I'm running both JRec and tRio, latest versions. Thats probably the most negative, in that you have to be running bleeding edge software to get it useable. But once you reach that point, it is most definitely usable. The fact that it netboots is probably both the best and worst thing about the Rio. Best, because it never goes out of date (depending of course, on gracious developers like Reed and Paul) and worst, because it isn't quite drop-in and "a total of 5 minutes to be listening to Christmas music on my stereo via the SLIMP3 from opening the box," to quote from sliMP3 website.

We have digital out adapters (same source as Empeg I believe), a soon-to-be slick web interface, and a hell of a backend in JRec that allowed me to write up a Python XML-RPC web streamer/icecast server in a couple hours (I've kinda put it on hold since the new tRio does basically everything I was attempting to do plus more)

Plus price! I'm picked up my Rio's for $100 a while back, and they still pop up on eBay, although not with the frequency that they used to. Slimp3 is $239 and stops at MP3. Rio's can play MP3, FLAC, Oggs w/o transcoding on tRio, plus whatever else you can throw a decoder/transcoder at in JRec.

Search doesn't exist on tRio right now, but I don't think it would be difficult to add -- Rioplay or Reza's player has search by title from remote.

Probably my main gripe (most would agree) is the display. The small LCD leaves a bit wishing, but the slimp3 doesn't have a big screen to start with either. Another screen (like the sliding LED panel) could be hacked on independent of the Rio to do status displays, although probably not the same way, since its a full graphical LCD panel. But grab the current playing song from tRio, and dump that out a serial port to the LED panel.

The Java programming might scare off the hacker/one-off developers out there (like me!), since both these projects are Java-based. You can get at JRec with the XML-RPC interface, so its a little easier, and tRio is the right approach (all the work on a machine with enough horsepower to do whatever, and basically export the display to the Rio)

loren: "i just want to come home and press a button and hear music, period."

Completely understandable. I'm doing that right now. Ahh, tRio in Jukebox Random Mode.