Features
Roughly the dimensions of a deck of cards (3.5 inches by 2.5 inches and 0.625 inches thick), the Rio was black and had an LCD screen and a circular pad with control buttons. It had controls for skipping tracks forwards or backwards, repeat, random play and for four preset equalizer settings. The LCD displayed the track number being played, but did not display artist or title information. It could play MP2 and MP3 format audio files, and had support for a variety of bit-rates, including MP3 variable-bitrate (VBR) support.
It shipped with 32 MB of internal memory and had a SmartMedia slot, allowing users to add additional memory. It was powered by a single AA battery which provided between 8 and 12 hours of playback time. Connection to a personal computer was through the computer's parallel port, with a proprietary connector on the Rio's edge.
The Rio retailed for US $200 with the ability to hold around 30 minutes of music at a bitrate of 128 kbit/s. An upgraded version was later released, which was colored translucent green and equipped with a larger 64 MB internal memory, at a cost of $250. The Rio also spawned one of the first Digital Music service providers (ASP or SaaS Cloud Service), RioPort. RioPort was the first digital music service to license secure, single-track commercial downloads from major record labels.
Diamond no longer provides support for the Rio, and the last version of Microsoft Windows to work with Diamond's Rio software was Windows 98. Consequently, owners wanting to keep their Rio working use independently produced freeware programs such as "Dreaming of Brazil" or "RIOsitude" to upload audio files to the player. Similarly, limited Linux command-line based support for the Rio is provided by the rioutils package.
Read more about this topic: Rio PMP300
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