Hugo, let me first said that I feel very lucky to have stumbled two years ago (I don't remember how) on a web site operated by a certain bunch of British nuts.

I think that Sonic|blue made less-than-halfhearted effort at marketing Rio - no, empeg car. Selling through one not so good car-audio chain covering a handfull of US states can hardly be called having a retail channel. Experience with US online sales would be laughable if it were not sad. All possible totally avoidable delays are unforgivable. Where were ads, reviews in geekish magazines, those little items in 'gadgets you must have' in Playboy and similar magazines for self-deluding men spending more that their actual disposable income is? No, if SB honchos say the empeg niche is very small and already saturated, they are lying to themselves.

Several questions (you have already answered to one - that you will make every reasonable effort to keep our precious cache of empegs working):

- Is further empeg car software development unique to our toys, of (hopefully) there exists a common codebase with some other products? If the former is the case, I am quite pessimistic about post-V2.0 future...

- You said SB cannot make an aftermarket product as polished as, say, Sony. You also said that the future is not in aftermarket but integrated audio. Which way (if any) will SB go: license empeg car technology to some aftermarket manufacturer, or to car manufacturers (or their OEM suppliers)? If the later, a car manufacturer, or will we ba able to buy the product(s) in variety of new (and not only American) cars?

- How much dumbed-down will eventual new products be? Will you have any say in it?

TIA for any answer you might be able to squeeze past NDAs and such...

Dragi "Bonzi" Raos
Zagreb, Croatia
Q#5196, MkII#80000376, 18GB green