not only does it play mp3s but ppl seem to over look it can play FM radio aswell...

i've been saving money and bought one... DAMN U WOOT.

FM modulars go for ne where from 30 -> 50 and the cheapest i've seen this particular mp3 player on froogle is 70. In addition i have two spare SD cards (one a 256 and the other a 16...) ... plus it plays radio. so if i dont like the mp3 player i can still use the modular fm with my car that HAS NO CASSETTE PLAYER.

The ONLY thing i dont like is the fact it uses tripple A batteries... o well time to use that best buy gift card and pick some NiMH up :-D

so all in all for me its a 512 mb (including my largest extra SD) mp3 player of 100 or more doller value for 44.99 which is quite a deal considering my GF has a 256 mb one with no SD card and it was probably around 150... with no modular FM. excelent deal, boy am i glad i also had that additional SD card, from my camera.

Pochacco1 wrote:Amazon has a review (tho its on the 1GB version), its basically the exact same player but with only 1GB built-in and not 256MB like Woot has, but here is the REAL MAIN problem with this player..

Amazon quote ::
"This is a nice little player in some ways, it had the things I was looking for:

1) Runs on an AAA battery, so no worries about charging
2) Has an SD card slot - great!
3) 1 GB of built in memory - nice

The interface and functionality of the player are very lacking. I got used to it after a couple weeks, but the deal breaker was when I got enough music on it to see that it wasn't playing music in the right order. I had a whole CD of music in one folder and it wasn't playing the songs in the right order. It wasn't even playing them in any kind of predictable order. This thing uses the ID3 tags heavily, but it was ignoring the track # on those too. I finally called tech support, and they told me the Lyra was not programmed to play songs in any particular order - not alphabetically, or by track #, or file name, nothing. "

like i said.. this quote is for the 1GB version, but has all the EXACT SAME features of the 256MB Woot has here... just pointing out the possible problems..

Looking at the manual
http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/NR/rdonlyres/CA8E68C3-4120-4B33-B176-4E51B82B73EA/0/RD2312IB.pdf
on page 17 it describes a shuffle function. Why would there be a shuffle function if it already played items in a random order?? Kinda wonder if the Amazon reviewer had the shuffle feature on and didn't know it. hehe

[quote user="dllwoot"]I really do like this device as a basic player with FM and Line In recording features, but I forgot to mention a couple of other drawbacks:

. . . quote]

How's the reception with the FM tuner? I have a Rio Forge 256mb (SD expandable also) with an FM tuner and it only has decent reception if you're outdoors. Once you go inside (even with lots of windows) the reception sucks.

chakan wrote:This is exactly what I'm looking for. I don't really listen to music much except when I'm in the car, and it seems silly to drop $200 + on an I-Pod I'll only use for a half hour a day. Assuming the FM modulator works, this is the perfect low-cost solution for me.100 free mp3s sealed the deal for me.

2nd that, I have a broken tape deck in my car, but a 6 CD changer in the trunk, so this will get me thru the commute, and then some with SD card from my digi cam, 3rd woot, and I'm bound be as happy with this as the prev. two

kuddy, you need a working FM radio in your car in order for the FM modulator to work. It sends out an audio signal over FM waves, so you can listen to your music over FM. It won't transfer straight to the speakers.
I've got an iPod, so I don't have a reason for this, however, I think I'm just going to get one for my little brother. It would be a nice brotherly thing to do, eh?

df00l wrote:Could I use both of these items combined to tune to one radio station and broadcast it on another frequency? Or perhaps on the same frequency 0.o? Would this create a tear in the space-time continuim?

Ha ha! Man, you GOTTA lay off the Star Trek for awhile!

joekisonu wrote:

Actually... no, you don't. Wanna listen to radio or mp3s in the car? use the headset.

Can't do that - it's illegal in most/all state to wear headphones while driving.
I have gotten a ticket for it! Don't do it - they will pull you over.
(ps - Ticket more than cost of this woot)

apparently it can also record off the radio, voice, and line in.

also every site i've seen it on with the FM transmitter have no pics of it... i assume its the same as the one on woot, in which case...
they all sell for around 89.95
http://www.procura.com/rd-2312fm.html

kristalipe wrote:

Can't do that - it's illegal in most/all state to wear headphones while driving.
I have gotten a ticket for it! Don't do it - they will pull you over.
(ps - Ticket more than cost of this woot)

Sheesh... what kind of headphones were you wearing? The big huge Princess Leah style? I see people wearing the ear-bud type or the small over ear type all the time. Who's to say whether they're listening to music or using a hands free set up on their cell phone?

joekisonu wrote:[quote user="dllwoot"]I really do like this device as a basic player with FM and Line In recording features, but I forgot to mention a couple of other drawbacks:

. . . quote]

How's the reception with the FM tuner? I have a Rio Forge 256mb (SD expandable also) with an FM tuner and it only has decent reception if you're outdoors. Once you go inside (even with lots of windows) the reception sucks.

I mostly listen to this indoors (near a window) and it gets decent reception here. There have been a few times where I've had to move it around a little, but I think it's pretty clear about 80-90% of the time.

Also, this plays tracks sequentially, unless you have the shuffle feature turned on.

There is a firmware upgrade that is supposed to fix/improve some of the features (http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/Cultures/en-US/Downloads.html?ProductID=RD2312).

merloj159 wrote:
however, most FM modulators/transmitters are pretty crappy in terms of sound quality. For people who want to play their MP3 music through their car stereo but with no line-in or aux in their car stereo, it's the only option.

Not true, a cassette adapter is an option if their car stereo has a cassette player.

Might be something very good. Woot stuff often can be outstanding bargains. Gee, I've bought enough Woots to say that. (Though always non-refurbished stuff--who needs someone else's problem passed on to them?)

In any case, tonight's offering is new. But prior to hitting that I WANT ONE button, some research into the recent history of the sold-off RCA brand name might be something Wooters might benefit from.

I thought you guys said you cleaned out all your old stuff, this woot seems a bit ancient seening how they have already have video on mp4 players and this thing still has a red display.

give us something to talk about!

joekisonu wrote:

Sheesh... what kind of headphones were you wearing? The big huge Princess Leah style? I see people wearing the ear-bud type or the small over ear type all the time. Who's to say whether they're listening to music or using a hands free set up on their cell phone?

They weren't that big - standard cheapo CD player headphones for the era (about 8 years ago) - with ear pieces about the size of a quarter, but I only had one on my ear, the window side ear was clear. This was before cell phone ear buds were popular, so maybe the cops don't pay attention anymore. But it is still illegal, and with good reason - with headphones, even earbuds, you can't hear traffic and emergency vehicles around you. Don't wear headsets while driving.

tehsuxs wrote:I thought you guys said you cleaned out all your old stuff, this woot seems a bit ancient seening how they have already have video on mp4 players and this thing still has a red display.

Actually, you have a choice of three backlight colors - blue, red and purple - and the display can flip so you can read it from whichever direction you are holding it from.
Red light is the best if you don't want to ruin your night vision while driving at night.

OK you sold me. Already have a Rio but it gets acts up sometimes. Also I have a FM modulator that runs on batteries. When I bought it I figured it was better than the cigarette lighter type because it would be portable, but it burns up batteries quickly so I'm using a battery for my Rio and two for the modulator. Also this has voice recording with a built in mic. I can use it to make notes for reminders. Also to get at the memory card on the Rio I have to open it up, on this one I don't.

tehsuxs wrote:...and this thing still has a red display.

actually u can change it from red to blue to purple even!
i'm really liking the line-in recording feature - I just wonder what does it record it at 320kbps? VBR? - manual doesn't say...
anyways hearing that this thing has worked with 1GB SD cards was the selling point for me - I'm a sucker for SD expandability (I've bought the Motorola m25 (GREAT BUY!) and the Izod...(DOA and NO RMA (was after "90 day warranty" that I was never informed of...) a total POS)
at least with this it's a "brand name" and "new" hehe - 5th woot! w00T!

wanted to point out from manual:
Note:
For better result, we
recommend a constant encoded bit
rate from 32 to 320 kbps for mp3
and 48kbps to 192 kbps for
Windows Media Audio.
Nevertheless, your unit may play
tracks encoded in variable bit rate
(VBR). - hmmm as long as it works with --alt-preset standard I should be fine

u4icw0n wrote:first of all, it doesnt really matter who did it first. what matters is who does it best. i am a loyal woot fan, but talking doody about apple will not due. first of all i work for apple, i would not work for a company i didnt believe in. second, if there is any respact to be paid, it shall be paid to the ipod. 256mb is a smurfing joke, and how dare you even make such a silly ass atempt at badmouthing a company that has had to deal with bill 'steal your ideas' gates. i would venture to say that you have little to no idea how apple was even created. market your products, use sales pitches, do what you have to do. but DO NOT run your uninformed mouth about a company like apple, ever.

Automaton!

Apple sucks for doing the same proprietary crap they've always done. And you know what? They always end up coming back to industry standards sooner or later. And they can rot in hell for charging $.99 per song. In a proprietary format.

dang, my first WOOT purchase and didn't stop to think that WOOT is in Dallas thus has brick/mortor presence in my state thus TAXES! ARRRGGGHH!! Annoying as can be; one of the best things about online shopping is the whole no taxes routine.

Oh well, what the hell.
Mc Watt, right before he flew into the mountain

[quote user="dancestoblue"]dang, my first WOOT purchase and didn't stop to think that WOOT is in Dallas thus has brick/mortor presence in my state thus TAXES! ARRRGGGHH!! Annoying as can be; one of the best things about online shopping is the whole no taxes routine.


TAXSUCKS - put in promotion code field = No Taxes for Texans!

I've read folks in the forum tonight going on about the 100 free songs, but you could easily get them anyhow, in fact they gave me fifty and then gave me a hundred more trying to get me to join. Lots of good music but you've got to dig. Good news if you are into Elliot Smith or Tom Waits or ?? Can't remember, been over a year, but you'll easily find a hundred songs you'll like, I dug through the whole catalog at the time, almost certainly it's lots bigger now but I bet there is still lots of dreck.

Just an fyi...

And joining into the silly iPod vs whatever fray, I love my iPod mini but I don't like to take it on that mountain bike, this will be just fine, probably I'll sell the fm modulator on Craiglist for ten bucks or fifteen, got a good stereo in the pickup, mp3 cds blah blah blah. Anyways, if I fall into a creek or go over the handlebars and land on this mp3 player who cares, not one of lifes biggies, but I'd hate to ruin that iPod. (btw, anyone wants a Griffin iBeam for your iPod, give me a shout, 12 bucks shipped to your door, new in the box.)

Oh well, what the hell.
Mc Watt, right before he flew into the mountain

Darn you Wooters. Last thing I needed was another mp3 player but you guys make some awful good points. Also, I already have 2 modulaters (FYI- there are FM modulaters out there that go for under $20) but agree with earlier poster about the batteries issue. The fact that this one plugs in is a huge plus. I will use it when I travel for my IPOD.

sa22112 wrote:[quote user="dancestoblue"]dang, my first WOOT purchase and didn't stop to think that WOOT is in Dallas thus has brick/mortor presence in my state thus TAXES! ARRRGGGHH!! Annoying as can be; one of the best things about online shopping is the whole no taxes routine.


TAXSUCKS - put in promotion code field = No Taxes for Texans!

Backward, oh backward
Oh, Time in your flight...

Well, won't help me this time but next time I'll know - thanx sa22112

Oh well, what the hell.
Mc Watt, right before he flew into the mountain

u4icw0n wrote:first of all, it doesnt really matter who did it first. what matters is who does it best. i am a loyal woot fan, but talking doody about apple will not due. first of all i work for apple, i would not work for a company i didnt believe in. second, if there is any respact to be paid, it shall be paid to the ipod. 256mb is a smurfing joke, and how dare you even make such a silly ass atempt at badmouthing a company that has had to deal with bill 'steal your ideas' gates. i would venture to say that you have little to no idea how apple was even created. market your products, use sales pitches, do what you have to do. but DO NOT run your uninformed mouth about a company like apple, ever.

Take your blinders off. Believe in the company that employees you? Good for you, but we don't really care as the rest of us don't blab about it because no one is interested.

You really need to get your facts straight before calling others uninformed unless you really believe Apple created the GUI, etc (then you're just hopeless). Do some research/reading if you don't get this.

Apple has its good and bad like 99.9% of the companies. iPod is successful due to its ease of use/accessibility to the masses (along with iTunes), the same reason some people are loyal Mac people, this is mostly different than the techier woot crowd. You are sorely mistaken if you believe iPod's success is due to its sound quality and technical innovations. It's the social aspects of their products that make them successful (ease of use, style, snob factor), great for Apple, and great for their target audience. There are many of us that are not the target audience. As long as you're happy with your iPod(s), more power to you. I for one cannot be happy with any portable music player with just adequate sound that requires proprietary software to transfer music and does not support transfering music from the player to a PC without 3rd party utils/hacks. And at times, I may leave my HDD based music device at home and take a disposable battery player with interchangeable flash cards for a different kind of convenience. The choice for techies is still iRiver. And at times, this Lyra.

Donjeep wrote:Who doesnt have a mp3 player by now. Love ya woot but not tonight.

It's not "who doesn't have a mp3 player by now", it's "who doesn't have *this* mp3 player" and wants it.

phirenze wrote:I bought the last RCA Lyra woot (the 1.5 GB one) and the thing crapped out on me after only a few months. Not that it was any good while it worked though. For this price though it may be worth the risk and disposibility.

This seems to always happen with rca players. They are all garbage.
I'm not joking. Anything that's rca and mp3 = complete crap. I highly suggest you wait for another woot not labeled "rca".

Masterface7 wrote:lets get one thing straight this thing is not to be compared with an ipod. Ipods are HD players and have a nice small hard drive in them this is a flash player. Its like storng all the songs on ram. if you wanna compare it, compare it to the shuffle which has more memory is a little more expensive but no lcd

riiiiiight. A little bit more expensive. btw this has 256 stored memory which is comparible to your 512 or 1 gig version of the shuffle which costs 4 times as much. Do the math.

kgonepostl wrote:

hill-a-r-iouse!!!

comedy, couldn't agree with you more. trust me i have my issues with the big announcements. speakers and stupid stuff like that the problem is most people dont really know when the good stuff comes out. so the waiting plus the hype = disapointment, sometimes. but, yeah i agree that wouldnt be such a big deal at all

Cheapest modulator is from Wal-Mart, 19.99. But my daughter has a Lyra, and she wouldn't trade it for an IPod. I hated the Ipod. Anyway, bought this. Who needs 4000 songs anyway? And iTunes sucks.
Sorry Apple Fans. No, I mean Sorry to Apple Fans!

An MP3 playere with only 256 MB isn't much use to me. SD/MMC only goes up to 2 GB and for that price, I might as well stick with buying hard drives. Woot should offer a car radio that plays CD's/MP3's and or DVD's. I think that would be more useful. Any on to the next woot.

evilkeo wrote:anyone know how big of an SD card you can use in this?

It's been my experience that there is no upper-limit on expansion when using SD memory cards. What often happens, when I have been able to find documentation stating some limit, is that the documentation contains "expandable up to X" when X is the largest available memory card available to consumers at the time the documentation was written. The documentation isn't so much telling you about a technical limit as they are telling you "you can expand it up to the biggest card they know about." Of course they don't warrant the device as working with cards larger than they imagined. I did have much older mp3 player using a SmartMedia card that only recognized their maximum capacity regardless of the actual capacity of the card. But that was back in the early to mid 1990s.

I'm currently using a 1GB card in a previous woot whose manual claimed it was expandable up to 512MB. Another user is currently using a 2GB SD card in that previous woot.

Currently you can buy 2GB SD cards. Another web site has a 2GB SD card for $78.

http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/NR/rdonlyres/CA8E68C3-4120-4B33-B176-4E51B82B73EA/0/RD2312IB.pdf:

512mb is the maximum SD/MMC card for this unit. So, 768mb total storage.

http://www.rcaaudiovideo.com/Cultures/en-US/RD2312_15_17Firmware:

"Supports a total of 520 songs, in up to 50 folders, with up to 8 levels of subfolders."

Bummer...

No Woot for me.

u4icw0n wrote:first of all, it doesnt really matter who did it first. what matters is who does it best. i am a loyal woot fan, but talking doody about apple will not due. first of all i work for apple,

you've done it now woot; first of all (a couple of times) you've pissed off the night watchman at apple

A previous message on this device is from an owner of this mp3 player who is using a 1GB SD card in the player.

I use one of two programs for setting the playback order or creating playlists in my solid-state mp3 players one program is called ReOrganize available at http://www.oliver-frietsch.de/?LinkID=ReOrganize-EN

Another program I like is Playlist Creator by oddgravity. Just use your favorite search engine to find it.

ReOrganize pre-pends the proper ASCII character to the filename so the file appears in the desired order among the files. Playlist Creator creates simple playlists of the .pls or .m3u type. I use ReOrganize on my Muvo TX, which doesn't read playlists. I use Playlist Creator on my woot-deliverd Rio Cali.

The forums today are almost entertaining. But mostly just annoying. Everyone shut up, you all suck :)

now that I've said that, if this woot is not for you, then move on . If it is, buy it. If you have useful information/insights to share, share it.

I own an iPod and the only reason i do is because I got it for free through a referral program. I couldn't justify paying $200+ for an mp3 player when I use it so little. My car stereo has an auxiliary input (I installed the entire sound system myself, so I made sure it did), so I don't have any need for the FM broadcaster today's woot includes, but the one particularly cool thing about this item, though, is that it has recording capabilities. I'm assuming if I had it I could hook up a microphone and take it to class and record lectures, or hook up a line-out from my car stereo to the line-in of the player and record radio stuff to mp3, which is kind of cool.

Now time for my pointless ramblings:
As for the Mac fanboy/MS fanboy bashing, you all know it's not going to get anywhere so why bother. Seriously. There are much better things you could be doing with your life than insulting someone you don't know over the internet whose opinions/preferences differ from your own. I used to consider myself fairly anti-Apple once upon a time (mostly due to ignorance - avoiding what I don't know about), but after I got my free mac mini last April (also through referral programs), I decided I would try it out and see if it was worth having or if I'd throw it on ebay (expecting the latter, of course). Much to my surprise, it impressed me and has managed to replace my Windows PC as my main workstation, web server, ftp server, and video encoding machine - and it's currently in at 196 days uptime (and counting) with zero maintenance. at all. Keeping my PC running for two weeks is a chore. No, my loyalties haven't switched because they never existed in the first place. It's called an open mind, something most people who argue about these things seem not to possess. In fact, I still use and love my Windows-based PC for gaming because the platform is unrivaled for that, and I would never consider myself a person who "made the switch" or anything like that. I am just human, which means I want to get the most benefit out of the least trouble. I just wish people would get over themselves and realize that in matters of opinion and preference, there is no right or wrong (while it's true there's always the possibility of an unjustified argument, for the most part it's all just mindless bashing in the form of "your stuff sucks because it's not what I use and I am better than you because you are not me ha ha ha I beat you in an argument because I am always right and I like to show it off over the internet because nobody in real life cares what I say." hmmm. I think I just bashed everyone at once. It wasn't my intention, and it was certainly an unfair generalization, but whatever. Feel free to tear me apart for anything in this post. I truly don't care :)

kuddy53 wrote:I was thinking about getting this for my giflfriend. Her stereo broke and isnt even in the car. Would this work at all to listen to the radio or mp3's or do i need a working stereo. The speakers work...

this will run your car speakers about as well as it makes toast

u4icw0n wrote:first of all, it doesnt really matter who did it first. what matters is who does it best. i am a loyal woot fan, but talking doody about apple will not due. first of all i work for apple, i would not work for a company i didnt believe in. second, if there is any respact to be paid, it shall be paid to the ipod. 256mb is a smurfing joke, and how dare you even make such a silly ass atempt at badmouthing a company that has had to deal with bill 'steal your ideas' gates. i would venture to say that you have little to no idea how apple was even created. market your products, use sales pitches, do what you have to do. but DO NOT run your uninformed mouth about a company like apple, ever.

I would never buy an iPOD in my life... after all the hearing problems created, lawsuits... and for what you guys try to sell them for, they aren't worth the money. WAYYY over priced, and looking around at all my friends who have broken iPods that apple will not fix i would never get one. Sorry but its my opinion.

That's it...I kidney punchin' Grandma.

The fact that you can add a memory card makes this alot better than a hard drive mp3 player for one purpose...running. I own both types, the memory card mp3 is an RCA and I own a iriver. Hard drive mp3s are hard to have skip, but if they are jolted enough, it will happen. For a couple of bucks, you might as well buy one of these if you're active.