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The Rio PMP-300 portable mp3 player. The top view shows the face of the player. The bottom view shows the edge of the player (including its proprietary connector) and the included parallel-port adaptor.

The Rio PMP300 was the second portable consumer MP3 digital audio player (portable digital audio player), and was produced by Diamond Multimedia. It shipped in 1998.

Roughly the dimensions of a deck of cards (3.5 inches by 2.5 inches and 0.625 inches thick), the Rio was black and had an LCD screen and a circular pad with control buttons. It had controls for skipping tracks forwards or backwards, repeat, random play and for four preset equalizer settings. The LCD displayed the track number being played, but did not display artist or title information. It could play MP2 and MP3 format audio files, and had support for a variety of bit-rates and had MP3 variable-bitrate (VBR) support.

It shipped with 32 Mbytes of internal memory and had a SmartMedia slot, allowing users to add additional memory (up to another 32Mbytes - larger cards are not recognized by the Rio's firmware). It was powered by a single AA battery which provided between 8 and 12 hours of playback time. Connection to a personal computer was through the computer's parallel port, with a proprietary connector on the Rio's edge.

The Rio retailed for US $200 with the ability to play 12 or so songs at 128kBPS. An even more expensive version was later released, and was colored translucent green and equipped with a larger 64 Mbyte internal memory, at a cost of $250.

Diamond no longer provides support for the Rio, and the last version of Microsoft Windows to work with Diamond's Rio software was Windows 98. Consequently, owners wanting to keep their Rio working use independently produced freeware programs such as "Dreaming of Brazil" or "RIOsitude" to upload audio files to the player. Similarly, limited Linux command-line based support for the Rio is provided by the rioutils package.

In October 1998, the American recording industry group, the Recording Industry Association of America, filed a lawsuit in the Ninth U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco claiming the player violated the 1992 Audio Home Recording Act. The three judge panel ruled in favor of Diamond, paving the way for the development of the MP3 portable player market. [1]

• Eiger Labs MPMan F10 – the first portable MP3 player

• The Adrenaline Vault's review of Rio PMP300 at The Adrenaline Vault (this link is outdated)
• Rioworld drivers, manuals, and software for most old Rio digital music players
• Original Rio PMP300 product page, from Archive.org, mentioning two of the first digital music services: Goodnoise and MP3.com