The other alternative, which might be a much better long-term prospect, would be a new client which made the Receiver fully emulate the Squeezebox! That way the Receiver could benefit from new Slim-Server plugins as they're developed and operate cleanly in a mixed Slim / Rio environment. Of course it's not quite as simple as that - there would need to be a seperate NFS boot-loader and the Rio is in some ways smarter than the SliMP3 / Squeezebox (these cannot link directly to Shoutcast streams for example - all traffic flows via the server). However the development community for Slim is very active and this would give the Rio Receiver a very dynamic future.

Of course the REALLY elegant solution would be for the new client (as an option?) to drive a Noritake VFD from the Rio serial port to provide an exact emulation - probably a better end result than wrapping / scrolling the display text on the current LCD.

As a general point, I think the lack of any standards or interoperability between the multitude of emerging Digital Receivers and their unique Server solutions is a big inhibitor on market growth. The products look too me to be at the stage in their lifecycle where a standard protocol would be more of a benefit to all players than a disadvantage. However the existence of a common solution for Slim and Rio (which probably have the greatest number of shared customers) would be a real bonus whatever happens to the rest.

Now if DNNA could see sense and make the Karma (and a formal Receiver client upgrade) work with Slim Server then THAT would be an interesting development. I wonder what Sean Adams (Mr. Slim...) would make of this idea!