Perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic, but I'm not at all surprised that Dell is discontinuing their re-branded Rio Receiver. I won't be terribly surprised if Sonic Blue kills the RR either, though I know the Empeg guys have said somewhere on this board that it's not being phased out, despite being clearance-priced at Best Buy and other retail outlets.

Host-based players are a unique animal these days in a market that is seeing a new standalone player emerging every few months. I'd imagine those devices are struggling to find their market as well as consumers are only starting to appreciate the alternatives to swapping CDs from their changers.

I do hope that Sonic Blue and Empeg stick with the RR and host-based players in particular. The power of the host is barely tapped in the software shipped with the RR, and that's a shame, as there is so much infrastructure in a Windows box that can be used to support a network-based player.

Sonic Blue screwed up big-time in the product development of the RR. They wanted a dumbed-down consumer device, but failed to execute proper support for the consumer. As a small example of missing functionality, where's the integrated CD ripper and tagger? Ideally, when a guy buys a RR, there should be support included for encoding his CD collection. That there isn't support accounts in part for the lackluster reception of the Rio in the marketplace, IMHO.



--Reed (http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net)