I noticed the IR1000 has a phone port on the back. Presumably it contains a built-in 56k modem. I'm wondering, though, what sort of sound quality can be sent through a 56 kbps link. MP3 only begins to sound reasonable at 80-112 kbps. And that's through computer speakers... I'd expect a hi-fi system to be much more revealing.

I wonder if this thing is actually useable without a broadband connection, and if not, why they bothered with the expense of a modem.

It does apparently contain a 56k modem (from what I understand of the information they've released), and they may be getting a little more out of that bandwidth than usual since it may be able to eliminate some of the bandwidth overhead of a dialed up PC (banner ads in the player, mail clients checking messages in the background, ... -- not much, but maybe a bit). I read somewhere that they did say it was preferable to use the broadband connection. A modem chip probably didn't add much cost (not like adding 802.11 wireless connectivity would have).

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Gonk

They had the IR1000 on a phone line at CES and WQXR, the classical radio station of the NY Times, sounded pretty good .... would expect it to sound even better on broadband.