Rating: 
Summary: great product
Review: It's not as compact as the Ipod but if that's the biggest complaint, deal with it. It's got a bunch of ways to sort your music and it's got a rechargeable battery so you never worry about buying any. You can get an adapter ...and use it in the car, and ... a charger for the car (Ipod has their adapter kit for around a "little more money"?) Great product, works well and you won't have to buy that CD changer for your car, this can take it's place. Great deal ....
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible MP3 Player
Review: I received this item as a Christmas gift and it was purchased from a different website, and it was horrible. The SonicBlue (manufacturer) technical support is a nightmare on the telephone (a toll call)- if there are no reps to help, they simply tell you to call back later and hang up. I emailed them and it took two weeks for them to return my question, which was after I had already returned the item. Plus, their advice, a moron could have figured it out and it didn't work.
The product, itself, is garbage. It is a nice concept and well thought out, but the first one I got, as a gift, I had to return it because the AC adapter did not work. The one I got in exchange for that one I got it home, downloaded my music, went to organize it, and then the whole screen started freaking out, jumped around, and then blanked out but would not shut off. I tried to reset it and it didn't work... I let the batteries run out 6 times. Each time, the player would work for less and less amounts of time, the maximum of 5 minutes after the initial meltown. I returned the product. I will never buy a product again from that company. And all I can say is, Thank goodness I have TiVO and not Replay TV.
Rating: 
Summary: The Roit Works, Try It Yourself
Review: I was nearly swayed to buy a different player considering some of the negative commments I've seen on the Roit. I'm glad I decided to findout for myself the real pros and cons.I've had the player a week now and I love it. I've applied all the new patches which is an important point the technical documentation makes. Theres not a product on the market without patches after it's release. I decided to use the old version of Real Jukebox and I've had no problems. The Real Jukebox has all the features a typical user would need. I tried the MoodLogic software and it was a little buggy. Real Jukebox has been rock solid. The sound is excellent I've hooked it up to the home stero and it sounds as good as my main player. The only draw-back is the slow transfers. But most PC users would have to deal with this no matter what device. After the initial transfer getting songs into the player is a snap. I can transfer an entire CD in about 3 min. I say try it yourself. The price is coming down on this thing and it's a steal considering all the things you can do with it. SonicBlue appears to be continuing development with other software features, I expect for this unit to keep it's usefulness for a few years.
Rating:
Summary: I love it! Great product, great price!
Review: The only thing I would change about the Rio Riot is the file transfer speed, otherwise, the thing is great. It does everything its advertised to do - and it does it well. No skipping, long battery life, no problems yet. It even works well as a car stereo through a headphone to RCA jack adapter with a 4 x 100 watt amplifier. No skipping, great sound quality. This unit is highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: NO SUPPORT!!!
Review: I was able to use the FM radio only. The support behind the poor software is non existant. To make things worse, to talk with tech.support it must be on your dime in the middle of the day. I e-mailed for 3 days with no response and asked them to call me. Bottom line, the Rio Riot never worked and I never heard from Sonic Blue. A company that truely is out of control.
Rating:
Summary: Poor Product and even worse support from the maker
Review: I bought one of these players five months ago. I have had to exchange it twice because of problems with the batteries. Before exchanging it the last time, I tried for three weeks to get the unit repired through the technical support at SonicBlue's website. It took over a week at times to get a response (my last attempt was never replied to!)and the responses didn't even address all of the issues raised in my e-mails. They would tell me to try things I told them I had already tried that didn't work! It seemed like my letters were sent through a search engine that spat out the same advice that didn't work when I found it in the support info on the web site. I tried calling the helpline, which was on my dime. I waited on hold for so long, I gave up on ever reaching a human voice. Apparently, I am not alone in my problems with this model. My problems were related to the battery life. It dissapeared after a few weeks of regular use, even though I followed the directions carefully that were in the manual and on the website. It deteriorated to the point where the unit would drop from a full charge to no power with the unit itself turned off in about 12 hours! I was also extremely dissapointed in the quality of the playback. There was distortion of the downloaded music that was not on the original files, kind of like the rumble on a warped record (for all of you over the age of 35)with a digital chirping. The problem decreased at a higher sampling rate but never went away entirely. It was not a problem with the original files and the files downloaded cleanly to other mp3 players I own. It was a problem that was consistant in all three of the rio riots I had the dipleasure of attempting to use. It may be related to the lousy Real One software you are FORCED to use with this player. And you cannot use this player to transfer other types of files like other jukeboxes this size will allow. I finally gave up on this player and a kind merchant allowed me to pick another model made by a competitor. Now I can go back to enjoying the unit instead of trying to make it work. I did like the headphones that came with this unit. I also will miss the random playing features. But I think I would rather have a unit that actually works or at least comes from a company that provides actual product support to help you make it work when things go wrong. If you buy this one, good luck!
Rating:
Summary: Hard good, soft not soo good
Review: I used to own my rio riot till couple days ago (when it was stolen from my car's glove box!) Anyhow, just like most reviews said:
Pros:
- Robust solid case
- Nice user friendly interface
- backlight very useful
- Entertainme option very time saving when in need of background music
- FM tuner is definitely a + Cons:
- The device managing software (Real Juke box) couldn't be much worse (not able to modify any track information when the file is already stored on device!!)
- Again software related and incredibly annoying: Not to be able to transfer songs back from player to PC. Basically you brake this s**t (or in my case its gets stolen or you loose it) Say good bye to your music collection (in the case you thought you could erase it from ur pc hard drive once u had it in the player!)
- It simply takes ages to transfer music! (If I replace it w/ the same Rio Riot, just the idea of going through all the time consuming process (had 8Gbs), is just not encouraging)
- No line out
- "Step increase" feel from 2 button volume Conclusion: I am considering buying another Rio Riot 20G(although hesitating with Creative Zen). Bottom line: It's a good product & if ur patient enough (go camping (without music) a couple of days for the transfer to take place!) its a good choice. When soft(ware) improvements come (for 2way transfer) then it's almost perfect.
Rating:
Summary: You have to ask yourself, 'Do I feel lucky?'
Review: This is a TERRIBLE product. I rip WMA files from my CDs using Windows XP Home. The Riot claims to support XP and WMA, yet playback exhibits pops, digital artifacts, and major skipping. I have literally never heard an entire song play from the Riot without some sort of flaw. Certain songs -- if you can believe this -- cause the unit to lock up, necessitating a bent paper clip to reset it. Don't have a paper clip handy? Too bad; you know own a 20GB paperweight. I have upgraded the firmware, I have tried the release and beta drivers, I have upgraded the digital nightmare that is RealPlayer, I have deleted and re-downloaded the same files many times, and still the quality is horrible. Yet, mysteriously, the same files play flawlessly on my PC. I might have given 'SONICblue' the benefit of the proverbial doubt, but if you read the reviews here -- and unlike me, you should read *all* of them; this thing isn't *that* cheap -- you will see that many XP users have had the same problems, dating back almost a year ago. Exactly when does 'SONICblue' intend to provide proper XP support? So I say this: if you feel lucky today, go ahead and buy the Riot. Maybe you'll even get one that works -- wouldn't that be nice?
Rating:
Summary: Yeah, the so-called customer service is a RIOT!
Review: In a nutshell, if it breaks, you have to buy another. That is their service to you. And don't bother calling them as the hours of hold time will be useless when you get a "representative" who last got fired from happy burger. Stay away from anything that says "Diamond Multimedia", "SonicBlue", "ReplayTV" or "GoVideo"... they are all the same company and could care less about their product or the consumer.
Rating:
Summary: Love It, First Large Storage Audio Player
Review: For my first large storage audio player, i love the Rio Riot. I considered paying the extra for the iPod but for the money you can't beat the Riot.
I use the iTunes with my mac and the transfer is flawless. A little slow but that's not a huge deal with me. If it was firewire I would be concerned but it's USB so it's expected.
The options are plentifull and very easy to work through. One drawback I saw is that you cannot (in iTunes at least) upload a playlist including the tracks, you have to create the playlist on the Riot and then add the tracks already on the player to the playlist. But again, not a huge deal, just takes a little more time.
It is a little bit big but not much larger than most of the other players of the same features. i like the protective case, it's nice that you can work the unit while it's covered, i really don't see any reason to take it off so I know the unit will remain looking new for long time.
The sound quality is very nice and volume is great. I work in a studio where I'm always hearing music so when I want to pop on the headphones and listen for a while, I can definitely turn up over the outside noise. Although I do recommend getting a better pair of headphones. The Rio headphones are okay but not high quality.
Anyway, I highly recommend this unit, especially if you're looking at the iPod and just cannot come to grips of paying almost double the Rio Riot's price.
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