score:5, Insightful)
I, for one, will stick with my iPod.
Re:Still USB (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Still USB (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Still USB (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it is pointless for devices that you might never want to hook up to a computer :-)
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:DV editing on FireWire… (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
iPod Crusher maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)
Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Huh. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's funny. I had heard that the iPod was lame. [slashdot.org] 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. (Score:5, Interesting)
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
make it play vorbis (Score:3, Offtopic)
Until then, I'll do without one.
design (Score:4, Insightful)
[1] noted exeptions: palm's computers and the sony playstation 2
iPod killer? Hardly. (Score:4, Insightful)
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...'
Two DAYS? what crack are you smoking? (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Stop worrying about USB... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Size/Weight, and iPod (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Didn't Atari make one of these? (Score:3, Flamebait)
I want a 0gb MP3 player (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks good, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Yesss! An iPod Killler! (Score:3, Funny)
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!
Priced Competitively? (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an image with some scale (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently it's from the 2002 International CES. The page [impress.co.jp] it's from is in Japanese, but has several other pics showing front/back/side.
Oh, here's [winsupersite.com] one more, even closer up, from SuperSite.
iPod killer? (Score:3, Redundant)
MP3 CD players (Score:3, Informative)
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 [easybuy2000.com]. 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.
"It looks to me like an iPod killer" (Score:5, Funny)
Hard Drives in MP3 Players (Score:3, Insightful)
- 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?Why the anti-Apple bias? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Kind of Like (Score:3, Insightful)
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 Recorder 20 is worth the wait (Score:3, Informative)
It's $369 and available Feb. 1
http://www.archos.com/us/products/product_500277.
http://www.archos.com/order_desk_na.html [archos.com]
-z
Archos Jukebox Recorder 20 (Score:3, Interesting)
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