and I understand that the suits probably balk at spending any money to add Vorbis support (for now)

Well, that and the fact that money would be spent on a product no longer made, or sold by them. I'm suprised 2.0 has gone as far as it has considering so much is specific to the empeg and can't be tied to other products except in a general way. If empeg could convince SB to add Vorbis support to the Rio Reciever or Rio Central with a licence that would also cover the Rio Car at no extra cost, then we might see it.

The whole Beta 4 issue does have me bummed about it as well. I'm still encoding in MP3 like the rest of the house, as 95% of the music played now is via a non computer MP3 device.