After a few weeks of playing around with xPLRioNet, I now officially consider myself 'converted'. After maxing out ARM, and taking the JReceiver/tRio plunge, I stumbled on the current thread about xPLRioNet and decided to give it a try.
First of all, since it runs as an 'NT' service, it is no good to the Linux people out there (obviously), but if you are running Windows NT/2000/XP on your server machine, this is the way to go! Simply unzip the installation package, configure your setup (easy) and start the service. It has its own database, Rio client software, and web server built in...and best of all, it has a browser-based front end that is editable! It took me just minutes to install, and in the few weeks I've been using it, the author has published several upgrades (also easy to upgrade!). It has many advanced capabilities (text to speech, integration with other xPL devices, Philips Pronto universal remote support, and more...), but I find that it performs the two main functions I need (MP3 and Shoutcast streaming) flawlessly, in an easy to setup and maintain environment.
I have played around with the web front end, and have published a modest replacement for the standard interface on the very active xPL Yahoo! group (
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ukha_xpl ), if anyone is interested.
I highly recommend this excellent replacement software for anyone who needs more than the stock ARM software, who doesn't want to mess with installing all the pieces required to get JReceiver/tRio working (MySQL database, Jetty web server, JReceiver audio server, tRio client software, Rio driver software).
Regards,