To prevent even more posts on the Rio Car announcement thread, I'm creating this one for discussion of the "Mark 3" (not officially named this) that will not show up from Rio directly, but will probably appear in the future. Here is the specs Hugo posted:

The unit had USB host (but no ethernet/USB slave/serial), CD slot for ripping, face-off, 4x45W amp, AM/FM tuner, bigger VFD (but smaller pixels), and was not pull-out - but the HDD was removeable and docked with USB. CPU was a 200MHz ARM9. The audio stage was basically identical, just using a slightly newer philips DSP.

...all fitted in a single-DIN unit. Tight squeeze, I can tell you! It was far less geeky than the mk2 (eg, no visuals on tuner or aux, no ethernet, etc) but we had some aggressive pricing to hit so some things had to go.

Personally, I wouldn't have bought one to upgrade my Mark 2. I enjoy the fact that the MK2 can be used in the house as well. I can see why OEMs should like the above unit though, as it is easy to use, and has the added benefit of fitting all in the dash and not needing a seperate box somewhere. Pioneer has a similar unit in the works, but without the removable HDD and USB host.

I believe empeg is smart though moving in this direction. It's something the average consumer can easially use, but high end audiophiles and geeks should still see appeal in it as well. The recent announcement shouldn't mean to us that the empeg touch is going away, but instead going more mainstream.