I wanted the Rio 500 for Christmas, and I was reading up on it, and I stumbled upon a review that said that it had a built in copyright protection thing. That was a major shut down.
I’ve downloaded hundreds of songs and have also got them from my friends. I’ve downloaded most them from scour.net…how do I know which ones are legal or not? If I get the Rio 500, can I only play a few of my hundreds of songs? Is it worth it to get the Rio 300 instead? or another mp3 player which will allow me to play ANY of my songs?
Thanks guys!
ps. I hope this question is worthy of the General Questions area I have a feeling it’ll be booted to MPSIMS.
As far as I know, it’s impossible for a device to tell if an mp3 is “legal” or not.
I could be wrong.
As far as the Rio goes, though, I think it’s a rip-off. Here’s why : the 500 model has 64mb of space; about an hour of music at near-cd quality. Every time you want to hear different music, you have to go back to your computer and load different songs on. Not so great if you’re on a long trip and have no access to your computer. Plus the damn thing costs $279, if i’m not mistaken.
Here’s what I’d do instead. Buy a CD burner (~$150), and decompress the mp3’s to raw audio data and burn them onto cd’s. Each cd could hold about 75 min of music and you could burn all the cd’s you want to take on that long trip. Buy yourself a portable cd player (~$80, though I’ve seen them as cheap as $30) and you’re all set.
Total cost = $230 versus $279 for the Rio and you get more flexibility with what you want to hear. (Plus you have that nifty cd burner to use for anything your little heart desires)
well, the nice thing about small mp3 players: they don’t skip. great for jogging and athletic activities (so i’ve been told…i don’t partake). sort of like mini-discs, which i love (which skip if you are very violent to the player).
i haven’t really looked into the rios, but it could very well have a copyright indicator. some companies are experimenting with digital watermarks on cds, and there’s the serial copyright management system (or something like that…SCMS, i think) on consumer grade mini-discs and cd burners (stand alone units, dunno about computer)…it can tell if you’ve made a digital dub of a cd, and it won’t let you make more than a first generation digital dub of a cd…although you can make as many analogue dubs as you want.
The makers of other brands overseas have been making their players with copyright protection. You basicaly could load the memory module once with the songs you purchased online and that’s what was forever in that memory module. You can put the memory in another player if you want.
Right now I’d go for a mini disk recorder player setup, and you don’t have the mp3 compression.
Perhaps someone could explain to me why anyone who owns a computer would want to buy a dedicated piece of hardware that doesn’t do anything but play MPEG-audio (.mp3)?
Don’t worry, there’s no way a little MP3 player is going to know if an MP3 is “legal” or not. The MP3 format has no form of “copy-proof” ID or protection. (Anything on a computer can be copied by a resourceful user… heh heh).
Rather that something like the Rio, I am hoping for a CD player that understands mp3-filled CD-ROMs. Now that would be nice. A hours and hours and hours of music.
i was watching ZDTV (the best frickin channel on earth) a few months ago and they had a cd player that understood MP3. i think it was a computer based one though, but getting a discman style shouldn’t be hard. do a search. it’s out there.
I thinks I saw the 60-minute Diamond Rio (?) machine at a local store two days ago for $179, with a $50 manufacturer’s rebate. Some stores have special lower pricing if you buy a computer from them. - I believe the $279 one is the two-hour one (-I have not seen that one on sale at all yet).
I want one because some time ago I bought a cheap car radio with a CD-in jack, so I could take along a CD player when I wanted to listen to my particular music. (I didn’t want to get an expensive CD/radio and have it stolen, and I didn’t want to get an expensive removable CD/radio and have to carry it around.) I never got around to buying a portable CD player, because [with the proliferation of used CD stores] I later decided I didn’t really want to carry around all those CD’s. A MP3 player is a bit harder to load musicwise, but it’s easier to use on the road. -And it is expensive, but it’s small enough to stick in your pocket; you don’t have to leave it in your vehicle. - MC
Plus, it’s small that you can stick a little piece of velcro on your dash somewhere and attach it that way. Whenever I used a portable CD player in the car is was a mess, especially if I had a passenger.
The manual of the Rio 300 claims that it cannot download duplications of copyrighted files, but that’s not true. They’re probably just saying that to avoid legal trouble.
I have a feeling it’ll be booted to MPSIMS.