“In the world of portable music players, the spotlight has lately been on Apple Computer Inc.’s top-selling iPod, but Rio Audio, the MP3 player pioneer, isn’t idling in the shadows. Rio, now owned by Digital Networks North America, Inc., debuted a player Monday that is expected to be the first of many to squarely compete against the popular 4-gigabyte iPod Mini,” May Wong reports for The Associated Press.
“The Rio Carbon, shaped like a slim wedge and weighing 3.2 ounces, uses Seagate Technology’s new 1-inch, 5-gigabyte hard drive, and touts up to 20 hours of playback time on a rechargeable battery. It will cost $249 and be available in late August, said Dan Torres, Rio’s vice president of product marketing,” Wong reports. “GoVideo, a DVD and VCR maker based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will enter the audio player market in September with a similar 5-gigabyte portable player as well as a 2.5-gigabyte model under a revived Rave-MP brand name.”
“Both the Rio and Rave-MP players will play songs encoded in the Windows Media Audio or MP3 formats. They will thus be locked out from songs purchased from online music providers that feature incompatible formats, such as Apple’s market-leading iTunes Music Store, of which songs are transferable only to Apple iPods,” Wong reports. Full article here.
See the Rio Carbon 5GB audio player here.
For $249, I’d rather buy the Rolls Roys of the MP3 players than this pale imitation… Pathetic…
Yeeeeaaaaaahhhhh!!!
mini killer?
lol
I think I’m going to develop a wall-hack for this iPod Shooter game here…
The design looks ok – but the ipod is in a totally different league!
Back to the drawing board RIO!!…
Nope, ain’t gonna do it. The iPod Mini is just a thousand times cooler than that. And for the same price, you get the “ooooh you have an iPod mini!” from everyone rather than “whats that, some kind of PDA?”.
Is there a reason Rio and all the other device makers do not include AAC playback in their products? Surelly whatever that would cost them is not going go affect the price of the final product; after all, they pay to include WMA support. Apple may have closed the door for the protected AAC files it sells online, but with iTunes anyone can rip their Audio CDs to AAC on either OS X or Windows platforms. If Rio wants to compete with Apple they should start with AAC playback.
how can I say about the design of this player,it even can not be mentioned to compete with ipod mini, shame on Rio. this player just sucks!!
Alternative write up from The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/02/rio_carbon/
The design makes me think it’ll be popular with PC techie types (read male Windows and Linux geeks) but outside of this rather small field, the mini’s not going to face many issues I don’t think.
what is that lop-sided thing? I still rule!
lol i just bought a 40g ipod so no chnace of me moving from aac format, i bet that all the ipod awners think the same way so…. good luck rio
+theres mp3 player looks like a squah dump, im sure they could of get better designers lol
OMG. The Rio site is a total rip off of the Macromedia site. Who do they think they are fooling?
Navigating thousands of songs with that interface looks like it would be pretty tough.
Looks like the “marketing” is following in Sony’s steps. Lots of songs (if you record at 64kbps). It “is perfect for the music lover with a few hundred CDs…” Yeah, right. Fit a few hundred CDs on there at a reasonable kbps level. Not going to happen. Looks to me like the other players in the field are trying to market increased capacity while downplaying the lower quality…must be a Windoze thing.
The amount of songs it can hold seems suspect unless they’re at a very low bitrate. I suspect that Apple will use the just announced 6GB Hitachi drive as soon as it is possible…. albeit they can’t seem to get enough of the current 4 GB drives OR are they just kind of stalling to announce that the mini will have the upgraded 6 GB drive real soon and at the same price???? That would one-up Rio!
Rio’s player will probably steal a half- to a whole point of Apple’s market share in September and maybe October just because of the drive size. If Apple upgrades to the 6gb drive before Christmas Rio’s gains will be nullified and then some.
Uhhh, tell me it’s April Fools Day?!?
it makes me wonder though… how can all these other companies make players that go for ~20hours when the ipod mini goes for only 8? My only gripe about my two mini’s is the battery life.
I almost feel sorry for Rio. Not quite though.
Jeff:
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I was just going to write the same thing. What’s up with the battery life. Can’t be a size issue! Apple needs to update the battery as this is the only thing that keeps it from being perfect.
Love my mini though!
That is one ugly POS…
Keep trying rio.
It’s ugly. Period. But I guess beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I guess Rio needs to get their eyes fixed. Or something.
amen.. this is perfect for windows geeks.. very 1998..
actually.. it rips off the ipod in many areas.. so it’s on its way..but.. no scroll wheel?.. where’s the scroll mechanism, minding apple’s patents..
how do you maneuver through menus..
this thing.. does.. have.. menus, right?
one thing Rio has:
You can wait 2 months for an iPod mini, or you can buy this thing now. If you don’t know the difference between the two players…well…could be a tough decision for some.
I read somewhere that battery life is somewhat tied into bit rate. Lower the bit rate the longer the battery life. So it could be a charade life number of songs.
Hmm, $249. So much for iPods being overpriced…
http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/item_accessories.asp?model=267
– 5GB* of memory stores up to 80 hours of MP3 or 160 hours of WMA music (up to 1250 MP3 or 2500 WMA songs)**
– AudibleReady� to listen to audiobooks
* Actual formatted capacity less.
** At 64kbps WMA.
This is how you get 20 hours battery life, too. Cheats.
good post hagar57…
thanks!
do these bastards think they’re winning over customers by screwing them with all these lies?!
Beam me up Scotty! Or phaser me! I don’t know these damn trekkie devices all look the same! Double damn!
The writer failed to mention that even though the battery lasts a so-called 20 hours, it’ll only last that long for songs encoded in 64kbps! No music lover in their right mind would ever encode at that low a rate, let alone listen to a low quality-ass song. The battery life with 128kbps songs would be the same for the iPod mini.
Geez�these “tech” writers don’t get all the important details out there. Incomplete reporting.
The iPod is like a blow-up doll for Mac users. It’s not really a hot-ass woman, but y’all like to pretend it is.
ugly
You won’t believe how long the battery lasts when your audiobooks are encoded at 16 kbps. The Rio Carbon is really special! Sounds like a bloody Mexican programming language.
Well, they call it “Carbon” cuz it’s just a bad copy of the Mini! Bring it on!
peace out.
The cool think about the pricing of the MP3 players is that there is not so much of a difference and so people feel that it is worth it to pay a little more for the very best. If we could just get everyone past the “Macs are way more expensive” myth and have them take a look at the prices and specs of Macintoshes before they buy a computer we would get lots of sales there too.
did i see correctly – does the Rio transfer songs over USB?
Yikes! One of the best things about the iPod (and mini) is the ability to update in seconds. I do this all the time: i’ll download a few songs, import a few, and then pop my iPod in the dock and take the new songs to the gym. Imagine having to wait 15 minutes while the songs transfer.
I definitely agree that this Rio thing is more ‘manly’ looking but far less ‘cool’ looking.
Right. Same price, 25% more storage, over double the battery life on a replaceable common battery size and it weighs 11% less. Only a fool would think it’s no competition… provided they can get a decent UI.
Guess most of the contributors here work for Apple, or have just been brainwashed by them.
By the way the figures quoted (as usual) are for MP3 @ 128kbps or WMA @ 64kbps (which gives a similar sound quality).
Buy an iPod mini? – you’re kidding