Rating: 
Summary: Great player
Review: Plays all my music, had early problems with Real Juke Box, learned the tricks, wish it would load back to PC, wish it was more compatible with XP, load the latest firmware 1.24, fixes startup speed and improves battery life, use BOSE noise cancelling earphones and zone out, remember you are an early adopter, people who wrote in October saying they had it for a year must have been smoking something illegal, Sonic Blue will probably continue the firmware upgrades, enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: A word on the songs that skip
Review: 3 months later and I still love my Riot... Anyway, I have seen some complaints about ripping CDs and getting scratches, skips, cut offs etc. I downloaded the current Real One software and all that nonsense stopped for some reason. Now all my CDs go on to the Riot perfectly. I also downloaded some free music software from Earthlink which works like a charm. Just dump the CD this thing comes with and you'll have a blast getting all 400 CD's on this. Just had a party at Xmas, put about 30 Xmas albums on here and put it on the genre for Xmas on random and had super background music. All the techies at the party checked this thing out and loved it.
Rating:
Summary: Great sound
Review: Sound quality and lack of storage space was what kept me from getting an MP3 player before now. The Rio Riot has superior sound quality and 20GB of storage. Use of Real One to transfer songs to the Riot is fairly intuitive, but there were some songs that would cause the Riot to hang during transfer. There have been a few updates to the Real One software since my last attempt to load music, so I am hoping that will resolve the issue. I feel a little patience is worth the great sound. Plus the riot is flashable, so hopefully all the minor bugs will be worked out soon.
Rating:
Summary: A Worthy Investment
Review: Spoil yourself. The "Rio Riot 20 GB Digital Audio Player," is a sophisticated technology toy with enormous listener potential. To that end, after checking it out and bringing it home...there is no doubt in my mind the Rio Riot is a worthy investment. Still and all, there is no beating around the bush. [I]f you love your own special flavor of music and want to hear volumes of it...this product is worth its weight in gold. Moreover, this SONICblue product offers massive possibilities and can easily cater to your every whim. Want a jukebox? This is how you go about taking a shortcut and reinventing one. Just remember one thing...the Rio Riot 20 GB can store over 400 albums at high-quality settings. It can also recall you favorite tunes and create custom presentations. Any rookie can handle this...go for it!
Rating:
Summary: Rio or the IPOD
Review: I actually went out and did it! I bought both the Rio Riot and the IPOD for Windows. You can tell I love my portable music and it goes everywhere with me in all types of situations. Both the Rio and the IPOD I have are loaded with the same 1,500 songs. To start with each of thses plyers comes with software to download music. Rio comes with Real Jukebox, IPOD with Musicmatch Jukebox. Neither of thses software packages was designed to interface to the specific MP3 device, but where after thoughts. Regardless of what anyone says utilizing the standard software packeges that comes with the device is a real headache to work with. No question that the IPOD has the best design. However, in the real world the IPOD controls are hard to work and have a sensitive feel. Try operating the IPOD jog wheel while you are on the treadmill. By comparison, the Rio Riot sports a bulky design with a protective leather cover. The controls on the Rio Riot are simplier to operate and have sturdy feel. The Rio Riot and the IPOD have good quality sound output with average graphic equalizer controls. Volume levels on the IPOD are louder than the Rio Riot. Major differences come with the functionality you get with the Rio Riot compared to IPOD. With the Rio Riot you have FM Radio built in. You are able to build plylists on the fly. IPOD requires you to build your playlist on the computer and transfer it to the IPOD. The Rio Riot provides several other unique song sort features like the "Rio DJ" that mixes songs for you based on how long you want to listen. This great for exercise timing. The bottom line here is IPOD is small and nice looking and you have to be carefull not to scratch it or you can go for the Rio Riot which is built to last with great operating features. For the money go for Rio Riot. I would give the Rio Riot a 5 rating but the interface software needs serious work. The pop-up ads from Real Networks that appear on the interface are annoying.
Rating:
Summary: Just stayed up until 3am playing with this
Review: The product is great overall. Based on negative items I have read I found the size to be perfect and smaller than anticipated. The case it comes with is perfect for toting it around. The software is all Real Networks but easy to use and fairly fast. One CD takes about 15 minutes to RIP and download to the device so it could take you all year to get 400 CDs in here. The sound is awesome and the FM radio works like a charm. Really nothing negative to say and I love it. Would be nice to upload from this and hope some software will be written in the future to do this. Without this feature you lose your library if the item ever breaks and you don't store your tunes on your hard drive. The features to break the music up by genre, artist, album, etc... with a 60 minute sampling and random features is awesome. Also plugged this into my home stereo and it cranks. Sound is perfect using 192 bits. Seriously great buy at [amount](w/rebate).
Rating:
Summary: Rio Riot=ULTIMATE MP3 PLAYER!
Review: The Rio Riot© is the best MP3 player i've ever seen. I am a 8th grade student(Technology buff)and was looking for a new MP3 player. I comparison shoped and saw thins little beauty while looking on Yahoo©. Once i saw the Internal FM player, 20 gig HardDrive, A wide variety of formats, Graphic equalizer, And all these other great A+ features, I was hooked. The Rio Riot was everything i expected and more. This player is designed for audio quality and space. The only thing i can find wrong with this player is its SLIGHTLY peculiar design. The design is new and bold... and alittle big. But for all the features it has(includeing the belt clip carrying case)I would buy this in a heartbeat. The only suggestion i have is get some new headphones(i personally have had no problems at all, but other customers said they quality can be alittle less powerful then the player can output.)I recommend "Behind-The-Head" headphones. They look(as Data would say)Asthetically pleaseing. Alright, thats it. Thats my review of the Rio Riot Digital Audio player.Peace out! -Francis Gelderloos
Rating: 
Summary: Very Disappointing Purchase
Review: I aquired my Rio Riot about a year ago for [$]. At the time, I was using a Creative Labs Nomad, but at 6 GB, I needed something more. Unfortunately, the Riot does not meet my modest needs. The software included, Real Jukebox 2, is substandard. Even upgrading to RealOne doesn't improve the software. The firmware isn't great, either. They've had two upgrades since my purchase.
The playback is plagued with artifacts and glitches--totally ruining the pleasure of the players high-quality audio. While the features are very nice, I cannot recommend this to anyone.
I still use my Nomad, and intend to upgrade to the new Nomad 3, or the Apple IPod.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Hardware, Terrible Software Ruins It.
Review: I love the device. The display is great, the buttons and interface are great, and the sound is great. HOWEVER. When loading music onto the device using the WinXP driver, your songs are polluted with chirps, clicks, pops and sometimes are truncated entirely. The last update to this driver was in 4/02 and it is now 10/02...not a good sign that SonicBlue cares enough to fix the problem. As a last resort (just to the get the music loaded) I installed Win98 and started to load the songs. Loading the songs with Win98 worked - they didn't get corrupt - but the crappy Real software kept hanging Windows! (And this is on a clean virgin install!) My advice: avoid unless drivers are corrected. I've fought with it all week and sadly, I will be returning mine. Again, the hardware itself is just great - if only SonicBLue/Diamond would fix the drivers, the device would be top notch.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointed
Review: I'm a huge huge fan of the Rio product line. I owned 3 Rio 300's, 2 Rio 500's, and 2 Rio Volts - these are all wildly fantastic products! I also own a Rio ReplayTV system - another unbelievably great product. My wife bought me the Rio Riot for our anniversary from Amazon.com and it's the first Rio product that really isn't up to par. I'm already a big MP3 music fan, so I have both iTunes and RealJukebox installed. You CANNOT use the Rio Riot with an existing copy of RealJukebox. I verified this with Rio tech support. The Rio Riot simply did not show up under iTunes no matter how many times I installed and used different USB cables. This definitely won't be my last Rio product, but I'm no longer going to buy their products so confidently. If you are a realy MP3 fan, you can trust my advice to pass over this one.
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