How long before Rio/Denon does a Rio receiver type thing? Surely there's a much bigger market now and all the client/server work's already been done, it's about time slimdevices had some (real) competition....

How long before Rio/Denon does a Rio receiver type thing?

I wish I knew. The Roku player seems to be turning to permavapour -- its ship date was once March and has been moving out at the rate of a month per month ever since. It looks like our best bet could be Apple, now nosing towards that direction.

Peter

The Roku's been like that forever, and the apple's not really the same; no display. I love the slim product (got 2 slimp3's), but it must p*ss the empeg guys off that even though they were first to market they've got nothing out there now. I reckon a networkable Denon with amp/tuner/cd and a nice display would do well.

the apple's not really the same; no display.

Yes, but it does appear to be a move towards that kind of product. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking.

it must p*ss the empeg guys off that even though they were first to market they've got nothing out there now.

It annoys me that we haven't, but it annoys me even more that nobody else has either.

I reckon a networkable Denon with amp/tuner/cd and a nice display would do well.

D&M's current nearest approach to that market is via Escient, but that's not quite the same thing either (video out instead of a display). Also, despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of any prices on their website, I suspect they're not cheap.

If you don't mind video-out instead of a display, there's various bits of gear you can use. But personally I don't want to turn my telly on just to play music.

Edit: and there's this, but the screen is LCD, i.e. unreadable, and you've got to feel for the reviewer who wrote "I had a hunch the software was going to suck and the firmware would be sketchy and I was right."

Peter

4 Posts and no mention of the Audiotron? It's reasonably priced and the display is readable (to me) from about 10 ft. away.

I think the Rio Receivers are great for a bedroom or office (I have about a dozen of them), but the Audiotron totally kicks butt in the stereo rack. It's unfortunate it only plays MP3 though.

There's also the Hauppauge MediaMVP that Cringley was talking about the other day.

As a side note, it allegedly runs linux, and with an ethernet port and tv-out, for $99 it looks like it could be a real contender for hacking into a remote LCD display for the empeg. I haven't seen one in the flesh yet, and online details are lacking, but since it uses a brick transformer it should be fairly low power and suitable for car use.

I'm intrigued by the Apple solution. It has a definite sense of "but wait! there's more!" I'm tempted to buy one strictly to create base stations on the fly for when I'm in some hotel that has Ethernet but not anywhere that I'd actually want to use it.

genixia i've got one of the MediaMVP's if you've got any questions (got to be basic for me!) and i could try to answer them.

You could just buy a long ethernet cable.

A long Ethernet cable would weigh more than the Apple gizmo, and long Ethernet cables don't give you all the it-slices-it-dices functionality. I'm not running out to buy one tomorow, but it's tempting.

Starter for 10... What are the voltage/current ratings on the power brick?

Look for new thread in General.

Input: 100-240V ~0.8A 47-63Hz
Output: 6.0-7.5V (dash with underline underneith) 2.15-1.7A

Ah typed that out then realised i could just find it on tinternet, so here is it
http://www.deer-group.com/ad16.htm
Model: AD1607E

A long Ethernet cable would weigh more than the Apple gizmo

I should RTFA.

Netgear's got one too: http://www.netgear.com/products/prod_details.php?prodID=234

GOD Netgear's site organization SUCKS these days. It used to be awesome... now i can't find anything without knowing the product number.

Apparently the Pinnacle Show Center is the one to have:
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/ProductPage_n.asp?Product_ID=1481&Langue_ID=7

I brought a long ethernet cable to E3 with me. It did the following:

Allowed me to be on the internet anywhere in the hotel room with a cord running everywhere.
Made my machine be the designated internet sharing box for 2 other laptops from people I stayed with at E3.

Having any wireless base station would have been handy, but we all forgot to get one, and couldn't justify buying one for 3 days. The Airport Express I would consider since I could also use it at home to ensure I get faster 802.11g speeds anywhere in the house. For some, the wireless to wired bridging might be handy as well. Not sure if the USB printer sharing works with Windows boxes easially, the normal Airport station can with some work.

You could try this the Macsense Homepod powered by Gloo.

Its a 802.11b wireless Ethernet +10/100Mbit/s Ethernet music playback device that can play mp3/wavs etc, comes with javavm builtin, runs Lunix [uses ARM processor I think] , has FM radio, Blue backlit graphical LCD display with (white) pixels & comes with a small IR remote.
The inbuilt USB port on the back is a USB host port [not a slave port], so you could connect external hard disks to it to play music from if needed (and or any USB devices you have drivers for) and it has optical digital out, inbuilt (tinny sounding) speakers and line out/head phone out. Front panel has 4 "soft" buttons plus rotary encoder with push function on it.

Price is $249USD for the developer version [with full java sources etc] (buy this from Gloolabs direct).

Since it fully programmable, then you can write whatever apps you want - or use whatever apps other folks have written. Seems to have a developer community.

Comes with "media server software (java based)" for Windows/Mac and Linux to allow Pcs to server up files to it.

Only problem is that the case is iPod white (only).

Apparently the Pinnacle Show Center is the one to have

I saw a big stack of them in the PC World over the road from Empeg Towers. Are they any good? Has anyone got the server software running on Linux yet?

Peter

I've got an MPV and it's crap, you can't even shuffle a playlist, and the telly has to be on

D&M's current nearest approach to that market is via Escient, but that's not quite the same thing either (video out instead of a display). Also, despite (or perhaps because of) the lack of any prices on their website, I suspect they're not cheap.

If you don't mind video-out instead of a display, there's various bits of gear you can use. But personally I don't want to turn my telly on just to play music.

Edit: and there's this, but the screen is LCD, i.e. unreadable, and you've got to feel for the reviewer who wrote "I had a hunch the software was going to suck and the firmware would be sketchy and I was right."

That's my point, there's nothing (apart from the slim) that has anywhere near the flexibility and maturity that empeg has. So are you saying that DNNA have got nothing in the works?

So are you saying that DNNA have got nothing in the works?

If they have, they've made the unfortunate error of not telling me about it. (Unfortunate in the sense that I'll likely be contributing to the profitability of whichever of our competitors gets one out first.)

What would be virtually cool enough would be Receiver-esque firmware on a car-player (screen, check, remote, check, no winchester noise, check) but that's been an unstarted skunkworks project of mine for absolutely yonks now. Without the Lord's coachwork it wouldn't look as pretty as a Roku, but it'd do the job.

Peter

it wouldn't look as pretty as a Roku

Does look pretty good doesn't it, I'd love to see the wider one sitting beneath my plasma, and it'll work with Slimserver (allegedly)

...for $99 it looks like it could be a real contender for hacking into a remote LCD display for the empeg.

Onsale at Amazon for $10 less with free shipping.