Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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282 of 288 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very good Jukebox Player, April 25, 2002
... I have used an original Nomad player, the Archos player, and the iPod. Of the three, I definitly like this one the best. It isnt even close.Just because this device works great for me doesn't mean it will work for everyone. I think the iPod serves a different nitch in the market so you want to pick the player that will fit your needs the best. I think the primary advantages for the iPod is the speed of the file transfers, and the size of the device. If you need a player that will fit into your shirt pocket and transfer your CDs extremely quickly, then go with the iPod. For me I went with the Riot instead because: 1. I like the display for the Riot 100x more then the iPod. The iPod display is pretty good, but it doesn't have enough information or enough real estate for me. The Riot's interface makes it much easier for me to find my CDs, and see my play list as I go. 2. I like the ability to remove files and manage my play lists in the player itself. I travel alot, and 90% of the time when I am listening to the player I am away from my computer. Being able to remove that song from that CD you just hate is a great bonus, and whipping together an "80s Playlist" is a big advantage to me. I do have a couple of issues with the play list and que, but overall I like this feature enough that it overrides the rest. 3. The size of the hard drive. Lets face it, for most of us 20 Gigs is going to cover our entire collection, I have 150 CDs, and I ripped them all at 192 rate for better quality and loaded them all into the Riot and still have 9 gigs of space remaining. With only 5 gigs of space (or even 10 with the iPod that will come out soon), I just can't say that. To me I would rather take longer to transfer all of my music then have fast transfers where I got to pick and choose a portion of my music. For someone who is around their computer more often, or where 5 gigs is more then enough for your music collection now and in the future then this may not be a big issue. 4. Size to me just wasn't a big issue. The player is about half the size of a CD player, and with the carrying case it is easy enough to carry along. I have to walk every day to the train and back, and I have no problem with the size of the player on the way. I think the size of the iPod is an advantage, but to me I wanted the larger hard drive and bigger display rather then the smaller size. The player easily fits in my coat pocket, and when I don't have one on, the carrying case works well enough for my needs. I wish they had included a portable plug instead of the standard one, but it isnt that big a deal. 5. And last but FAR from least is the FM tuner. It is great when I get bored with my own music to turn on the FM tuner and listen to some music. It is also nice to get the news or traffic updates while listening to the player. I would have prefered an AM/FM tuner so I can listen to my sports and news shows as well, but it is a minor quibble. 6. I have noticed a number of people complaining about the battery life on this device, and I must point out that I simply have not had these problems with the device. I generally charge my Riot over night then play it all day at work and in my car, and under this usage I have yet to run out of battery power during the day. Overall, I find this player to be perfect for myself. It can hold all my music, has a great interface and allows me to control my music while away from my computer. I think if you dont HAVE to have a player which will fit into your shirt pocket then I would go with the Riot over the iPod.
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36 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Upgrade firmware & drivers to solve major issues, June 20, 2002
By A Customer
I was very hesitant about buying a Riot after reading some of the initial negative reviews. Well, I went ahead and bought it and have found that now most of the issues expressed in those negative reviews have been corrected through firmware (v1.9) and Win XP/2000 driver updates and the Riot has proven to be a great product for me...I noticed battery complains in several early reviews and this seems to be correctable. The firmware fixes problems with batteries draining prematurely -I upgraded right out of the box, so I never had this problem, but be sure to follow the upgrade directions and calibrate the battery after the firmware upgrade in order to prevent inaccurate battery readings (also mentioned). The other main complaint I read was pops and sound problems in MP3 files encoded under a Win XP or 2000 OS. I have never experienced these as I am running Win 98, but sonic blue contends that their driver update fixes this. It also helps if you stop running other programs while encoding music and if the software has an option to run it at a higher priority, then enable that option. As for the player, the sound is great. I encoded all 150 of my CDs as MP3s at 192Kb VBR and still have room for another 100 albums - SWEET! I have yet to try WMA but I hear the sound is even better. The battery lasts 10 hours at least and it even took me about 5+ hours to intentionally deplete it (for batter calibration) with full volume music and backlight alway on! ...You can download the trial version (20 complete luanches) of a great encoding product using the LAME standard... Using high quality encoder softare will also ensure error free songs. When you encode your CDs to mp3 files, make sure to edit the ID3 tags for accuracy and consistency as the Riot will organzie all the music around them...For instance, make sure to use the exact same artist name and genre for two albums by say The Offspring. If you put one as "Offspring" and the other as "The Offspring" it will store them as 2 separate artists and it will not be so easy to compare all the albums by The Offspring. It would be nice if the Riot used "The" as a wild card and considered all Offspring artists the same. The same goes for genre, so be careful not to store one album as say "Punk" and another by the same artist or group as "Punk Rock". I found this out the hard way and had to redo some albums. Freedb is a great tool in the encoding software for looking up albums and artists, but the user needs to monitor consistency on their own to avoid the above problems. Also consider changing the recording year of compilation albums to match the approx date of the original songs (think of the decade play lists). Definitely upgrade the RealPlayer software to the RealOne free player. To transfer music (which is not very obvious at all), go to "My Library", clear all songs (select all and delete - not required but makes it easier to manage many songs), then "Scan for Media" (file or option menu) and select only those folders with music you wish to transfer. Once all the music is added to "My Library", right click and Select All, then right click and "Copy To..." => "Rio Riot". The view should switch to the "Devices" => "Rio Riot" screen and all new songs should be added with "Ready to Transfer" status displayed in green. Click the "Transfer" button in the lower left of the window. Do this over night as large transfers can take several hours. For the most part the player has been great and I only have a few minor irritating issues, so hopefully some of these will be addressed in future firmware updates. The USB is slow, but once I transfer everything I don't expect to do large amounts again. The interface is a bit confusing at first and the Back button doesn't go back when you go from the menus to playing a song, which is kind of a pain. When you go to play music by Genre, it lists all the songs of that Genre and there is no way to see the artist or album in that view; I don't know how many people have 2000+ songs memorized, but scrolling through all songs of say the Rock category is less than helpful. A better method would be to select Genre, then Artist, then song. Also, when playing a song, the Track Info does not list the Genre, comments or year imbedded in the ID3 tag. Finally, the Song info is purposely ghosted in the background when in the menus, which is confusing at best. It would be cleaner for the volume, scroll bar and upcoming tracks or track info to disappear when in the menus, then the song and play mode could either be ghosted or remain dark, but overlapping menus and information is confusing. Of course, imported play lists would be great and just the ability to see the Riot drive as a hard drive as you do with a Digital Camera would be extremely helpful. Finally, the menus are a bit slow when viewing songs, albums, or genre lists. For the most part I have been quite happy with the Riot. It is a bit big, but I can't imagine having an even smaller screen and the player is still smaller than a Discman. Don't let a few negative reviews dissuade you - for ample music storage from a PC, the larger screen and great sound, go with The Riot. With future firmware upgrades the interface will surely continue to improve.
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30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A review for people who have not bought this device yet, June 2, 2003
Okay.I have been watching the RIO RIOT on amazon, and other than the price dropping like a stone, I have noticed some trends in the reviews. The trends are this: 1. Customer service stinks. I would have to agree, due to the details of the complaints, and taking a personal look at the diamondww website, that there might be a problem with c.service. 2. Battery trouble. This is totally unfounded. There IS a battery problem, but, there is a solution to the battery problem at the horrible web site (it is very difficult to find the battery driver update...but it is there). If folks would take more time combing through the bad website to find the update to the firmware, instead of complaining on amazon, they would have an answer here. For every complaint of a battery problem there is a person writing in noting that they had their problem solved through the upgraded driver. (this includes me, fixed easily) 3. Many people note that thier Rio Riot just stops playing and will not play anymore. It just sits dead. Will not respond to anything. There is some reason to suspect this story. Mine has done this three or four times, but if you read in the directions, there is a small hole in the back of the Rio Riot which will reset the machine. People have to read the directions on their machine, then they will have to find a paperclip to utilize for this simple, yet seemingly hard excersize. A very simple solution. 3a. Still other people have had their machine die, and the ugly folks at diamondmm could not fix their machine and they were stuck with it. This is a problem. It is NOT a problem that should leave someone totally out of their investment. Keep your receipt. Return it. This IS an electronic device, a hard drive. A hard drive with a user interface. Hard drives, by nature, can be easily damaged. If you drop the box with the Rio Riot in it, which could happen during shipping, this device most likely has a 50% chance of not working. Makes you wonder just how many of these devices, while EN ROUTE are dropped? I would say a fair amount are either dropped or, at the very least, shipped in a rough manner. I am in the military, and have moved several times, and even though the movers have wrapped my belongings in several layers of blankets and crated them, they still arrived broke and mangled. Why? Nature of the beast. If you buy something and it fails within your warrantee period, keep your receipt and return it. If you didn't keep your receipt, take it back anyway, most places will take it back in lieu of an exchange. You might not want this product after a bad experience, but if you don't have your receipt, and you return it for an exchange, you won't be out your money. (ask for a new receipt this time, most of the time you can get a new receipt when you exhange, or they make you sign a return paperwork, KEEP THAT) 4. People like to complain about the size of the device. This is confusing. The size is posted on the box, and on the amazon site. I can only say one thing to this: 'BUY A RULER'. This is a larger MP3 player. Not intended for jogging or athletic participation. IPOD will be good for that, they are slim and sexxy. This is fat and ugly. But it does what it says it does ON THE BOX. Rio Riot is NOT guilty of false advertising. Matter of fact, the only guilty folks are the folks buying this device without reading anything before hand, without determining what they need, or what they will be doing with the device. No help for these folks. They will be upset, and will get EVEN MORE UPSET with the cruddy website. 5. Transfer Rates. Once again, this device tells you the transfer rates RIGHT on the box. In english. If you don't know what the terms are for speed in transfers, or if you can't read english, that is NOT Rio Riots problem, it is yours. Read. Look. Decide. Or learn english, read, look and decide. 6. Price. This device is TONS cheaper than the IPOD. There should be allowances for price. Our society is based on supply and demand principles, most of the time. cheaper means, in this case, a bigger device, slower transfer rates, perhaps bad customer service. Is Diamond the same type of company as Apple? NO WAY, apple is a caddilac and this is more like an every day low budget import. BUT IT IS VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY. I hope I helped someone that might be thinking about purchasing this device.
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