So, I'm sure this has been asked before, but I'm curious to see what your opinions are, so here goes..

I would like to buy a Rio Car, and I have seem them going on Ebay from anywhere from $400.00 to $800.00+. Not a bad price, at all. My question is, how soon will we see new products that are of the same type / caliber as the Rio Car? Within 1-2 years? Or, in your opinions, will this type of technology never catch on mainstream?

If Sonic|Blue is indeed pushing their technology with OEM manufacturers, would it be best for a person like me to wait a year or so and get a new product that still has active support from the company? Or do you think the Rio Car will be the only linux-based, hard-drive type car stereo?

What's a guy to do?!

I asked myself the same thing before I forked over a nice chunk of change for a 60GB rio. It's on it's way as I type.

I doubt the bigger companies give us anything better anytime soon.

Well, click here for a comparison matrix of three products in this category including the Rio Car.

There are also two new hard disk based players from Sony and Pioneer but they have some pretty severe drawbacks. Their advantage is that they also have a CD drive in them so that they can rip the CDs right there in the dash. But their drawbacks are that they are more expensive and less feature-rich than the Rio Car. And not everyone wants to have to be in their car to rip their CDs.

And the other thing is that the Rio Car, being a somewhat open system based on Linux, is quite hackable. Read through the first section of the FAQ and see if you think it's worth the money.

And let me just say that I paid about $1000.00 for my first empeg player, and I considered it an extreme bargain at that price, it was easily worth much more. Just about everyone who owns one agrees that it's the best MP3 player money can buy.

Is anything better going to come along soon? Well, here's a hint: When the player went out of production, a significant number of owners bought a second (or third or fourth) player just so that they would have backup units if their first one stopped working. It's that good.

My opinion, as congealed from other responses to questions like yours, is that we're unlikely to see anything like the empeg from any company that is not employing the same team that made the empeg. Take, for example, the products that have appeared so far. There were and are the MP3 CD players, but you still have to swap CDs, getting away from which was my personal number one reason for getting an empeg. Then there are the basically brand-new hard drive based MP3 players from Pioneer and someone else, both of which require that you rip the CDs while in the car, and they only have about 10GB worth of unupgradable space on them. And at least one of them was ATRAC anyway.

Then you've got the assumption, which seems to have some legitimate backing, that the empeg team is making a new player for some ``OEM'' car audio player. I don't know if that means GM or Ford, or if it means Pioneer or Sony. (I'm personally inclined to say it's the former, but that has no basis.) Regardless, though, whatever company it is is likely to be much more conservative than a group of hobbyists is (or was), and, for that reason, I'll bet that while the new product might be a little more polished, and possibly a little more stable, it will probably have fewer features (other than probably one big flashy thing), and, in general, be much less cool.

Also keep in mind that many of us bought our empegs for well over $1000, so the prices you see, while somewhat exorbitant, given the price for which they were likely purchased, is actually fairly cheap. But you seem to have noted that already.

In other words, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. It is so choice.

I can't see any major manufacturer besting the empeg within 3 years. The market is too tough - those guys want to sell tens, if not hundreds of thousands of units, and to do that they have to meet certain criteria:

1) Price. Sony's latest effort is still as much as the empeg was originally, making ebay prices look darn cheap. The fact of the matter is that this type of device is not cheap to manufacture - custom motherboard, custom software, laptop hard-drives, pricey displays, etc, and all for a fairly limited market.

2) Ease of use. I suspect that this may be partly the reason that Sony have made their unit with an integral CD reader - the average Joe is going to find it more convenient to put the CD in their car once in order to rip, then to muck around ripping and syncing via PC. Yes, this does bring some severe limitations that the empeg doesn't have, but does make the unit more accessible to technophobes.

3) Legal acceptability. The empeg uses an open-spec standard file format for music storage. That's great for us, but major OEM manufacturers may have concerns about going down that same route. The Sony unit uses a proprietary closed-spec secure file format - a design decision surely influenced by their music publishing arm. Part of me suspects that other companies will try to do the same.

So how will these issues be addressed?

1) Well, if the car manufacturers get involved, the pricing may get hidden in the cost of the car. Especially if they are already putting in most of the necessary hardware components (motherboard, CPU, display etc) for other purposes such as GPS, car-related functionality and DVD. Slap a laptop drive in, license some technology from SB, and the cost delta per car will be far lower.

2) Ease of use for the masses will be attained be dropping features. I wouldn't be surprised to see the car manufacturers go Sony's route of rip-in-car either - since they are already putting DVD drives in them. Reduced flexibility and choice, but they'll aim to make it so easy to use that a blind and deaf octagenarian could use it in their sleep.

3) IANAL, but this past year hasn't been the greatest for MP3 technology from a legal standpoint. The RIAA is getting more and more aggressive towards it, and I think that we're still some time off from the end-game, when all the court battles have been fought, and everyone knows where they stand. But companies might also be wary of going with their own format - it'll bring short-term costs (development), and longer-term costs (they'll have to support it - the empeg guys never had to worry much about the ripping and encoding process). And then when you look at the rate at which storage and networking capabilities increase, why bother? .wav files are a viable solution *now*. Just how worthwhile will that propietary format be in 3 years time?

You know you want one. Just buy one.

Bitt: Nice Ferris line...

You're right.. I do want one, and I will most likely buy it.... Even though I promised myself I was going to buy a new TV.. Thanks for posting that comparison chart though, that gave me some perspective..

Another quick question.. I read that upgrading the Hard Drives (removing the seal) voids the warranty. Is there anyway around that? They obviously dont have any "certified repair/installation" places at this point, so are you pretty much SOL if you want to upgrade and you happen to screw something up?

Waiting 1-2 years just means a) that you'll have to buy the best MP3 player (the empeg) from ebay for a higher price than they are now, and b) that you'll be without an MP3 player for the intervening time.

Yeah, that just reminded me about something I meant to say earlier. The original Mk1 Empeg was conceived of in late '97/early '98 IIRC, and it's design and feature set were well publicised to prospective buyers. We are now halfway though 2002, and no other manfacturer has even come close to the Mk1 in terms of functionality. (The only thing that they have bettered the Mk1 on is capacity, but that's a gimme.)

In other words, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. It is so choice. Is it just me, or did he just sound like Ferris Bueller?

Edit: Just a hint, always read to the END of the thread before posting. DOH!

It depends how geeky a product you want. If you want a product as geeky as Rio Car (tons of third party development, lots of expensive and unnecessary hardware gadgets etc) then I doubt there will EVER be another product quite like it.

If you want something more consumerised then I'm sure there will be many such products released over the next few years.

Rob

I got my empeg/rio off ebay and I love it, I had been looking at other products but there was always somthing I didnt like. What's with the neo-car using a full size hard drive anyway?... umm does BIG come into mind. None of the other players I have seen have the great music search like the empeg either. As a mater of fact I was in best buy when they had just got the new sony player in, the sony rep. was there setting it up and I said "thats nice, but I still like my empeg" and he said "your what?" so I brought it into the store and showed him and then he said "wow the sony sucks compared to that, look at the screen it shows all the info at once!". Not to mention what a big crowd that formed around me, with costomers and employes saying "where can I get one?"

And at least one of them was ATRAC anyway.

I expect in practice that the minor misfeature of ATRAC is completely concealed by a much larger misfeature: if you can't get the music out again in encoded form, it might as well encode it to VLIW bitstreams targeting a long row of tuned miniature bongo drums for all the good it does you.

Peter

That's true, but my point was that even if you could find a way to upload music to it (which is probably quite a stretch anyway), you'd have to convert everything to ATRAC, and I don't even know if there's an ATRAC encoder available. Not to mention if you had to convert MP3s to ATRACs; they would sound lovely, I'm sure.

i think you can upload to the sony.

get cd encode through sony software on to your computer then download from your computer on to memory stick. Walk out to car drop down face plate and suck tunes off memory stick into stereo.

empeg way use wireless connect over wireless and upload to car without leaving seat.

just buy the empeg if you don't like it sell it on later over e-bay i think someone will buy it.

Even though I promised myself I was going to buy a new TV.

I did both (TV is widescreen 16:9 high-def even), and although I love the TV, I get more daily enjoyment out of the Empeg. Much more bang for the buck, there.

BUY IT!
Downside is you'll hate riding in other people's cars!
But thats just the price you gotta pay.

Downside is you'll hate riding in other people's cars!

So true!!!

Let's see if this can push him over the edge.

Durden, read through this thread.

there are more downsides than this

not understanding why the skip button doesn't work on the radio

wondering why the CD player doesn't give track info

not understanding why shuffle takes so long on cd players

total paranoia about where the car stereo is

spending half your life on this board (look at tony)

not buying a car without thinking will the empeg fit




It is the best geek toy you could ever buy if you ain't a geek it is the best car stereo i can think of

I would recommend buying one 100 %, The best investment i've ever made,
Everyone loves the look of it and wonders what the hell it it!

Buy it Go On

buy it you won't regret it.I have two just sitting in my closet for backups.Thats how much I love it.and Im broke.

... adn i'm starting to question ONLY having one as a backup... Maybe two would be more safe...

And people were thought I was crazy when I started getting the backups long ago...

Buy it! "don't worry... it's not a pod... it won't hurt you..."

In reply to:

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Downside is you'll hate riding in other people's cars!

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My colleague has run a phono lead from the back of the line-in on his stereo and I have made up a ciggy lighter cord for my empeg so we can link them up when we are in his car.

Gareth