“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.