Just curious, does the Rio Reciever do the MP3 decoding, or does the server? I'm just wondering on the aspect of how future proof the product is.

Think about it-- the receiver does the decoding. It has to, to save on network bandwidth and server CPU power. This allows many receivers to work smoothly on the same network, without putting much of a dent in the network throughput or the server's CPU power.

Now, as far as "future proof" goes, remember that the receiver gets its software (decoder and all) from the server. When you power-cycle the receiver, it re-downloads its software from the server from scratch. So upgrades of everything except the receiver hardware are possible.

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Tony Fabris

Not seeing one for more then 5 mins, I wasn't sure. So the capabilities of it now come down to how powerful the CPU is onboard. The empeg has a StrongARM at 220, and my iPaq also has a StrongARM at 206. The iPaq can now do MPEG4 video, so that gives somewhat of an idea of how far the empeg can go before being stuck with an old codec. I'm curious about the same longevity of the RioReciever.

The receiver has a 74Mhz cirrus; arm7 core, only 8k of I+D cache (cf: 16k I-cache and 8k D-cache plus SA110 core on the SA11[01]0).

It's less powerful by some way. However, the chip is capable of MP3, WMA, AAC and Ogg Vorbis.

Hugo

...and Ogg Vorbis.

I hope that was a hint!!!!

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Tony Fabris

Nope.

Nice try

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Rod, UK Mk2 64gig Red S/N.341 Empeg 2xDigital Audio Receiver - one Wireless