Ah, when he said people aren't getting it, then went on to talk about lack of CD player, I took "getting it" to be synonymous with "understanding it". If that's what he meant, then I think he's wrong -- look at the popularity of the iPod despite it not having a CD player or tuner, and you still have to rip and upload. Do you think it would have sold as well if it had been introduced back in '97? I doubt it, but MP3s are so ubiquitous now that the market can support such a device.

So what's the difference between the iPod and the empeg? As I see it, the iPod is a walkman style device, and the empeg is a car stereo (and home stereo component, in my case). Just by being a car stereo puts the empeg in a niche market -- the average car buyer doesn't even bother to upgrade their head unit, let alone dig into the options deep enough to hear about the empeg. I only heard about it because somebody else on the Nissan Frontier forum mentioned it once in passing (sadly, I don't recall who it was). On top of that, the quality of it puts it into a niche of the car stereo market. The Sony and Pioneer units are also in that niche, but looking at even just the spec sheets side by side, it's no comparison which is better. In that respect, people are getting it.

However, if by "not getting it", he meant that people still wouldn't be purchasing more and more of them, well then of course he (and you) are correct -- it's still a product that fills a niche that only a small segment of the population fits. I doubt the Sony or Pioneer units will sell well, either.

A