Hi Rob,
I use my Central everyday, and I can tell you the CDDB database lookup is definitely working, as of 5 minutes ago when I recorded a new storebought CD.

One thing you don't mention is that a lookup is only needed on CDs newer than when the Central was made in early 2002. So if you recorded a classic CD, it should have the data without looking it up.

But as far as getting error message or Internet timeouts, that only happened to me when I had a physical cable problem on the USB adapter a few months ago. I finally found it and reseated the cable and all was well.

I'm not sure what your problem could be...Do you have a Rio receiver to connect to see if something like that could connect to it? That might give some clues....

Randy