I had a glance at the winradio web site, and it looks like what you're describing is do-able. The 4ghz box they advertise does indeed have a serial port and a 12v input.

For control software, you'd have to write your own standalone executable which runs on the empeg. Although you might be able to use someone else's Winradio Linux code as a starting point, you'd still have to do a lot of work yourself. You would have to use some of the known information about interpreting button/IR presses and displaying text on the empeg.

Assuming the Winradio serial control command interface is "open" (i.e., you can get the specs), this is definitely something you could do if you had the programming skillz.

You could replace the empeg's init with one that looped back and forth between the empeg player software and your Winradio control software. Select "quit" from the empeg's menu to run the Winradio software. Do the same from the Winradio software to go back to the empeg.

Interesting idea for a project. Let us know if you go through with it.

(Although it seems to me that it'd just be easier to wait for the Empeg tuner...)

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Tony Fabris