The Rio/Dell receiver is very unlikely to ever get Samba support, as it's a thin client. The advantages of this approach will become clearer over time...

For example, the Audiotron has a hard limit on the number of tunes it can index - simply because it has to hold the index in memory. We don't have any such limitations as the indexes are server-side - this also allows complex queries and inter-device integration.

I agree the form factor isn't ideal, but I dispute that S/PDIF is essential if you have damn good DACs on board (which the Receiver *does* have). S/PDIF isn't desparately cheap to add either, both the encoder and TOSLINK connector aren't throwaway price, together they cost 2x what a good DAC does.

The receiver DHCPs (or uPnP boots) which means it slots into most networks pretty easily.

Anyway, suffice to say that if you want to hang around a bit you'll see why you want a receiver & not the gateway box :)

Hugo