Aren't the Rio Central and the empeg very similar in hard ware?

Yes, and they're even more similar in soft ware.

I assume that if the empeg team is going to provide Ogg support because they are getting the license for free, they may be able to pursuade the bean counters to pay for Ogg on the Rio Central (because the license would be the only cost - they've already done the needed in house developement!)

Seems like this format would really kill in the portable market. Yet WMA has some of the same advantages.

As someone else pointed out, it's a chicken-and-ogg situation. Part of the idea of the Rio Central is to talk to Rio portables, so there wouldn't be much point supporting Ogg (or at least Ogg encode) until all the portables knew about it.

But we have to start somewhere, and I for one am very grateful to Emmett and Xiph for offering us the chance to start with the car player.

Peter