I went on a shopping spree on Sunday at my local BestBuy and picked up the the RioRiot for $399.

As a side note I noticed that the 20 GB Archos Jukebox is down to a very low $299 at the same store. I also noticed that they have shelfspace made for the Archos Multimedia player.

Anyway quick notes, I really, really enjoy the interface on this player. It is by far the best I've ever seen. Of course I have yet to see either the Nomad's nor the Archos' interface. The RioRiot is roughly the size of a Gameboy Advance. It's a little thicker and a tiny bit wider but otherwise it's nearly the same size. It's even got a Joypad-like controller which is the Play, Stop, FF, and REW buttons.

My favorite part of the player is the jog dial, it's very much like the iPod's but is on the right hand side rather than centered. It works for me since I like holding it like a Gameboy anyway. The Radio is a very nice feature, I believe that this is the first Hard Drive based player with a built-in radio.

The LCD screen is gorgeous, it's quite large about 2 1/2 inches across as opposed to the usual 1 inch that I'm used to. On the screen is the name of the song near the top scrolling and the time under it. Next to the time is the remaining time counter, which is much smaller. The lower 1/3 of the screen is the navigational menu.

Playlists on the player are magnifigant. There is even a DJ feature that lets you randomly generate playlists for the time frame of 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hr, 2 hr... and so on. It's so damn cool. There are options to play the most recently downloaded and most often played as well. It would take an entire page to tell you all of the options, so I'll leave it to the full review.

Overall the RioRiot has great sound, a super navigational system and some really sweet features. It's a little bit bulky but hey it holds 20 gigs, honestly I can live with the SDMI compliant feature. It's not that big of a deal since I eventually back all my mp3s on CDs anyway.

A thing that does bug me about the player is that it cannot be used as a portable hard drive. It seems kind of difficult to fill 20 gigs with mp3s. I'd like to be able to store other files and maybe have pictures or games on the oh so lovely LCD screen.

Look for a the Full Review some time soon.

Nice review. It looks friggin sweet!

:first post:

send me a note to get my shipping address.

D'oh t'is not a review. Reviews are long winded and have pictures. This was just a Brief introduction

man looks different.... won't look to good in my pad.... may bye in my new house...

thought it was a pda at first

yeah it wouldn't look good in your pad.

yea....wouldn't look good in your pad eh....

looks cool

Looks great

Despite the crappy copy protection, this player is very very nice.. especially since it has perhaps the best playlist support hands down from any player. But if Sonicblue, Archos, or Creative Labs are really smart then they would have already made a really sweet 8 track portable player complete with digital play and stop buttons

Great player, but huge indeed

btw: Joe, there is a picture, do you remember?

Eh Just in case you can't see what is what on the thing. I had no clue there was a Jog dial until I started playing with the thing. I thought it was just some big bizarre button.

Also there's nothing to compare the above picture with. I originally thought the player was about the size of a VHS tape. THAT would have been HUGE!

what's a jog button??

jog dial i mean??

well smelv1n, it's a small switch like lever which you can hold/roll up and down to scan through songs & options. And on many jog dials you can also press it to lets say make a selection on a song. It is much easier then the traditional push button navigation for songs and option scrolling.

yeah the Riot's Jog Dial doesn't push in though. Just spins... quite handy