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So sonicblue went bankrupt, someone bought Rio, and some other divisions, but declined on the Empeg. So who currently owns the Empeg design?

DNNA do I believe. Most of the empeg team now work for them.

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It seems that with a few updates, and savage price reduction, this could sell quite a bit better today.

Savage price reduction? That already happened back in the fire sale days...

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Plus, if sold as a platform, there is already an open-source OS for it (hijack).

It runs Linux to be specific. Mark has patched it to support extra functionality and fix various bugs regarding the player but it's not a seperate OS. Even if you didn't have the existing port, creating a new one isn't particularly difficult for ARM platforms. What IS hard however is the player. The empeg team have invested several years of time in writing it and large portions of the code are still used in new products.

Basically, look else where. Barring any surprise annoucements, the player and design aren't going to be released or purchased for a low price.