I had to move some other gadgets off of my desk the other evening for an infrequent empeg docking session and I got to thinking about all the toys I have discarded in the four (five?) years since I got my empeg. Today I read some cost complaints in the thread on tuners and that got me thinking about the relative value of me the empg measured against all of my other gizmos since 1998. (all prices USD)

1 Empeg Mark2a 30 Gig with tuner $1,800. Never been replaced, in fact I'm looking for a new one for an additional car.
6 or 7 handheld digital music players (including 2 ipods) totaling at least $3,000
3 handheld video camera (the latest digital) for a total of $2,400
3 Desktop PCs for a total of $3,200. (this includes various upgrades like video cards)
5 Laptop PCs (I use for work) $11,780

Some of you may not have gone through so much stuff (wasteful American that I am) but some of you have gone through more. When compared to these frequently replaced items, my empeg seems like a sound investment. I wish a new, better replacement was available. I suspect it will only be a matter of months before something does eclipse my Mark II - but I have felt this way for a year or more and it never comes to pass. For now I am satisfied and I have reminded the wife how sound my empeg investment is more then once.

-Greenbean

I found myself thinking the same more than once. If on one side having discontinued the empeg is sad, on the other side it really seems that the only bunch of people who could eclipse our Mark II s are in the empeg team itself, so for three years or more we've all be the owners of the best car stereo ever made and we still are. Now, this is very impressive in "today's world, where technology changes so rapidly"(TM) , and tells much about what an excellent (meaning effective, expandable, complete, smart, simple in a way) idea the empeg is.
Now, I can't really estimate what would have been in terms of replacement rate of my tech toys if I did not buy my empegs, but I am sure that I would have gone through a car MP3 compatible CD Player, then a CD Player + MP3 compatible CD Changer, them some hdd mp3 player to be used as a cd changer, and so on, until today, when I still would not have anything like the empeg.
I did save a considerable abount of money in these years.
After being unluky enough to have my first and perfectly working radio module stolen, my second radio module malfunctioning, my trial third radio module with a weak signal, I have to admit that a integrated radio solution, ALSO at the expenses of one internal drive, would have saved me so much trouble, and I now consider that the only weakness of the empeg design. I found at my own expenses that being a pull-out unit is a GREAT ADVANTAGE for a device like the empeg, and the radio module is not pull-out. If it wasn't for that, i would rate my "empeg experience" top score on ALL aspects. However, I still am a very satisfied customer. Now, that tells a lot about what's the value of the empeg.

I think one of the biggest issues with the tuner is that none of us were RF people, so tuners are all black magic and strange components that you don't get to use elsewhere

As for next-gen empeg units....

It's annoying, but DIN-format car stereo is a dying format nowadays due to the more and more elaborate car dashboards out there, even on base model cars.

What would be great would be to have a standard bus for video/audio/touchscreen feedback which would allow you to add-on audio components to an in-dash nav screen... pity such a thing doesn't appear to exist. Without a standard you're restricted to a small set of (probably premium) cars that you could keep up with in terms of variants of dashboard systems. Car manufacturers tend to change things without telling the aftermarket guys

The other alternative is a totally non-form-factor unit like the satellite radio people have gone for. A velcro-on screen you stick somewhere in view and a box of gubbins elsewhere. ideally with direct audio out or at least CD bus connectivity.

Hmmm.

Hugo

The other alternative is a totally non-form-factor unit like the satellite radio people have gone for. A velcro-on screen you stick somewhere in view and a box of gubbins elsewhere. ideally with direct audio out or at least CD bus connectivity.

I would choose this method because I think it would allow for more flexibility in the mp3 player design. You wouldn't be limited to what ever display and controls the car maker used. Look how the ipod bmw thing turned out as an example.

Canbus?

Yes, canbus is a good idea, it seems. While considering the various options to install some tuner in my car, I saw that Becker's head units are in fact canbus, apparently, and when replaced to Audi's head units they still display all the computer info and mobile phone info on the screen.
All this... on paper. Never seen it working yet
If only one could split a canbus connection and use it for some external player such as the Karma/iPod etc, good chances are one could even use the factory steering wheel controls on those... Really nice...

A Karma that could be integrated that way would be a dream. I'd buy one tomorrow (provided you can replace the hdd).

CANbus is good for relatively low data rates. I think the max data size per packet is something like only 8 bytes making it no good for any sort of streaming etc. Great for little things like station names, frequencies, window up, window down etc but no good here.

The concept however (addresses etc) is a great idea if a high bandwidth version was developed. Essentially then you are talking about ethernet. Just needs to be hardened for reliable use in a vehicle and you're set.

I thought canbus was multidrop, i.e. there's no splitting involved, just add it to the bus.

Correct. Perhaps I should have said 10-base-2 ethernet (coax). I was more referring to the fact that everything has a unique address on the bus like CANbus + it's high bandwidth unlike CANbus.

CANBus also doesn't have restrictions on splits in the network I think. i.e. Y junctions are OK. Ethernet can't really do that but that's mainly because of the high speed.

I'm not saying it's exactly the same but it's pretty close already and the hardware is very cheap.

... two years passed by, and I don't think there's anything yet that can eclipse the empeg. Not, this is amazing. And, it is incredible that the closest thing to the empeg we have in the market today is an iPod (60Gb max!) connected to some head unit with some not so pleasant interface.

Ugh. The iPod "interface" is just the ye olde CD changer connection but with an iPod plug on the end. I guess it is okay if you just keep your iPod stuck on shuffle forever.

Right, that's what I meant. Really bad interface.

Even though I thought more recent head units could interact more with the ipod?!

Like this one?

The news release I saw said it allowed full browsing via the car's controls, so I guess that's probably one step better than the factory-fit iPod interfaces so far - which have been basically track skip only. Here's the meat:

"Seamless iPod integration also allows drivers to use their car’s multifunction controls to select their music using artist, album, playlist or shuffle songs, as well as to easily skip between tracks and playlists."

See http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/aug/03ipod.html

It's not an empeg, but then again the iPod wasn't a Karma either and that didn't seem to bother most customers... they have pretty low standards when it comes down to it, as they've not seen anything better and so don't know what they're missing.

Hugo

Stop badmouthing your new employer.

Does anybody uses a Becker head unit with an iPod? I am curious to know how good their iPod interface is. Becker usually has very good software.

The becker Cascade Pro is an excellent head unit, and if you look at the specs, it seems that their iPod Link offers some more than kist fast forwarding through the tracks...

It looks like there is a lot of marketing license on this one. I came across it here first - http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/080406/index.asp. That seemed to hint that Ford considered an aux-in socket as enough for "Seamless iPod integration", which seems to be borne out by other sources. Shame! Hopefully, I am wrong.

Can't find much on the TripTunes Advanced and the other future possibilities though... It's got a catchy name - it must be good!

Nick