I think it has functionality that I haven't seen mentioned for the empeg designed devices. I can take input from a analogue device, encode it, and stream it onto the network. I don't think (though I may be wrong) that the empeg device does that ?

OK, that does have some value - not to me personally, but I'm sure it would to some. But I think it would be much more viable if they had a dumbed down client version that was closer to the Dell/Rio price. Then you could have one expensive server that had a drive, could encode/stream, etc. and a number of much cheaper clients. The clients could be diskless only and wouldn't need the computing horsepower to encode, stream and serve multiple clients. The cheap clients could skip the digital I/O and A/D converter to save on hardware costs. Then I think they would have something.

-Dylan