Hi folks,
I'm an owner of a Rio Central box and several connected Rio Receivers...I have owned my unit since the beginning and use it almost every day, so I can probably answer most of your questions about it....
Right at the beginning I'll say that there will be folks who will say that they can build a cheaper PC that will serve music. True statement, no problem. If price is the total equation, then the Rio Central or other non-PC solution probably isn't for you. But like many folks, I was looking for a self-contained solution that I could install in my stereo rack. There also weren't many products in this category two years ago, but now there are more to choose from. I think the Overstock $499 price is a good one for this unit...
I've always thought the unit sounded very good through my stereo, but I do find that I listen to most of my music streamed through the Rio receivers that I have throughout the house and garage...I have all the music ripped on the Rio Central at 256KB. It will go up to 320 KB if you want and you can also store duplicate smaller song files for portable upload (I've never done that to maximize my space).
You can upgrade the 40GB drive that comes installed in the Rio and re-install a new operating system on the new drive with the CD that they include with the unit.
I installed a 120GB drive right away and have it on a removable drive bay/cartridge so I can remove the drive for backups, etc. I also have a smaller 40GB drive with only Christmas music (and some of my essential stuff) to listen to in December....That way the Christmas stuff doesn't take up space on my main 120GB drive...I guess I have about 90-95 GB of music stored on my main 120 GB drive right now. At some point, I'll probably have to split it to two drives when the collection gets too large. That's probably the main disadvantage of the Rio Central right now (at least to me!)...
It seems that a 120GB drive is the largest one that you can install unless someone does some software work on the box. After reading posts on the Rio Central forum, I don't think that a larger drive breakthrough is in the works. The reason for that is that there seems to be some boot code written in flash on the motherboard that is not LBA48 or large drive compliant. The Linux kernal on the hard drive itself seems to have the large drive support. So in order to try and get a larger drive to boot, I think reflashing the motherboard is a requirement....Too much work, I'm guessing. And you could ruin your box if you don't get it right...
The Rio Central has a USB jack on the back, so to connect it to the home network you need a USB to Ethernet adapter. I bought one of the supported models from Linksys and it has always worked fine. It will also work with a "phone line network", if you have of those in the house...I don't know many who do, but there are still some around...
Someone mentioned that a new software release was just done, that is true. The main benefit from that release is to fix a stability problem when ripping CDs to the box, especially in multiple mode. The old software had a tendency to reboot in the middle of a multi-disc rip, which was inconvenient. They also added some support for some of the Rio portables, but not the latest ones like the Karma. Even though the date of the software update on the support website is December 2003, it was held back from an earlier release date.
We don't know yet if the CDDB database is updated in the new release because the 540+ MB zip file has an error in it and can't be unzipped. They should fix that soon, I hope...
I believe a full CDDB database is included with the unit, and like someone else mentioned earlier, the purpose of it is to save time when ripping CDs on the box. If a CD isn't in the database, then the unit goes out to the Internet and looks it up. It's just an extra step. Out of the 800 CDs I have ripped on my drive, about 110 of them needed the Internet lookup. Mainly because they were newer than the internal CDDB database. If you rip a CD older than 2001, it will most likely be found in the internal CDDB database.
The internal screen on the Rio Central is nice and lets you control the unit without having to squint too much (unlike the Rio Receiver!).
The box runs the Debian version of Linux and the complete source code is available on the Rio Central support website...
http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/sup...asp?prodID=100
You can also plug in a USB keyboard on the front panel and get a shell prompt. I am not a Linux expert, so I haven't explored that too much...
There is a program available for download on the net called Emplode 2.0 that lets you communicate to the Rio Central from your PC. This is handy to fix up the song/album titles, although you can do it from the Rio Central itself (better with an attached keyboard).
Using Emplode, you can copy MP3's from a PC to the Rio Central. But, currently, you cannot copy MP3's from the Rio Central to a PC. There is another third-party program that was originally written for the Rio Car unit called jEmplode that may allow this functionality with the Rio Central, but the latest version of jEmplode doesn't work well with the Rio Central. The good news is that the author for jEmplode now has a Rio Central and is supposed to be making the software more compatible across platforms...
You can select certain MP3's on the Rio Central and burn a mix CD on the internal CD-RW drive. I haven't done that too much, but it is possible. It isn't quick about doing that, however, because of the MP3 to WAV file conversion and then slower speed burn....
The unit also has a Standby mode that spins the hard drive down automatically when it isn't in use. That's the mode I use most of the time. When I ask the box to serve music, then the drive spins up and I get music after a 5 second delay or so. Then when I'm done, the drive shuts down automatically...
There's RCA line outputs for stereo system connection and also a digital audio output that you can use to optically connect to your stereo system. The remote control has most of the front panel/menu items duplicated, but the buttons are a bit small....
I have always liked this box and will continue to use it for awhile until something else comes along with more features and larger storage space. Please feel free to ask me any questions you have about the Rio Central and I'll try to help...
Thanks, Randy