Hell if I know, but I managed to get v2.0b to install.
Today has been a pretty good day. Since things were going so well I said why not, and tried the install again. It came up with the familiar 'your installer is old.. loser.. get a new one' message but this time when I clicked 'I know' it continued and installed fine with no problems.
I installed the image to my player with no trouble as well.
I booted up the new version of emplode on my PC and was blown away with the way it looked. I was so excited that I came straight here to report my progress, I haven't even poked around in the new software yet. I can see that my afternoon is now shot playing with this.
Note : The only thing I can think of that was going on was this attempt, I re-downloaded the software before installing. Maybe my previous attempts were due to a bad download, I do not know. The previous downloads did not report any problems.. all I know is it works now.