Sony Brings the Bling with Swarovski Photoframe

Tag Archive: Rio

DirecTV Buys ReplayTV

DirecTV Buys ReplayTV

Satellite TV operator DirecTV has inked a deal to aquire most of the assets of ReplayTV from its current corporate owner, Japan’s D&M Holdings, Inc.

“Although we valued this asset and the business was profitable, the sale of ReplayTV to DirecTV makes the most sense for this business, its employees and us,” said D&M Holdings chair and CEO Eric C. Evans, in a statement. “We believe this transaction is a positive development for ReplayTV and this sale allows D&M to further direct our focus on building our brands and executing our growth and acquisition strategies.”

Sasse Departs iriver America CEO Position

Digital Trends has learned that a management shake up has occurred at MP3 player manufacturer iriver America. This shake up has resulted in the departure of former CEO Jonathan Sasse for greener pastures.

Sasse, in an email exchange with Digital Trends, confirmed he had in fact left iriver America, makers of the popular clix portable media player, for an undisclosed start up.

Up the Rio: D&M Closes Its Music Player Biz

Japanese electronics maker D&M Holdings Inc., which also owns the Denon, McIntosh, Marantz, and ReplayTV brands, has said it will cease production and marketing of its Rio portable digital music player by September 30 due to poor sales. The company said in a statement that “the decision to exit the Rio business followed a determination that the mass-market portable digital audio player market was not a strong enough strategic fit with the company’s core and profitable premium consumer electronics brands.”

In other words, lackluster sales under the Rio brand weren’t justifying D&M’s continued investment in the business, especially give the market dominance of Apple’s iPod portable music players.

iPod #1 with American Teens, Survey Shows

“In its bi-annual ‘Taking Stock With Teens’ survey obtained by The Mac Observer, research analysts Michael Olson and Gene Munster found that of 518 students, the number of kids owning an iPodhad risen dramatically. 56% said they owned an iPod, compared to 40% as reported in the company’s Fall survey. The next closest competitor in the current survey was Sony, which was chosen by 14% ofdevice owners, followed by iRiver at 7% and Rio at 5%. 17% of respondents said they owned others brands, including Dell and Creative.

But it was numbers of those planning to buy in the near future that were just as interesting: Of the 59% of students expecting to purchase a device within the next year, 70% expect to buy an iPod. While that number was the same in the Fall survey, only 46% of students were looking to buy a device at that time.”

Seagate Ships 6GB 1-INCH Hard Drive

Seagate began shipping this industry-leading 6GB drive in December 2004. The 6GB Seagate ST1 Series can hold up to 150 hours – or 3,000 songs – of high-quality music files (128 kbps), providingbreakthrough value and storage capacity for small music players, PDAs and handheld entertainment devices. Consumers can now keep larger-than-ever libraries of music, video and digital photos in theirpockets. Since it was first introduced in June 2004, the Seagate ST1 Series hard drive family has been used in the leading handheld music players and adopted by more entertainment device makers thanany other 1-inch hard drive – including Creative, Olympus, Rio, Sanyo, Virgin and others – further confirming Seagate’s status as the number-one choice in consumer electronics hard drives.

Rio Unveils The ce2100 MP3 Player

Sharing the same unique, ultra-slim and tapered design and boasting a battery life of up to 20 hours like the Rio Carbon, the Rio ce2100 features a 2.5GB1 hard disk drive that is capable of holdingup to 40 hours of MP3 (80 hours WMA) music2. Customers now have a choice in the amount of music or audiobooks that can easily slide into their pockets with the Rio ce2100 or the Rio Carbon.Additionally, Rio is also introducing a second color for the Rio Carbon, giving customers the choice of the classic silver version or the new pearl Rio Carbon.

“Rio understands that music players reflect the attitude, personality and status of the customer. The addition of the Rio ce2100 and the pearl Rio Carbon 5GB1 to Rio’s award-winning line of MP3 players, expands the options for customers to choose a player that expresses who they are,” said Dan Torres, VP of Product Marketing at Rio. “Whether it’s a choice between a sophisticated, ultra-thin pearl or silver 5GB MP3 player, a sleek and competitively priced 2.5GB MP3 player, or a rugged and durable flash-based MP3 player for fitness and sports, Rio MP3 players are designed with a variety of lifestyles and budgets in mind to meet consumer demands.”

AudioFeast Raises $10M In Funding

AudioFeast, first to market with portable Internet radio service for MP3 players, mobile devices and PCs, today announced it has received $10 million in Series A funding. Venture capital firmMayfield led the investment round, and was joined by Worldview Technology Partners and previous company investors.

As part of the financing, Mayfield managing director, Yogen Dalal and Worldview Technology Partners general partner, Irwin Gross will join AudioFeast’s board of directors.

Rio Audio Comments On Apple iPod

Rio’s vice-president for marketing, Dan Torres, recently spoke with BusinessWeek Online reporter Amy Tsao about his company’s plans to catch the competition. Some of the questions Dan answers include:

Q: How are you competing with Apple’s iPod?

Q: What about Dell (DELL ) and Microsoft?

Q: What will happen to the market if Apple comes out with a flash-memory-based player?

Q: Is consolidation coming among makers of digital music players?

Q: What kind of growth do you expect from Rio players?

Read more at BusinessWeek

Found VIA MacMinute

RIO To Use SigmaTel MP3 Controller Chips

Rio has selected SigmaTel D-Major solutions for many of their current and past players including the recently announced 5GB Rio Carbon hard-drive player and the flash-based Rio Forge players. Previously released players that use SigmaTel controllers include the 1.5GB Rio Nitrus hard-drive player as well as the Rio Cali and Chiba flash players.

For future hard-drive and flash MP3 player designs in 2005 and 2006, Rio has expressed a preference to use SigmaTel’s next generation ARM-based MP3 controllers as well as the current STMP35xx product family. This newest family of devices, the STMP36xx to be available early next year, will allow Rio to continue to capitalize on the integration and power-management expertise that SigmaTel is known for. Due to a broad engineering adoption of the ARM-based core, new features can be easily implemented and ported from design to design.

Rio Carbon MP3 Player Hits Store Shelves

Rio’s new MP3 player is finally hitting store shelves and it looks like Rio will be throwing some marketing muscle behind the new Carbon. Look for a review soon on Designtechnica.

Rio is marking the availability of one of its newest and hottest players, the Rio Carbon 5GB MP3 player, with 500 limited edition units. These players feature 20 free downloads and three free months from Napster, a customized laser engraved stainless-steel back, along with a collectors’ edition external package. The highly anticipated Rio Carbon 5GB will soon be hitting store shelves, however, consumers can be one of the first to own a Limited Edition Rio Carbon beginning today by going to http://www.rioaudio.com.

Page 1 of 3123»

Join The Digital Trends Community

DT RSS Feed

Everyone wants to be an insider, and you can be one too! Choose your poison: sign-up for our Newsletter, join us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter. Do all three and you'll be swimming in the the latest news, reviews, videos and more gadget goodness!

DT Newsletter Sign-Up

Sign-up for the Digital Trends newsletter and find out about the latest contests, the hottest content, and the most popular videos. Let us keep you up-to-date!

Our Facebook

Become a DT soldier! Join us on Facebook and share the best news, guides, videos and other cool information directly with all your friends. Some might even thank you for it!

Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Facebook.

Twitter Us

Do you like information in small snippets? Then our Twitter feed is just for you. Follow Digital Trends and you'll be able to catch up daily on our latest content, or even interact directly with our team. Tweet Tweet!

Join the thousands and follow the best of us on Twitter.

That’s Right, Sign-up For Our Monthly Random Prize Drawings and You Could Be That Winner.