Since there are tons of new people here, I thought I'd post a link to this comparative table looking at the Riocar (empeg Mk2a), PhatNoise's Phatbox and the SSI Neo. I've updated it to reflect the recently added support for WMA on the empegcar as well as a few other minor changes for the other players.

Direct clickable link: (auto)mobile Jukebox matrix
Plain copyable link: http://www.mypocket.com/mobilematrix/index.php

If anyone has any corrections or ideas for additional criteria, let me know. There's at least one new player on the market which would make an interesting addition. The recent Sony 10GB and Pioneer units might also make it into a future revision (though I'm leaning to disqualifying anything that doesn't support MP3).

Bruno

Great job. Accurate and complete. I recall seeing another product comp. matrix where they errored in certain of the empeg's specs. Probably because they were an estore selling the other units.

Sean

Might you be speaking of this one? If so, they have a reason to bend the truth and leave out many categories.

Bruno, There is now an nnofficial phatbox forum. You may want to add it as the content is probably more interesting.

http://www.go-racecar.com/uphatphorum/

Added. Thanks. I also rev'ed the descriptions for the forum cells of each product to mention what BBS software they run.

If anyone has memberships at other In-Car-Entertainment/Stereo-related boards, or at one of the other MP3-car product boards, please post a link to the comparison matrix. It's just about as non-biased as I could make it.

Bruno

I'm adding a very important update right now. The PhatBox has been EOL. Yup. That's it. Poof. The only unit now available is the Kenwood Branded 10GB unit. And of course they're working contract deals with OEMs like Visteon. No news of them offering another product retail.

Bruno

That's a good one. It took me a few minutes to find this again, but this is the gem.

EOL, but you can buy their domain name here.

Ahh yes... I have seen that one before. Since its layout is so crappy I never read it all the way through. Horizontal scroll bars on a website, especially one using a table, is unacceptable.

phatnoise is their website phatbox was probably a cyebersquatter or something

they win for stupidest name anyway "music keg"

Oh, I've got far more interesting domains I'd be willing to sell. Just see the domain of the same name as my posting handle.

Bruno

whitevanspeakers.com? This reminds me of stories on audioreview.com of guys selling "designer" speakers out of a white van. Apparently the speakers were bogus and many people fell for the scam.

Thats why I registered the domain. Someone at work bought a pair of those speakers last year. I was laughing all day. I registered the domain almst immediately after he told me the story. Never did get around to making into a nice joke site though. Time time time...

The best I saw was someone selling white vans out of the back of a stereo shop. Complete with a picture of a tractor trailer filled with white vans. It was hilarious. The white van thing is global by the way: Europe, Australia, Canada, USA...

I just renewed some of the domains. Some I'm going to let expire because they're no longer part of any plans.

Here's the reviews for the "white van speakers."

FYI, empeg only offers technical support via e-mail now, the phone number listed in the manual rings to a message informing callers of this. I was a bit suprised by that when I had my friend Ted call, but I can understand since it would have required the continued staffing of an off hours worker in tough economic times.

Perfect. I just wanted 100% confirmation before I removed that bit of info from the table.

Bruno

I just noticed this...
Can Be Used as Portable Hard Drive
Only allows uploading of songs to the unit, does not allow downloading for legal reasons

That's not quite as true as it used to be

Right up there with one of my stranger domains http://www.girliespeakers.com/

(dedicated to a work collegue who admitted to buying a rather pathetic surround sound system)

In practice the phone lined is manned about eight hours a day on average, but we can't guarantee the specific hours.

It's very rare not to get a reply to an email or a voicemail the same day.

Rob

"phatnoise is their website phatbox was probably a cyebersquatter or something

they win for stupidest name anyway "music keg" "

They're going after the elusive "frat boy music pirate with too much money on his hands" market :P

Ok, so I'm adding the phone note back in. What about calling the US 1-800? Will that get people anywhere?

Bruno

I'll visit this point right now... I've made it a bit more robust by including two categories instead of one. Now it covers both music transfers as well as non-music.

Bruno

In the row for "Can Play Music Outside of Car (Home, etc.)" you might add that with 3rd party software (hijack), the empeg can also be used as a network mp3 server.

Gem?! Have you read it?!

There's many error WRT the empeg and many "unknown"s. Overall it's a terrible comparison.

I think that was his point. Did you notice that their red ``especially bad'' things for the empeg included some things that were the same for other players, but not marked red?

Exactly what is this comparison to be used for? What is the purpose?

Tables and charts are usually marketing devices used to show the strengths and weaknesses of one product compared to others.

I don't think it was the intent of Scott at HotMP3Gear, the other chart being mentioned, to be unfair. He just didn't have the detailed information needed for all the players. Plus some features have changed and/or expanded over the past year.

Now, the purpose of MY table? Just to show the various features of the various units from an objective view. People can use it while shopping or just to know what they have compared to what else is out there. There is also information in there that a lot of people might not know about without reading all sorts of other resources.

I'll eventually update it to include a master list of hacks and 3rd party software for the empeg. Just haven't had any time for that lately.

Bruno

I'm not knocking the comparison but it appears to little more than regurgitated spec sheets. It doesn't hurt anything but just wondering what the usefulness is since empeg/riocar isn't made anymore. Given that, it seems largely a waste of time. Surely anyone on this bbs already has a player installed.

Nope. I have one on order. I used the chart before ordering to check that none of the competetion had surpassed the Empeg.....Very nice chart it is too.

The matrix has been up since December 1. Again, largely in part just for fun and because the others that were out there were kind of one-sided or just plain wrong.

Now the empeg is EOL and sold out everywhere except Carplayer.com and eBay and PhatBox has also ended production except for the Kenwood Music Keg.

It's a tight space to fit a lot of pointers to more information. Like the BBS, the FAQ, web addresses, locations to buy, etc. Plus I think it looks kind of cool. And it was the first time I had used any PHP at all (very minor use to swap out part of the html to pull up smaller images).

Bruno

Oh well, maybe you have a lot of time on your hands. Like I said, no offense intended just seemed pointless plus not viewed a lot.

Oh well, maybe you have a lot of time on your hands. Like I said, no offense intended just seemed pointless plus not viewed a lot.

If you don't have something nice to say...


Shut the fsck up.

No offense intended. It just seemed like a lot of work to put into something when the whole market seems to be dead ended. I can certainly see his point regarding using web tools he's never used before. Is it true PhatBox has also been discontinued?

The whole market has not dead-ended, and there are new products coming out in this category. When those products are available, I'm sure Bruno will update the chart. It is useful.

What about the PhatBox? Was it discontinued? Not that I would want one.

If you think about it, every single RioCar that is left at SB will be sold to someone. I checked today and saw stock for the 30s and 60s. is that for real? Put into context, the media alone is worth more than they are selling them for.

The PhatBox LE (Limited Edition) was in fact a "Limited Edition" release. Much to the dismay of some current owners and others who were not able to order in time. PhatNoise is no longer selling any players through retail and have no plans to (none made public).

Internally, it is exactly the same unit as the Kenwood Music Keg. The Keg is available right now at retail with a 10GB cartridge. 20 and 30GB cartridegs are still available from PhaNoise's Yahoo store and will work with the Kenwood model. I do not believe that the adapters for Audi/BMW/VW/Sony are available for sale to anyone but owners of the PhatBox LE. This means you can't buy a Kenwood product and then an adapter.

I'm waiting on some email to clarrify a few points. But the retail situation has been confirmed. They didn't post an official EOL release, but all the information on their website indicates that's what's happened.

Bruno

Thanks Tony. I've just updated even more info and added some Hijack-related notes that affect 3rd-party solutions to some of the categories.

In a couple of weeks I'd like to get started on a good solid 3rd party Hack/Application list, along with descriptions and links to everyone's software. I'll make sure to give the info to Tom to put up on Riocar.org as well.

Bruno