Rio Carbon MP3 Has A 5G CF To Be Cannibalized 256
GlucoPilot writes "This guy bought a Rio Carbon Mp3 player because he figured he could rip the 5GB CF Card out of it. He did, and put it in his prosumer 6MP digital camera. Now he can take 1,500 six-megapixel pics in one sitting. Oy." The card is apparently a 5GB Microdrive, note, not 5GB of Flash memory.
Be nice to Rio (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this not nice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if they make their money off selling the things.. that doesn't make sense. Why should they care what you do with their product once they've sold it? This could leads to them selling more units.
(Besides which.. The idea of being 'nice' to a business is just ridiculous. It's a friggin' business venture, not a person! They're in it to make money. If they act 'nice' it's because they believe it's a good strategy to make money. I completely fail to see how that should inspire any loyalties from me.)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is that there are some companies I prefer supporting over others, because I know what sort of people are behind them.
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:3, Informative)
A corporation is not a person; legally, figuratively, literally, or in any other fashion. A corporation is a model of ownership, just like "sole proprietorship" or "partnership."
Two of the most obvious differences between a "corporation" and either of the other two ownership models I mentioned are (1) a corporation uses allocation of stock to shareholders, whether publicly traded or not, and (2) the separate entity clause, which says very
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Funny)
AOOOGHAAA!
AOOOGHAAA!
ATTENTION!
ATTENTION!
An Apple Reality Distortion Engineering team has been dispatched to re-educate you in proper company loyalty pavlovian responses.
Please Stand By!
In a hurry?
Shaving your scalp for the electrodes will save time and fuss later.
That is all.
Yeah, yeah, I dissed apple, mod me down, whatever...
I hate to tell you this, but... (Score:3, Informative)
You can't see? (Score:3, Informative)
If a company A is more successful than company B because it acts nicer, that will reinforce company A's nice behavior.
If that is what you value in a company AND it's products, since no product exists in a vacuum, then it SHOULD inspire loyalty from you because that is what you pay for. If you DON'T value niceness, then of course it shouldn't inspire loyal
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:2)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:2)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Insightful)
What? After having given Rio roughly two hundred and fifty bucks, I'm ALSO supposed to advertise for them at no charge? I don't think so. It's like the dealership sticker on the back of cars. My buddy used to tell them that either they knock off, say, a thousand bucks off the cost of the car in exchange for advertising, or lose the sticker before the deal closed (properly... no razor blades). Stunningly, he never drove cars with dealership stickers.
Sure, he was being petty, but I completely agree with the point he made. Why would I advertise for Rio or their ilk? It's not as though they've done me any unilateral favours.
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:2)
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:5, Informative)
A quick google search reveals that a professional camera shop/mail order company sells a 4 GByte microdrive for $370-$500, while the MP3 player is expected to retail for $250. The difference is due to market pricing, as professional photographers are used to paying thousands for a professional camera, while the average consumer is used to paying hundreds for a portable digital product. The casing of the product hides the fact that both products used the same core component. Eventually the market will realize this and take action- perhaps choosing MP3 players with removable microdrives
This isn't any different from Amazon's price discrimination [kdnuggets.com] for books.
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:2)
This is BS man/woman.
Any business out there is intended to make money or why the hell are they there? Even farmers are out there to make a buck so should we treat them the same? And being nice to custo
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:4, Insightful)
I buy a product from Rio, that's that. If they're selling these at a loss, (which I guarantee you they're not) then they're losing money whether I use it, advertise, etc. or not.
If this were not the case, and they are selling it at a loss to increase sales, as someone suggested, then wouldn't their losses increase due to additional sales? What fruity business consultant would come up with that idea?
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Either way it will drive up the costs for Rio, and damage them as a company. They will be forced to become less hacker friendly, and everyone will end up hating them.
Its called thinking more than one step ahead, and this exact same scenario has already occurred to other HDD music player makers.
Good v Bad (Score:2)
As long as you find nothing wrong with them treating you (the consumer) the same way, then fine. Personally I like to reward companies who see benefit in supporting customers with my business.
If you teach companies that they won't be rewarded for playing nice, they won't. If you send the message (with your $$$) that actually
Re:How is this not nice? (Score:2)
Yeah, but the reason they choose that as a strategy is that they anticipate customers favoring their company for its niceness. If niceness is actually important, then lots of people will gravitate toward
Re:Be nice to Rio (Score:2, Insightful)
Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, I'm glad they didn't copy Apple in this respect -- after all, if I were Rio I wouldn't care what my customers did after I bought it, since I would have already been paid.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
Not suitable for continuous r/w operations! Mp3 player/Camera use is a single file being written then the drive is stopped again....
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
A full miniDV tape is 30GB worth. Microdrives are still stuck at 6GB. Additionally, an mp3 player has a very low disk access frequency, which reduces the risks of physical damage while reading/writing. A camcorder on the other hand, is CONSTANTLY accessing the disk.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:3, Interesting)
Varying DV formats (Score:4, Interesting)
Some of the DV "container" formats used on PCs (such as one of the two DV-AVI types) duplicate the audio stream, with the "video" stream actually being the original raw DV (which has both video and audio)
Also, longer tapes might exist now. The typical 60-minute-standard-play tapes are 13 GB. I think that tapes exist that are 75 and even 90 minutes in standard mode now though, although last time I went miniDV shopping they were hard to find and VERY expensive. (Compared to 6-packs of 60s relatively cheap at Costco.)
See above regarding extended play tapes, which I think are 18-20 GB or so (but with a MUCH higher risk of errors) on a 60 minute tape.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:3, Interesting)
What do you mean by "importing as full DV with iMovie"? iMovie can only import as full DV - there are no choices. Are you importing it with something else as full DV and THEN importing those clips into iMovie? Because that would double your disk space used - iMovie makes a duplicate of whatever you import.
If not that, are you using an 80 minute tape in LP mode?
I use iMovie quite a bit and 1 tape = ~13 GB for me.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2)
Yes, the cost would be higher, as a 6GB Microdrive is expensive, and you'd also need an MPEG-4 encoder chip, but the size/weight of the camcorder would be significantly reduced, I'd think.
Also, Microdrives are often used in such constant-access situations. For example, anybody who owns a PDA and plays video files off a Microdrive (Or any other type of
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? DV tape is so much cheaper, with much bigger capacity.
While a microdrive may be faster, with random access, DV tapes are fast enough for almost all camcorder applications, and far more robust than a microdrive.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:2)
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:5, Insightful)
While reason #3 is often cited by conspiracy theorists to be some kind of plot to prevent people from canibalizing drives out of the ipod to prevent potential loss of iTunes revenue, it is really only a side effect of reasona #1 and #2. If running full-fledged drives in the iPod were actually cheaper or the same price as running drives with reduced integrated electronics, rest assured Apple would do it. It's got to be a fairly difficult/expensive/unnecessary engineering process to integrate drive electronics into your design simply to keep people from buying your product to take it apart.
Re:Speaking of cameras... (Score:4, Informative)
players makes two types of drives. One type has both a IDE interface
and a CF (compact flash) interface. These will work in the MP3 players,
cameras, and as a hard drive on a computer. The other type only has
the IDE interface. These will work in the MP3 players and as a hard
drive on a computer, but will not work on the cameras. The Apple uses
the IDE only drive. The Muvo used the IDE and CF compatible version
until Hitachi made them switch to the IDE only version, because it was
hurting sales of their stand alone product at much higher margins. The
Rio player uses a Seagate drive so the issues may be different.
BTW Creative has a new Muvo with the Seagate drive, that is easier to take apart.
http://www.vr-zone.com/?i=1249&s=1 [vr-zone.com]
http://www.photo.net/equipment/hitachi/mp3microdr
1500? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1500? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:1500? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really. The Digital Rebel and 10D both get about 500-600 shots out of the battery if you don't use the flash, AF in servo mode(ie continuous refocusing) or use a lens with image stabilization a lot. Canon and Nikon both make vertical grips for their cameras which hold two standard battery packs.
I've gone to motorsport events and taken 2-3GB of RAW photos on one battery pack, and I use both image stabilization and AI servo focus mode. I have two packs, and I've almost never needed the second one in my year of ownership thus far.
I have an older 330MB microdrive. It's slow as shit. CF cards used to be slower, now it's completely the opposite. Compared to my Sandisk Extreme and Ultra II cards, the microdrive takes 4x longer to offload photos from the buffer.
When you've been shooting pictures of every 4th car going by you and then one of them locks up the rear and starts to spin, you want as many shots out of the 9-shot camera buffer as possible. Shoot continuous at 3fps for 3 seconds and sort the good from the bad on the laptop later.
Most pros don't use anything over 1GB. Why? Because 1GB is almost 120 photos for a 10D- a shitload. So you're not swapping that often. By using 4 1GB cards- if one gets erased, stepped on, lost, or dies on you- you're only out 1/4 of your photos, instead of ALL of them. Furthermore- 1 can be in your 'digital wallet' widget or laptop, while the other is in your camera. Oh, and it's hideously expensive for a 4GB card versus a 1GB card or a bunch of 512's, just like those super-huge memory dimms cost much more per MB than a 512 or 1GB stick.
Re:1500? (Score:5, Funny)
You just need more fiber in your diet.
Re:1500? (Score:2)
I have the same camera he has, the Nikon D70, and I can say it is a sweet camera. I have a couple of the high capacity cards and a microdrive card and they do hold a lot of pictures but I question this drive people have to get big and fatter cards.
Sure, you can get 1500 pictures on this card but I ask you is this a wise thing? I know CF card falure is rare but it does happen and the microdrives are more prone to fail than the memory cards are. It seems to me more logical instead of carrying a couple o
Re:1500? (Score:2)
You're right generally, of course, but plenty of even portable applications can use this kind of storage (and more).
Re:1500? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm about to take mine out to do some shotting and I've been shooting on the same battery for 2 weeks now.
No News Here (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see why this is making news now. Those of us with the high end digital SLR and such have been doing this since we first found out you could get these CF cards in these players. It's cheaper to buy the player and canblize it for the CF than to buy the CF.
Waste of a good player if you ask me.
But this is 5, not 4! (Score:4, Interesting)
The interesting thing is, I was under the impression that both Creative and Apple have now protected their Microdrives so they're not readable in a camera.
For those who are thinking of doing this, beware, though. I bought a cannibalized microdrive, which worked for about weeks, then died without warning. Now I have no idea how to get the thing fixed.
Defending Slashdot's repost policy (Score:2)
Not everyone reads the first article. Quite frankly, I'm glad Slashdot reposts nearly identical articles.
Providing they're not posted the same day.
Re:No News Here (Score:2)
Cannibalized? (Score:5, Funny)
5GB Microdrive on eBay: $96 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:5GB Microdrive on eBay: $96 (Score:5, Informative)
This drive is PC Card sized, which is not usable in any modern consumer digital camera. The seller was simply keyword spamming. "Microdrive" is actually a marketing name created by IBM (and then sold to Hitachi) for a hard drive with a CompactFlash interface, so neither this auction nor the Seagate drive can be legally called a Microdrive.
Re:So microdrives are dying? (Score:2)
Article Text - Server Super Slow (Score:5, Informative)
As I described yesterday, I bought a very nice MP3 player, the new Rio Carbon 5GB model. It's awesome, and I already like it a lot. My original intent, though, was not to buy an MP3 player to listen to music, but instead to rip apart for its 5GB hard drive, for use in my Nikon D70 digital camera. But once I saw the Carbon, I decided it was time to own an MP3 player, so I got two.
Rather than eating lunch today, I decided I would share my story of destruction. In part two of our saga, I tear into the second of the two Carbons I bought, pictures included.
Note: If you decide to spend $249 on one of these things and tear it apart yourself, you do so at your own risk. It's value to Rio and the store you bought it at will instantly become $0, and your warranty will be a thing of the past. At your own risk, your mileage may vary, do not pass go, please tip your waitress. Oh, and whatever you do, don't come yelling at me. It's your own damn fault. In fact, you will probably end up with $249 worth of useless junk. You have been warned.
Okay, so first of all let me tell you right up front that I broke the thing to the point where I will have to use a little glue to put it back together. The Carbon has a metal back plate, and a plastic front plate, with a rubber surround. What I did not realize is that the front plate is in sections, as well. Not realizing this, I didn't remove the front plastic facing (the silver plastic with the LCD window and the Rio logo) from the body of the MP3 player. It is held in place with some adhesive. Just be careful while you remove it and it will come right off. Once off, it may be that there is a better way to get this thing apart than the method I used. If I will have to use some glue inside where it used to have screws holding things together, because I broke a few plastic threads on the plastic case where the screws were attached as I pried it apart.
While it looks from the outside like the rubber portion is a section all on it's own, it in fact is not. The rubber part is just glued to the plastic front plate, which is under the silver plastic front cover just mentioned.
How I got it apart (your mileage may vary, be careful): I started by working a small screwdriver around the case, prying very gently between the metal back plate and the rubberized section. There are a number of metal tabs that you will see inside as you go. Those hod the drive in place. Be careful and don't go too deep or apply too much pressure inside with your screwdriver, you will break things if you do, or you might crack the case. If you don't care about reusing the Carbon, you can afford to be a little more indiscriminate, but things are packed together pretty tight in the small case, so caution and taking one's time is warranted.
Once I worked all the way around with the small screwdrivers (I used 2, it helped keep things working along), I peeked inside to become a little bit familiar (there's a lot you just cannot see, though). Then I used a screwdriver inserted from the bottom of the case to get good leverage as pictured below, and worked the case looser.
In the end, I used my fingers, after loosening with the screwdriver, to take the case apart. Again, note that I broke the plastic threaded screw posts in the process. The end result was a front plate, a loose power button (just insert it back in place later), the top chrome-like trim plate (that has the holes in it for USB, earphones, etc), and the back plate with all the electronics attached. The front panel navigation button is loose when you disassemble it - it's held in place by the front plate.
There are two screws that you will need to remove from the face of the circuit board (the side with the LCD screen), and then you can start to swing the circuit board away from the hard drive. Below is the view from the side, pulling the circuit board up and away from the battery (lower left) and hard drive (in the lower center of the picture under t
Re:Article Text - Server Super Slow (Score:4, Informative)
Nit picking (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
So his camera makes 10% smaller jpegs/raws(didnt rtfa) then yours, which is more then possible given the different compression strategies used.
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
But really, how often do you need that many pics?
All the time if you are doing astrophotography and stack images. If you are shooting 10-15 raw photos at a time, you can only get 12 series of exposures on a 1 GB card.
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
Re:Nit picking (Score:2)
Batteries are more of an issue, anyway, but even so it only takes a few seconds to changeout a CF card or a battery, so it just isn't worth the potential loss of data to use cards with ridiculously large capacitie
this is kind of cool but ... (Score:2, Informative)
its about $180 for a 5G drive with some sort of warranty
Re:this is kind of cool but ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Energy consumption (Score:5, Interesting)
-- yeah, i know, my english sucks
Re:Energy consumption (Score:4, Informative)
Anyone who's tried, please post this find... (Score:5, Interesting)
And to note... I recently spoke with someone at Hitachi. They said the MAIN reason the iPod mini is a closed device where you can't just remove the drive easily is solely to protect it's market for the drives otherwise.
Re:Anyone who's tried, please post this find...Huh (Score:2)
If that was the case, why doesn't Hitachi just swap a couple pins for their embedded customers. That way it would not be interchangable with the consumer version.
Re:Anyone who's tried, please post this find... (Score:2)
my wish list... (Score:5, Interesting)
since we are talking cameras, i might as well ask. i have a 2mp camera which takes good pictures, but i am thinking about getting a 3 or 4mp as prices have fallen (paid over $250 for my 2mp 18 months ago). what digi camera's do people have, and how do they like them? my 2mp is fuji, and i have been happy with them. the 2mp takes nice pictures, but a guy at the photohut told me that for anything larger than 4x6, i should get a better camera.
Re:my wish list... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:my wish list... (Score:2)
Re:my wish list... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying to make money, not help you.
Re:my wish list... (Score:2)
not asking for much are you? (Score:2)
Want really good zoom? Get a DSLR and a nice lens. The nikon D70's 18-70mm kit lens is worth $500 but only costs a bargain $250 in the kit.
More battery power = bigger battery = bigger camera. Size is a purchase factor for many people.
Most DSLR's can shoot well over 1000 shots between charges and theres no need to turn the camera off. Heck, my D70 *never* turns off com
Re:my wish list... (Score:2)
Are Slashdotters retarded (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Are Slashdotters retarded (Score:3, Funny)
In other Digital Camera Storage News.. (Score:5, Interesting)
With the ability to take so many 6MP pictures... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Batteries? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got a Sony DSC-V1, and I love it. But getting a > 256mb memory stick won't do me too much good without extra batteries.
Seagate Drive Will Soon Be Released As Standalone (Score:4, Informative)
Seagate says drives will ship in September (Score:5, Informative)
The drive was designed in Singapore and manufactured in China. Seagate, once a California company, is now so multinational they barely have US operations. They've closed plants in Ireland, Mexico, Mayalasia, and Singapore because those places weren't low-cost enough.
Here's the ST1 drive manual [seagate.com]. Expect a glut of these things in January, once the holiday season business has been fulfilled and the production lines are running at full speed.
Priceless ! (Score:5, Funny)
Cost of trip to buy Rio: $5
Value of your time to disassemble Rio: $50
Having your hack featured on Slashdot: PRICELESS!
The Next DIY Project (Score:3, Interesting)
After all, if people are cannibalizing OnStar systems after the subscription runs out just to get the GPS components, someone ought to be able to suggest a use for the rest of your Rio.
Re:The Next DIY Project (Score:2)
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, there's the other side of it: what if somebody wanted the shell? The thing that upsets me about the iPod Mini is that I want an iPod (to sync with my iBook), but I want a flash-based player. I would have loved to buy an iPod Mini shell off Ebay after somebody else took the hard drive, but NOOOO, Apple had to go screw it up!
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
Better yet, mod it up so that a CF card reader slot was put in there, so you could swao out CF cards. So does anyone know if you can do that, and if so, anyone have an mp3 player shell t
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
However, if you'd want an MP3 player that's designed to use CF cards, there's exactly one(!) company out there that makes them, called Frontier Labs. [frontierlabs.com] They make a CF-based player called the NexIA. [frontierlabs.com] I've thought ab
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
Anyways, seems like a cheap way to get a very nice mp3 player, that you can scale with larger cards as you a) get more money and b) they get cheaper.
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:2)
So even though power consumption of a memory card is about 4 times less than a microdrive (305mA write vs 80mA write, but possibly worse since it will only be reading and the flash is still 80mA read), it will be spending about 4 times as long actually reading from the device, too.
And I'm fairly certain that the iPod shuts down the hard drive entirely, rather than having it sit idle, to conserve power. If it doesn't, it could, and considering
Re:Time for a redesign (Score:3, Insightful)
But... aren't CF memory cards anywhere from 3 to 5 times slower?
In a word, No
High end CF memory cards are 2 to 3 times [robgalbraith.com] faster than microdrives. [robgalbraith.com]
Of course they can cost up to fourteen thousand dollars for the really big ones [dpreview.com]
Re:Er, Duplicate Article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Er, Duplicate Article (Score:2)
Re:Lifespan (Score:2)
Re:Rio Return Scam? (Score:2)
Re:Rio Return Scam? (Score:2)
Re:Rio Return Scam? (Score:2)
Of course, that's why I like tamper-proof seals on things. That way you can be relatively sure that no one has had the device before you. I never by "open box" electronics for this very reason--the stores just can't test everything and often are so swamped that they overlook little things, and it's
Re:Rio Return Scam? (Score:2)
Re:Rio Return Scam? (Score:2)
Even the other little stickers seem to come off just fine... the only ones that have severe issues are the "protection" ones that leave behind bits of themselves spelling out "VOID" or somesuch.
We once bought a nice 80gb drive from Future Shop as an "open box" drive... whoever had the drive prior had low-level formatted it to 2gb... and we couldn't
yes (Score:2)
Of course it does. Just drop it into a Zaurus or other handheld running Debian. I can imagine using partitions as /usr and /var.