Check out the AVX-2494

http://www.eclipse-web.com/

20 Gigs and Nice stats plus Color screen. and built in CddDB

This sounds cool.

Also records from broadcasts.
Another plus is that Music Juke even allows you to record AM/FM radio broadcast clips. Just hit the record button when you hear something you like being broadcast and Music Juke will make sure it’s recorded from the song’s beginning, even if you hit the record button after it started!


This sucks.

*uses ATRAC3 encoding
For the most efficient recording, the AVX2494 uses ATRAC3 encoding which is a feature on many portable music devices.
It’s an advanced encoding/decoding process that compresses music files to just 1/10 the size without harming the music content.


The screen looks great but it has the same problem as the sony and pioneer units. Do they expect me to sit in the car for hours and rip cds. I can understand that they don' t want to make a pull out but they could have a removable hard drive.

Still can't hold a candle to the Empeg but as more and more players enter the market more and more people will start using them which will in turn drive up the features and quality

It ripps cd's as you play them, not the best idea in my book but you never know.


BTW I have heard of "ATRAC3" encoding before how does it compair to MP3,

It ripps cd's as you play them, not the best idea in my book but you never know.

Yeah, such a terrible idea that the Empeg guys implemented it flawlessly in the Rio Central and in their prototypes for Visteon.

BTW I have heard of "ATRAC3" encoding before how does it compair to MP3,

If I recall correctly, it is the same format used for Minidisc. It compares favorably to MP3.

Edit: Clarification... It compares favorably in terms of audio quality. In terms of utility, nothing beats MP3 because it's so universal, cross-platform, and has the largest library of tools to work with.

Yeah, such a terrible idea that the Empeg guys implemented it flawlessly in the Rio Central and in their prototypes for Visteon.

I do believe that you've missed the point. In your house, it's a great idea. You're in your house doing other things; you can easily multitask swapping CDs and doing other stuff. In your car, you're driving. Period. If you want to rip CDs, you've gotta take a bunch of CDs to the car, either wait there for them to rip or wander in and out, leaving your car on the whole time.

As far as convenience, sure, it makes enough sense for it to be able to do that. (I'm surprised that there's not a legal battle over it, as it'd be pretty easy to copy your friends CDs that you want to listen to in the car.) But ripping all of your CDs in car would be an awful experience. If it also has another way to get music on the player, fine, but my impression is that it doesn't.

No, I believe you missed the point. The idea is that people are already swapping a handful of CDs in and out of the car every day to listen to them on the drive to work. You put in a new system like this, and do the same thing. Only this time it just remembers the CDs you've put into it.

I agree that it would be a PITA to rip your entire collection in one sitting, but it's not intended for that to be its main use anyway.

Agreed. It's a good feature, but it damn well better not be the only way to get music on there. Of course, it most likely is. I'm not aware of any free ATRAC3 encoders to use to create files to be transported there another way.

There is another aspect to this. A big chunk of the target market does not have an existing MP3 (or whatever) collection. To them, words like ATRAC or MP3 mean nothing - they just want to put a disc in, wait and put in another to "store" them. They don't want to use any PC they might have to rip, catalog and transfer them. For this audience, the Eclipse/Camelot approach is perfect. The car journey is often the chunk of their music listening time anyway.

The issue that always comes up in conversations with OEMs about this is the problem of the "initial load" or what to do with your collection when you change cars (esp. if it is an OEM version). There are many ways to approach this from dealer services, to a home power supply for ripping a good chunk of your collection before installation. But, if the ripping speed is decent (and you can listen while you rip), it is surprising how quickly you can build up a decent collection on a normal commute. When I first tried the Pioneer one, the single speed ripping had me fed up in no time at all, especially after being spoilt by the empeg alternatives.

For those that have a collection already, providing a way to transfer that collection easily (even before installation) is important, and then new additions can be added as and when. Of course, then we are into how to keep the CDDB up to date (the Eclipse one appears several months out-of-date already). This is what I think will be a bigger issue than the ripping itself, as it is one thing to wait a few minutes while the CD rips, and quite another to then have to enter the tags yourself on the unit so you can actually choose music usefully.

Overall, the no-PC-needed solution will expand the appeal of HDD-players to a wider audience.

Mind you, I have no answer to the US Manager who, on being shown a 400-disc capacity empeg prototype dismissed it with "Why don't I just keep those discs in the glovebox and I can just choose which to put in the player?". I know you guys make your cars big, but....!!

Nick

ATRAC and the Memory Stick slot gives me a horrible feeling that it may end up with the checking files in and out debacle that the Sony version implemented!! Aaaaaaaaarrrrghh!

Still not sure why I can't quote other peoples posts, I must be missing something.

anyway I wasn't poopoo'ing anyones Ideas but I would personally rather usb it to my computer then sit in my car and encode 700 cd' X 74 Mins per cd / 60 /24 thats like 35 days.

but I can convert all my cd's to mp3 or most other formats over a weeked while playing computer games.

Do we ever get to find out who you are, BTW? "No" is a potential answer, I suppose.

Copy and paste the appropriate text, then put [q] and [/q] tags around it.

"Quote"
"Do we ever get to find out who you are, BTW? "No" is a potential answer, I suppose"

Who I am ? I am just a dumb looking scrawnie little four eyed Geek,

Maybe there is a way to update the CDDB and transfer music to the unit


The increasing crossover use of digital media gets another boost because the AVX2494 and AVX2404 can be used with
popular Magic Gate Memory Sticks for music or still image playback from data previously downloaded onto the Memory Stick from your PC.

Do we ever get to find out who you are, BTW?

I hope I'm not revealing too much by saying this, but I determined through deduction (reading his posts) that he works for Visteon in Europe.

I am confused who are you trying to figure out information on?

Do we ever get to find out who you are, BTW?
I hope I'm not revealing too much by saying this, but I determined through deduction (reading his posts) that he works for Visteon in Europe.

I don't know. Maybe the person I responded to. (Half_Geek)

I read stuff in Flat mode usually, so it is easy enough to lose the hierarchy of messages!

Think of it ripping at multiple speed (e.g. 8x for the Sony) while you are using the car anyway. Even the shortest journey should be able to rip 1 CD (especially if it finished ripping after ignition off and then shuts down), so to and from work gives you 10 CDs a week minimum, without any special effort to rip at other times. As mentioned, it is personal preference, and I am guessing that all those posting to this board regularly are showing more computer keenness than the majority of the target market, and probably a considerably larger CD collection (please forgive my extreme generalisations!). Market research gives a surprisingly low figure for the amount of HDD space most people think they want (certainly not enough to trouble the size of laptop/automotive drives available! (Please don't tell me about the reliability of market research results!!)

I work for Visteon in the UK on automotive multimedia of various sorts. I guess I am empeg's main advocate inside Visteon, which is by turns fruitful and interesting, and other times frustrating - the latter pretty much always on our side I have to say - OEM is rarely the cutting edge of technology!

Nick

And by the way, even with the Central in my house, even when I was deliberately re-ripping my entire collection on the Central, I only ever did 3-6 CDs in one session. I never tried to stuff my whole collection into it at once...

(i replied to mseager because I'm agreeing with him. )

Simply: The design of "in car CD rip while you listen" is a roadblock to the next generation of consumerism. 21st century is the "Digital Lifestyle" which allows for seamless movement of content between home, work, car, and portable. If the industries tap into this paradigm, they'll be able to make tons more "stuff to sell to consumers"; which is good for the industries.

(i'm having a hard time putting this in writing (maybe it's my head cold), so bear with me)

By clinging to old-world physically-distributed music and storage, industries are missing out on vast potential for new products based on electronic, dynamic storage. Yes, it's hard to quickly turn industries and WAY harder to turn consumer usage patterns, but the benefit of memory-based portable MP3 players has been embraced by a seemingly vast consumer-base.

My point is, if the industries can transition consumers away from CDs and to dynamic storage (memory cards, HDD, internet), the industries will be able to better achieve their bottom line: create stuff for consumers to purchase like mindless lemmings. We all have CD walkmans and CD headunits and CD home decks; we don't need to buy any more. But we don't all have dynamic music storage in car, home, and portably. So, move consumers to the more flexible dynamic storage and they'll buy all the stuff.

Look at MP3 portables. I've seen the most unlikely of people sporting Rio portables. They are enjoying the flexability of moving their music seamlessly around their Digital Lifestyle: from home to portable, quickly reconfigurable at will. Seems like a success.

Rio Central and empeg fill the "Digital Lifestyle" for home and car audio, but they stand alone it seems. Consumers already have one foot in the Digital Lifestyle with their MP3 portables. Once they see the benefit of moving their music (and other material) seamlessly between home, car, and portable; they'll GLADLY buy up whatever the industries can cook up.

Bottom line is: Kill off pressed rotational media for storage and distribution. Encourage consumers to create MP3 libraries just as they would rather save electronic documents than stash paper copies in file cabinets. Further do for music what e-mail did for people visiting the post office. And before you know it, there will be a massive demand for products which enable the Digital Lifestyle's ease and benefits.

Another 21st century device. Too bad I won't be buying it because it's a Creative product. ... Though their MuVO is pretty cool.

That looks like Creative's Media To Go offering - in other words, apart from the plastics, it is identical to every other Microsoft Media To Go player. If you want one but don't want a Creative product you'll find the same thing from any number of other vendors this year.

Needless to say, Rio is not following the flock on this one..

Rob

Needless to say, Rio is not following the flock on this one..

Hmm. I've been wondering what you guys have been up to recently. I know that the Karma has been seeing some firmware work, but you've all been suspiciously quiet.

Suffice to say we're keeping busy! Too damn busy :-)

Rob

Hmmm... Rob revives a two week old thread to give a cryptic response with a smiley... Something is brewing...

Maybe they're working on a carrying case for the Karma? Hehehe.

Bruno

or a remote!

Or the Karma 2!

Again, it all sounds good on paper.

I'm really looking for something to come along and give the iPod a run for its money. At this point, the iPod, its marketing buzz and availability simply make everything else seem nearly irrelevant in most people's eyes.

To appeal to me (this may not have any impact on the mass market) a cool portable device would also have (available as options) a great car connection kit like the IceLink as well as a home docking station that did a lot more than hook up to your PC. Something with a larger display or TV output (with a simple graphics controller) would be great.

None of the above speaks of the device itself. Personally, I want a BIG hard drive and enough CPU power to play video as well as audio. It doesn't have to have a huge built-in screen. I'd like to be able to connect it to external displays for playback. Such a device should most definitely double as portable storage (allowing one to play the same content from it directly on a laptop or other computer).

These types of devices will be a new target for content exported from personal video recorders (computer-based, TiVo, etc..). Definitely on my mind while developing such PVR designs... (shhhh)

Bruno

I agree, the next generation of portables should take the empeg "car/home" design to the next level: "portable/car/home." We've talked about this before, but I'll rattle it off again for no good reason.

The new generation should be a portable should be hard drive based with a nice screen and good software. Also, it should be able to insert into its specific single DIN car deck. The car deck will have all the front panel controls and a nice screen. Lastly, the portable should have a home dock which, like hybrid8 said, should be more than a connection to the PC. A standalone box with a screen (as an option) would be nice. It would be even more nice if the home box had RioCentral (I think) ability to feed sound streams to other boxes in other rooms of the house.

21st century, connectivity, portability, simplicity, and freedom to have ALL of your "stuff" wherever you are.