There has already been some work done along the lines of porting other kinds of player software to the empeg platform, replacing its existing player software. I seem to recall that some of them even played streams (although I could be wrong about this). A high degree of fit-n-finish wasn't ever achieved, but I know there were working prototypes. Anyone got links?

Another option is the one where you install the empeg player "rio receiver" version, which emulates the rio receiver, and then tweak a server-app so that it'll translate streams to rio receiver units. Dunno if anyone's ever tried that, though. I think all the existing Rio Receiver replacements were a combination of client+server, I dunno if anyone ever did a server-only version that'll send streams to a normal Rio Receiver.