Diamond Rio PMP300 - The 1998 MP3 Player Experience

I think we got our channels switched this week…

Dankpods talks about calculators and LGR talks about an MP3 nugget all in the same week. Fun times all around.

That "magical" feeling from ripping CDs was legit. I remember the first CD I ripped was The Slim Shady LP and it was freaking mind blogging that I was listening to the songs while the CD was sitting next to me in the case.

Thank you for capturing the nostalgia of this time. I spent so many hours ripping cds and trying to organize digital music files. I remember leaving downloads going all night on a P2P program, then waking up in the morning to see what actually downloaded. Thank you for putting this together.

dankpods makes an extremely LGR video, LGR makes an extremely dankpods video. the world is in balance

Media was so expensive back then, I waited for the CD/MP3 versions, easy to burn those mp3's to inexpensive CD's and enjoy hours of playback per CD. Great vid as always!

Ahhh, love hearing the 1990s RIAA story being retold. The RIAA were just insane with their lack of vision and desire to control.

"Of course, that's all history for the history books." And I appreciate your time and effort into gathering it, Clint. Always nice to know how the device came to be and how it's affected the future.

My dad was one of the Lead Software Engineers that worked this player. We had drawers full of these all over our house when I was in highschool. My dad would let us play test them. I remember my teachers being blown away when I showed them this. If I remember correctly he has several patents in his name pertaining to his work on this. It's crazy to see these showing up on a YT video so many years later.

9:17 Was waiting eagerly for that line.

When mp3s first came out I remember just being blown away by it. We went from huge wav files to mp3s seemingly overnight. Game changer!!

That alliteration of the Rio’s size relative to it’s cost. Precise practical perfection!

The whole RIAA thing they posed against the Rio is how they kept the Philips DCC (digital compact cassette) from becoming commercially viable. They kept Philips wrapped up in legislative road blocks and it was released in like 1992, having been ready for prime time in 1989. At that point is was a technological curiosity at best.

Gotta love the packaging - it couldn't look more late 90's if it tried 😂

I'm so jealous Clint gets to relive days through new-old-stock, but then again I can't think of a person or YouTube channel more deserving of it.

I've been watching for years and I just wanted to say that your editing has improved tremendously in that time. This was a particularly well-made video.

My 1990s mp3 experience: will this be the song I wanted, that clip of bill clinton apologizing, or "developers developers developers!"

I saved, saved, and saved to buy a PMP300 when it was released and it was truly one of my treasured possessions for many years after. Seeing one in new old stock condition- every pamphlet and CD, and especially the software just absolutely floods me with nostalgia.

Yep, I bought one of these on release back in the day. It was pretty amazing at the time, you could actually play back entire CDs on this thing! You have to understand, we were in an age where CD walkmans were pretty new. But THEN.... CD walkmans that could read MP3s came out...

Outstanding video - I remember buying it when it launched....and it replaced my giant CD player that took 6 AA batteries - this was magical...I was stuck with about 6-8 MP3 songs I could play over and over but it was worth it! Also, every kid in high school was like "dude...how is there music coming out of there with no CD? What is an Mp3?". It wasn't until 2000 when everyone realized what an MP3 file was! I still had my original Rip PMP that I fired up back in 2015: it had tracks from the early 2000s era! (ended up donating the player The 8-Bit Guy along with a fully working Creative Nomad Jukebox!)