Hi Mike,
I've had a Central since they first came out and have been enjoying it for about two years now...It was expensive at the time of release at $1,499, but it was the first of its kind in the market place. I bought it because I wanted a solution to fit in my stereo cabinet that was self-contained (hard drive, could play on the stereo, or stream over the network). With my very large CD collection, the Central has made it so much easier to access and listen to my music collection. I used to have to hunt for particular CDs, and now I can play the music from the Central. It's as easy as playing all music by an artist, playing an album separately, or playing a pre-generated playlist with favorite songs...

Now that Overstock is selling the units for $499, the price is a little bit more reasonable for the Central. What I find very interesting is that in the two years since the Central came out, the industry seems to have gone in a different direction. Consumer-priced players for the most part are now made to attach to a PC or some sort of file share where the music is stored. So these players just stream the music from the PC to their outputs (the Central actually stores the music).

You can get one of these "Streamer" players for about $2-300 or so. No problem, if you have a PC running most of the time that you can store the tunes on. I wanted to get away from that, and get a self-contained solution. So when I saw the Rio Central at the Consumer Electronics show, I ordered one right away. My serial number ends in "019", so maybe I have one of the first ones... While it was pricy, I use it everyday. If something else comes out that can match the Central's features and improve on them, then maybe I'll consider making a change. But the Central is doing the job for me right now...I'm listening to Pat Benatar streaming from the Central right now as I type this...(!)

The machine isn't supported any more, so the features it has are the features you'll get. A software update was released a few months ago that fixed a bug or two, so that's nice.

It doesn't have any analog inputs, so getting your record collection into the central would not be a turnkey operation. You'd have to copy the album songs onto a standalone CD burner to transfer to the Central or you'd have to copy your album tracks onto a computer with the right soundcard to digitize and then you could copy them up to the Central via the LAN connection...

There's always something better coming, but whether it will do what you want is a different matter...I have never regretted my Central purchase, as it does exactly what I want. I have a larger removable hard drive in it and can store large amounts of music on different drives. I even have a small drive filled up with Christmas music and a few other favorites to play around the holidays...

Let me know if you have any questions, as you can see I am a cheerleader for the Central....Thanks, Randy