Has anyone considered/started making a sucessor? Who owns the hardware jigs/designs etc as well as the IP ? Is there info on this somewhere?

I know that empeg was bought by sonicblue, then killed. Does this mean that sonic blue have all that info?

any info would be nice

In reply to:

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Has anyone considered/started making a sucessor?

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Yes, and every one of them realised it would be nearly impossible to make anything other than a one-off at great personal expense. I don't think Sonic Blue would ever release the designs. Besides, unless you've some serious PCB/soldering/metal work/linux kernel hacking skills it's probably easier to build something based on an existing PC motherboard.

Selling the things is another problem, most people want something that doesn't require a PC to make use of it. You'd also have to have something that looks fancy, the number of people I have met who think my empeg is the ugliest car stereo they've ever seen is quite alarming. Once they find out what it's capable of, they change their minds. The problem is, when your stereo is one of a bunch on display at the car stereo dealer it's got to stick out as the one to get. The empeg in it's current form doesn't do that.

Good luck with your car stereo building...

what about a new design?

The only realistic way I see of accomplishing this is by using stock PC parts, like a 3.5in form factor motherboard.

Here's a good list of single-board computers with which I've always wanted to do something, but I don't know what. But they're fairly pricy.

Now I like the MOPSlcd7 it's got two serials, USB, on board graphics with flat panel support, EIDE bus, processors upto 700Mhz. The only problem is no on board sound, but hey, you got USB so maybe you could use an Extigy.

and it's a snip at £450

Well I am still in the "I wonder how feasable it is" stage: my mk2a rules and it seem there is a good market for 2nd hand empegs, showing that there is a market of sorts for them.

I agree that the new one would need to grab potential buyers with a flashier look - the one thing I wish my empeg had was a color screen. I know these are more expensive then their mono/2bit counterparts, but still, has anyone seen a stock component colour screen that may be suitable? (ie similar dimensions etc..)

There are reference strongARM boards, and there are the PC104 (+) boards - does anyone have any other ideas for doner processors? I have considered using a non-software solution (ie hardware decoder chip etc.) but I think one of the strengths of the empeg is its software base so I'd like to stick to linux if possible: it satisfies my tux tendancies

the source code for the empeg is available, but under what license? if I did got the strongarm way, i could re-use lots of the code maybe .....

lat thought: what else would you improve on the empeg if you were redesigning?

bluetooth or 802.11?
integrated tuner?
100mbit lan?
firewire?
cd shuttle control?
color screen?

sadly the player source isn't available, so you'd still have to write that (which is a massive chunk). I think if both of my empegs eventually give out my next car stereo will be home made

I know this sounds sad but, other than faster downloads and a colour screen, don't think there's much else i'd want...... okay okay, a master USB socket, so I could run other stuff, more serial ports, DAB tuner, modular decoding engine (ogg etc.), more preouts (with dedicated sub out), voice recognition , I could probably go on for hours!!!

You're moving in the exact opposite direction to that you should take if you want to manufacture a car player style product and make enough money for it to be worthwhile. You're adding cost, but what you should be doing is reducing it - a lot! Distributors buy at 40% to 50% of SRP, and I think anyone on this BBS that observed the Christmas 2001 phenomenon will have realised that the SRP sweet spot is well under $500.

Alternatively, if you want to make a low volume product and sell it to geeks that truly "get it" then I'd say we (empeg) did a pretty good job of that. Only thing is, you're four years late

That's not to say we wouldn't welcome the competition - but our IP isn't up for grabs!

Rob

Rob you are right that I am late: I remember first seeing the empeg and knowing that I HAD to have one. However there seems to be no product that realy competes with empeg/riocar anymore - the closest I can find is the phatbox and that just isnt as cool (anyone else know of a HDD based car mp3 player that doesnt suck?)

I figured the IP of empeg was not available: have you considered selling the rights to start re-manufacturing the riocar? or does sonicBlue/empeg not want to?

I agree that costs are the driving force, but I can dream first then consider the costs....

If i did figure a way of creating a similar device I wouldnt be competing with empeg/rio/sonicblue anyway as none of them sell a car based mp3 player !

have you considered selling the rights to start re-manufacturing the riocar?

If the player could be sold at a profit, Sonic Blue would still be doing it.

Even when the prices were reduced to well below the manufacturing costs (10 GB players were for sale for $295) it still took them over a month to get rid of the remaining stock.

The empeg player is very much a niche toy -- and that niche (computer geek audiophile motorhead) is pretty much filled with the 4,000 units they produced. For a little more insight (my insight, anyway), see this post.

tanstaafl.

with the 4,000 units they produced

And this BBS has almost 2400 subscribers and several members seem to have more than one player. So I guess almost everyone with an empeg is on this BBS by now.

I am friends with 2 people who own 5 empegs between them that don't even READ the bbs, let alone have a login.

I figured the IP of empeg was not available: have you considered selling the rights to start re-manufacturing the riocar?

That design is out of date and too expensive to manufacture. We have much better designs for sale now.

Rob

...Much better designs for sale now...

Hmm...

Is SonicBlue coming out with something in the near future, perhaps???

Or perhaps Rob means the IP is for sale to OEM's for vehicle integration, as has been mentioned several times (though not too recently). Rob?

-Zeke

.....
That design is out of date and too expensive to manufacture. We have much better designs for sale now.
.....

But nothing revolutionary like the empeg...

Hmmm... I would debate that "profit" is a matter of opinion in the sense of "how much" profit is enough to keep the line alive. I would ask the question that if Empeg had not sold to SonicBlue, would they still be making the Empeg for the niche market. Does Empeg have the same revenue requirements that SonicBlue had? Y'know? I think if the unit was still out there, it would still be selling... just not at the nose-bleed "I gotta have it" pace that SonicBlue expected.

Honestly, most of the people I showed the player to "got it" but didn't want to spend the money whether it was made by Sony or Kenwood or Rio (JukeBox) or Archon (whoever it is that makes that other one).

The Sony with CD/HD is a cool (and expensive unit) - at $1500 vs. the Empeg, the Empeg still wins.

My wonder is why (not how - they have billions) Sony puts something so crippled on the market when others who offered a technically superior unit (empeg) got out.

In the end, a lot of these products a niche. I don't see how the future is going to make it when I know college grads who are as computer illiterate as my 70yr old dad. In fact, my mom, at 64 knows more about computers than some of those college grads...

Technology seemed to really surpass society's understanding of it back in the 90's. The world needs to catch up. The only question is how long it will take for that to happen.

I'm done now.

BTW, here's a nice SBC with flatscreen support, Audio and more... don't know the price, but I assume it's probably not cheap...

http://www.aaeon.com/news/NewsLetterManagement/NewsletterFile/2000_09.pdf

in the sense of "how much" profit is enough to keep the line alive.

Remember, when you lose money on every sale, it's hard to make up for it with volume.

The empeg was expensive to manufacture. Components were expensive, assembly was expensive, and the 10+ man-years of development time (software and hardware) had to be amortized before they could even break even, much less show a profit.

I don't think (admittedly just guessing here) that they could break even at $1000, and the number of people who will spend $1000 for a car-toy that makes music is quite limited.

A couple things to keep in mind: The original production goal of empeg (before the Sonic Blue purchase) was in the neighborhood of 2,000 units. (I think I remember one of the guys @ empeg saying that -- forgive me if I am in error); and a lot of people will bemoan the fact that they can't buy an empeg now and say that they want one when they know they are "safe" -- they won't really have to pony up the money because they are unavailable.

There just aren't that many motorhead/computer-geek/audiophiles out there.

tanstaafl.

As discussed in a previous thread to do with CVBS output.
There is often a pretty suitable tool significantly cheaper than the custon stuff.


With the Via Epia motherboards with CPU and flash disk now available for £75, a very simple Empeg like device could be created. Someone has fitted this in a NES or a PSone so its probably possible to mount in a cd changer type box or something and a power feed + amps + display + cIR in a headunit type box, or even use a lcd screen headunit with video in as the control.
As the Mobo is pretty inclusive vga, video out, spdif, Lan, usb etc One could simply add a DC regulator circuit and a 2.5inch HDD and away yourd go. If someone wrote a nice EMpeg type interface you could output the empeg-like display in 24 bit colour to any y/c or cvbs video monitor in high quality resizable output.
If one used an 6.4" earthlink vga panel or a USD LCD output http://www.massworks.com/ you could even use a touchscreen for remote control and gain the ability to run emplode, gps, etc in the car.
Further, as it would be a standard pc and the new epia-m ( www.mini-itx.com ) can play div-x and ac3 you could even run dvd's or other media ;-) in the car.
It kind of goes away from the Elegant EMpeg type solution although theres going to be alot of car-pc integration coming , after all incar pc is kind of mutually exclusive with EMpeg.

I can see the Ricers and crusers now --- yeah man I got direct port fully mapped wet 150 shot nitrous, twin garret t64's ceramic turbos and a Athlon hammer XP with 2.1 terabyte raid serial ATA running gnome!

However as a cheap soloution if you were keen an epia (fanless) it and the PSU would fit in a box the smaller than a poweramp, mine sits under the passenger seat and cost less than 100 bucks.
Obviously not as elegant as redesigning the entire Empeg display subsystem but with some lateral thinking, like that that created our fabulous Empegs there are often many ways to solve a particular problem.

If someone Reverse engineered the touchscreen output on the new kenwood 7inch widesceen displays to feed a linux driver it could be very smart and ergonomic solution.
I have even looked at digital out from the Epia into a Alpine PXA H700 ( http://m2-shop.com/shop/car/cd/alpine/pxa-h700/pxa-h700.html ) with dolby digital, time alignment and delt-sig 24bit/96k 6 channel digital XO I think this could really change some people view on HDD based car audio especially even if you then wanted to use monkey or FLAC.

Best Regards
Max

Most CE products sell into distribution with at least 50% discount, and THEN you have to make your margin. Ouch. Empeg could never have sold through distribution, but I do believe we saturated the direct-to-geek market for this particular product.

Most serious car audio nuts buy from dealers, and car audio dealers in particular are well known for taking very generous margins. Look at the prices being charged by all the serious Japanese manufacturers who have put next generation empeg style products into this space.. they're clearly speculative products right now.

Rob

There's something called "automotive spec". It specifies things like temperature range, vibration, shock, humidity, power characteristics, EMC and other criteria that your in-car product has to cope with.

Auto manufacturers have to comply with this religiously - a factory fit stereo is bullet proof.

Mainstream after market manufacturers comply less rigidly, so some cool factor (or a price reduction) can comprise reliability slightly. Consumers are OK with this.

Niche after market manufacturers comply to differing degrees. With the hard drives available when the empeg was invented there was no way to meet the full spec, but the restrictions (mainly temperature) were published and niche consumers made the choice to live with them.

Hobby implementors usually don't even know what the typical automotive specification calls for, and neither do they care because they can fix something if it breaks.

This is one reason that it can sound so simple to pull a selection of parts from catalogues and specify the killer in-car PC. In practice it ain't that simple. It's a big, time consuming, expensive step from mp3mobile to empeg car and it's an even bigger step from empeg car to the mainstream.

Rob