How good is the radio on empeg going to be on the first release of the software ?
The technical page on the web site talks about "FM fuzzy logic autotuning radio, full RDS, RBDS capability", does this mean that the first version of the software will make the RDS stuff available, or does it means that the hardware is capable and it will take a while for the software to catch up.


Number 330 in the queue...

The first release isn't a lot more than freq up/down, presets and a signal strength meter. This will improve as time goes on - currently, in the kernel patches available to patch the SA1100 source there's a basic in-kernel RDS decoder which we've yet to encapsulate in a proper device driver harness.

Hugo
empeg

Hmmm.... I'm getting hints here that the software is not *quite* as far along the road as it might be.

Can you guys use a hand? Device drivers used to be my speciality... ;^)

Thanks for the offer, but it's probably a lot of hassle farming chunks out to other people - we've also got a new programmer (John) starting in a week or so, which will give us some more effort. We've been concentrating on the player software more than the radio so far, but the radio will be addressed soon.

Hugo

At least it sounds like it is more of a programming issue than shortcomings with the hardware. I like the idea of not having to shell out for new hardware every time a new feature comes out! ; )

Will you guys be wanting to make money ouy of new software updates or the does the fact that we have purchased the hardware
entitle us to all future software upgrades, e.g. this radio RDS upgrade?

Hope the latter is true,
Thanks,
Andy

You get updates for free - the only time we might have to charge is when we add new codecs, which might mean we have to pay a per-unit licence fee to the codec owner. We have to pass this cost on: however, we'll do our best to ensure that this is *not* compulsory, ie you can stick with existing codecs and still get new features even after new ones are released.

Hugo