I just received my RIO Receiver($99 bucks from Tiger). I had been pondering the purchase for several months and along came the email Ad from TigerDirect. I could not resist! Well, I am VERY please so far. Setup took less than 5 minutes(I just loaded the SW and plugged it in the LAN).

Now, I am curious why there is so little discussion on this board? Is there no further development taking place on this product? The SW seems a bit over simplified, there looks to be a lot of room for development. I specifically would like to see the abilty to receive streaming radio added. I would not think this to be too difficult.

So, now that they are cheap, we should see a lot more activity. Right?

Doesn't matter how cheap they are, if you can't get your hands on one, theres not a lot you can do.
But I hope things will pick up as Sonic Blue get themsleves sorted out.
I also have an empeg, and from day 1, most things have been slow to happen. But when they finally they do, they've been worth the wait.
(well apart from discontinuing the empeg. arse.)

Dobbs

I think the lack of traffic on this BBS is simply due to people not knowing it's here. I'm sure there are a lot of Mercury owners who just don't know this BBS exists.

This is in stark contrast to the empeg BBS, where I think nearly every empeg owner has contributed at some point or another.

I'm sure there are a lot of Mercury owners...

What's that on the floor? Oh, Tony just dropped another internal codename .

It's possibly because the platform is less "open" than the car player -- it's a lot harder to bring a shell up on it, for example. Maybe this doesn't engender the same kind of fanaticism.

Sorry, slip of the tongue.

Hardly the most secret of internal code names though, given that the kernel supplied on the un-tars into a folder with mercury in the name...

Nah, I wasn't berating Tony for "leaking" the internal project name -- the whole point of project names is to prevent people knowing what they are until they're released, after all.

The Receiver (mercury) is now released, so that's obviously not a problem. What is a problem is that people might not have realised that he was talking about the same thing.

And also to take the piss out of Tony a little -- he did the same thing when talking about the HSX-109 (jupiter) .

> Now, I am curious why there is so little discussion
> on this board?

I've been wondering that myself...

> Is there no further development taking place on this product?

I've DEFINITELY been wondering that one. Anyone care to comment?

There's a lot of effort going on with the JReceiver server software, and I hope to add some new functionality of my own, at least as far as I can with the current player software. I've found a couple neat tricks that I don't think are documented anywhere, including how to create custom layouts (though I still haven't found the spectrum analyzer).

So, what exactly is the status of the receiver? I assume, with the HSX-whatever (can I just call it "Jupiter"?), that we'll obvioulsy need a receiver-like product, but I wonder if it might be morphing to be more like a plugged-in Riot. That'd be cool, as that's a great interface and screen.

What I really want, though, is a combination MP3 receiver (with a flourescent display), that also does video (with a more comprehensive on-screen interface, and easily hacked-into video streaming), so I can build my networked UberTiVo. Or just hook it to a Replay, if it gets close enough to my desired featureset.


Anyway, there's a little hacking going on, including some kernel hacks to provide volume control on line-out, and a webserver / java applet that lets you remotely control the device from any web browser in the house...kinda cool. It just doesn't seem like it's getting discussed a whole lot...


david.

This is in stark contrast to the empeg BBS, where I think nearly every empeg owner has contributed at some point or another.

I point a lot of people who email or phone support to the BBS (and more recently, riocar.org as well) when they're asking about hacking the player or install recommendations - I often notice threads started by new members asking questions that were in support a day or two earlier.

I think every user website I've seen that mentions empeg has a link to the BBS too.

I've seen comments on the Empeg BBs about the Rceiver software getting a revamp in the not too distant future.
There's no doubt about it, the rio Receiver is part of SB's strategy going forward - of course that could change at any moment.

It could well be that Rio Receiver Mk2 is just around the corner and thats maybe why (a) SB has recently started selling them for less than $200 each and (b) why Tiger direct is getting out its old stock - could also be that Tiger direct are stopping selling them fullstop hence the sale.

I think the 1st Generation Receever is pretty good and a few tweaks could make it a really popular product maybe.

With only 4 MB of RAM the current platform is a little light on spare resources to do much serious hacking I think.

I thought the comments we had seen from the chaps in Cambridge was that several of them own Receivers, and hence want to fix a few things for their own benifit.
I have seen nothing to say that SB are funding this development.

My guess would be that if the empeg guys say they want to 'revisit' the Rio Receiver Software after 2.0, then I would guess thats because the Rio Receiver is not yet EOLed and is a requirement with the HSX 109 for multi-room audio.
Without the Receiver the HSX109 is one expensive piece of kit.

Therefore I suggest that SB will be funding this development [whether SB knows that or not I can't possibly comment :-)) ]