“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.
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