I'm not sure of the dates things started to ship, but here's the story.

The first batch of Rio Cars were wanted quickly. That left little time for sorting out new packaging and so on. We also had a small stock of IBM drives to use up.

The early players were sold as 10GB units, but some people got 12GB units. They were in the original packaging, with the empeg user guide, plus a 4-page addendum, mainly to cover the new remote. All Rio-branded players have a Rio remote.

You can tell the difference betweeen the first and second batch of players by looking at the print on the rear of the player. If you have an unused space marked for a serial number label, then your player is from the second batch. Other than that, the hardware is identical.