169.254.*.* is an automatically assigned IP address when a DHCP server (which allocates IP addresses to devices that ask for them) is not found on the network. It's basically to say, I couldn't get an IP address, so I had to make one up, here it is.

This means that either you don't have a DHCP server on your network (and so will have to configure a fixed IP address on the player), the DHCP server is broken or ignoring connections from the empeg, or the empeg network port is broken in either hardware or software.

Unless you can get it to give you a real IP (most internal IPs are either 192.168.*.* or 10.0.*.*, but that's not an all-inclusive list), you'll have little luck connecting via Ethernet.

Hope this helps,

A.