but can you tell me if there will be something as good or better on the horizon?

Consensus of opinion around here is no.

There may be machines in the next few years that can store MP3s on a hard drive and play them in your car, but it is unlikely that you will have the ability to "hack" the unit the way we can do with the empeg, and it is unlikely that the user interface will be as flexible or as powerful.

The only ones currently on the market right now are nowhere near as good as the empeg, and cost considerably more than any empeg for sale today on ebay.

tanstaafl.