Business Services Industry

With Riaa Approval, Diamond Ships Portable Internet Music Player

EDP Weekly's IT Monitor, Nov 30, 1998

Rio PMP300 Stores, Plays Up To 60 Minutes Of Digital Music Downloaded From Web

Just in time for the holidays, sound card and multimedia product maker Diamond Multimedia Systems Inc. has begun shipping its long-awaited Rio PMP300 portable digital music player to North American customers.

International shipments will follow within the next few weeks, the firm says. The Rio PMP300 will be available through numerous e-commerce sites and on-the-shelf at major retailers this weekend for about $199.

E-commerce sites that plan to carry the Rio MP3 include Barnes and Noble College Bookstores, CompUSA Direct, Compu-Plus, Cyberian Outpost, GoodNoise.com, IQVC, Microwarehouse, MP3.com, MusicMatch.com, NECX and PC Connection. Major retailers include Babbages, Best Buy as well as Circuit City, Electronics Boutique, Fry's Electronics, J&R Computerworld and Nobody Beats the Wiz.

The Rio PMP300 is a portable, lightweight digital music player for mixing and storing up to sixty minutes of digital quality music and up to eight hours of voice quality audio downloaded from the Internet to a PC. The device currently supports MP3 and features a simple interface for easily transferring files to Rio from the PC.

It is smaller than an audio cassette and has no moving parts so it won't skip, even during extreme movement. The unit is powered by a single AA alkaline battery for up to 12 hours of continuous playback; 32MB of onboard flash memory provides up to 60 minutes of continuous digital quality playback and up to eight hours of voice quality audio.

An add-on flash memory upgrade card is also available in a half-hour (16MB) configuration for $49.95; a one-hour configuration (32MB) will be available in February for $99.95 through Diamond Multimedia's online store at www.diamondmm.com/onlinestore.> One area of concern that has held back the unit's release: Diamond Multimedia says it has incorporated a Serial Copyright Management System (SCMS) into the Rio PMP300 to address concerns of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) over copyright protection.

"Even though the Rio offers the functional equivalent of SCMS because it has no digital output, we incorporated a more formal implementation of SCMS copyright protection that prevents a second-generation copy of a digital audio recording from being made," says Ken Wirt, vice president of corporate marketing at the San Jose-based firm.

The Rio PMP300 ships with an installer CD featuring MusicMatch Jukebox software for making MP3 tracks (limited edition), an MP3 music sampler CD, portable stereo headphones, a cable for connecting Rio to the PC, a pass-through parallel port connector and a .15V AA alkaline battery.