... article at C|Net.

||| loren |||

Perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic, but I'm not at all surprised that Dell is discontinuing their re-branded Rio Receiver. I won't be terribly surprised if Sonic Blue kills the RR either, though I know the Empeg guys have said somewhere on this board that it's not being phased out, despite being clearance-priced at Best Buy and other retail outlets.

Host-based players are a unique animal these days in a market that is seeing a new standalone player emerging every few months. I'd imagine those devices are struggling to find their market as well as consumers are only starting to appreciate the alternatives to swapping CDs from their changers.

I do hope that Sonic Blue and Empeg stick with the RR and host-based players in particular. The power of the host is barely tapped in the software shipped with the RR, and that's a shame, as there is so much infrastructure in a Windows box that can be used to support a network-based player.

Sonic Blue screwed up big-time in the product development of the RR. They wanted a dumbed-down consumer device, but failed to execute proper support for the consumer. As a small example of missing functionality, where's the integrated CD ripper and tagger? Ideally, when a guy buys a RR, there should be support included for encoding his CD collection. That there isn't support accounts in part for the lackluster reception of the Rio in the marketplace, IMHO.



--Reed (http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net)

The RR was pretty much developed to Dell's spec, and they didn't want a ripper - Dell bundle with musicmatch already. It works well with MM (tunes, playlists).

If you ask me, the biggest no-no with the RR is shipping a PCI card with it for the PNA interface, requiring people to open up their PC. A USB adaptor would have worked just fine and would have been a lot less frightening.

Hugo

> The RR was pretty much developed to Dell's spec

I stand corrected and will redirect my blame accordingly.

A credit to Dell for at least bundling a ripper. The same cannot be said for the RR that Sonic Blue offered. Oh well, it's water under the bridge at this point.

On the positive side, the emergence of 802.11 home networks should give the host-based player another shot at the marketplace, perhaps with more success. No more cabling or NIC issues.

--Reed (http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net)