A bit back I posted that Rio had gone belly-up. All assets had been sold to Sigmatel, and hope for anything developed by their team looked lost.
Looks like I jumped the gun.
Turns out, Sigmatel has kept Rio’s development team, along with everything they’d been working on when Rio closed up shop. According to a thread on Riovolution, the whole STMP3600 reference design that was planned for the Chroma is still alive and well, and will likely be used as the foundation for other players soon. That includes the best features of the Karma (gapless playback, wide format compatibility, parametric EQ), plus MSC compliance and several others.
How long before we see it in a consumer-level product is anyone’s guess. Austin Vaughan was at CES a few days back, and Ralph Fiennes (Rio’s primary Karma developer) gave an interview, in which we get this:
We got a product demonstation of Sigmatel’s reference design for a player that’s just like the Rio Avalon – an 8gb MicroDrive based player which has the same body style as the Rio Carbon but has a color screen and all the features of the Rio Karma. All that and more… video playback, animated backgrounds, album art, semi-transparent menu overlays, etc. Very nice. We also learned details of the Opel – which could have been, which still could be – the ultimate DAP.
Looks like there’s still life in the platform.