Is there any hope for being able to browse music while music is playing?
The larger display, SPDIF out, and Samba functionality are all deal breakers for me and my friends. We played with the Gateway version at a Gateway Country strore and besides having really old firmware (0.88), it worked more or less as expected. Skip delay was 3-5 seconds. We were impressed by the networking options (static/dhcp/hpna/username/password).
If Rio/Empeg Receiver were to change their component form factor, display, spdif out, and Samba support, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
-Hoagy.