iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month
Posted by: rob
iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 09:43
http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2004/irivercar.htmlAt last someone can see an opportunity here. What a surprise it isn't Rio!
Rob
Posted by: pgrzelak
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 10:11
Don't get me started... I know... I know...
Posted by: andy
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 10:29
I was surprised to see Alan Cox, of all people, saying:
"True but you can buy mini-itx PC cases in card stereo form factor now and roll your own with added support for video, gps"
in response to a "my empeg is great" comment
Posted by: cushman
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 10:42
Quote:
I was surprised to see Alan Cox, of all people, saying:
"True but you can buy mini-itx PC cases in card stereo form factor now and roll your own with added support for video, gps"
in response to a "my empeg is great" comment
Of course! Because everyone is (or should be) a top-class software engineer that could pound that out in a few hours.
Bah.
Posted by: peter
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 10:55
I'm all behind them. When Diamond bought Empeg they picked up that whole market sector on a plate -- the car-player was literally years ahead of anything else. (Even now, v2 has features that nothing else on the market has.) Since then, the successive owners of the car-player copyrights have utterly dropped the ball. year-in, year-out, displaying blistering incompetence and vertiginous indifference in equal proportions. I don't think Rio deserve to succeed in the car audio market after that. (Judging from their flash and portable players, the Iriver won't be gapless and its UI will suck. But there'll be lots of hardware features and it'll be better than nothing.)
Frankly, I'm good and cross. Within arm's reach of where I'm sitting now are technologies and code that could have kept Rio on top of the car audio market all this time, and put them all over the map into the home audio market (Roku schmoku). But nothing ever happens.
Peter
Posted by: mschrag
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 11:22
It really is embarrassing that they haven't taken advantage of the opportunity. What do the higher-ups at Rio say about this when it's brought up? It MUST be brought up, right? Is it possible now that iRiver is moving forward that they might change their minds and look at a car version, or is it just not going to happen?
Posted by: Daria
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 12:32
It'd be odd for them to continue to write off the market in the face of their next nearest competitor adopting it, unless they know something we don't.
Posted by: SuperQ
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 12:57
it's too bad, I've had discussions with several people about why we as an empeg community can't step in and build 1000 units of a new model player, license the software from rio, and fix the problem ourselvs.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 14:57
Quote:
Frankly, I'm good and cross.
You don't need to be, not yet. Keep in mind that the article is about a piece of vaporware at this point. There's a chance that iRiver may discover the truth: It's hard to break into the car stereo market with an expensive hard-disk player. Whether they can overcome those difficulties or not remains to be seen.
Of course, if they're able to do it today, it'll probably be thanks to the iPod opening the door to hard-disk-player-mindshare, something that didn't exist in the early empeg days. We'll see.
Posted by: mdavey
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 15:17
Quote:
It's hard to break into the car stereo market
Sure, but I would have thought that D&M would have the marketing prowess to achieve this. Perhaps not with a Rio branded standard head unit aimed at all the car manufacturers or the after-sale market. However, surely they are capable of a deal with Mercedes, say, to provide custom-size, integrated Denon branded head units in the same way that BMWs are available with a Blaupunkt head-unit.
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 15:19
They also mention rebranding the product and offering to another company. In that case, they don't need to break into the market as much... they could sell it to someone with presence like Clarion or Delphi.
Posted by: SonicSnoop
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 16:49
Maybe if iRiver does produce it and it does really well Rio may come back and deciede to try a Empeg 3. *hoping*
Posted by: image
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 19:40
if anyone wanted to sell their spare, now's a good time to do it. there's usually a surge for empeg sales every mention on slashdot. be even better if someone posted a link to the BBS in reply to alan cox. =)
Posted by: genixia
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 20:09
Quote:
by SuperQ on Slashdot, in reply to Alan Cox
that's a bunch of bullshit, mini-itx has no where near the hardware funcationality to handle mobile setups.
The empeg has special kernel hooks, and power controls to handle dips in car power. Car voltages fluctuate wildly while starting. The empeg also stores state in a small flash area which is controled by a kernel module to make sure the thing can start where it left off on next boot.
I'd like to see you stuff a mini-itx board, power supply, laptop drive, shock mounting, and display in a single din dashboard. Put your money where your mouth is, write the software, show us the hardware setup, and then we can talk about "oh yea, anyone can do that"
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 20:17
Quote:
be even better if someone posted a link to the BBS in reply to alan cox.
If it'll bring the Slashdot crowd, please don't.
Posted by: FireFox31
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 21:38
Quote:
unless they know something we don't
They, D&M, knows that the DIN format is dying, if not all ready dead. I don't know what iRiver is thinking making a (potentially) DIN, in-dash player. Like we've all said a hundred times, someone needs to make a rock solid interface between portables and the factory stereo. ie: bluetooth on the portable talking to a box in the trunk that's wired into the factory system and uses an elegant remote display (bluetooth?) which can be mounted anywhere.
I'm with SuperQ. With the sheer mind power we have in this community, why don't we make like Hugo and create the MKIII? Maybe score some funding (investment capital? personal funds?) to pay Patrick create his design or something like I mentioned above (more practical in todays cars, I think). And the coding ability we have here? Between the lot of the programmers, they've probably recreated most of the empeg software itself. And marketing? We could start at the source; deep within the geek community like we are. Get a foot hold, spread the word, then try to get the attention of the car manufacturers.
Granted, we can't create 700,000 a month, but if we create a Karma/iPod/Nomad-native non-dashboard interface, and someone like Ford Motor Company takes notice, ha, then we can let the big boys take care of the big numbers.
I know I'm all talk, but an idea like this really gets me fired up.
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 23:03
Is DIN really dead? Seems like tons of aftermarket audio companies are doing quite well. In fact, cars marketed toward younger buyers feature popular aftermarket headunits as a selling point. The empeg has shown that the hardware is really secondary. We are running very similar software on our empegs as the Karma owners are on their portables. I don't know of any aftermarket audio manufacturers that are making non-DIN units, so if a company were to get started in the aftermarket audio business, it'd make sense to do DIN units. Otherwise, they would be trying to break into two markets at one (mp3 car audio and non-DIN car audio.)
Don't get me wrong, I see the advantages of a portable/dash integration method, but I don't think that DIN is as dead as we might think. It might at least get them into the market and they could take their software with them to wherever the market goes.
Posted by: msaeger
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 23:15
Yeah but people buying Scions wouldn't be the target market for 1000.00 dollar car decks.
I would rather see a seperate box with the majority of the parts in it and a remote display / control unit.
Posted by: SE_Sport_Driver
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 13/10/2004 23:19
Actually, younger people are more likely to dish out gobs of money on this stuff and be computer savy enough to do it! Once we get houses, a spouse and kids, it's harder to justify this kinda stuff. I'd be there are more "low end" cars that have $1000 car stereos than cars over $30,000. Though I admit, I'm just guessing on this.
Posted by: peter
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 07:44
Quote:
Granted, we can't create 700,000 a month
It's not totally clear from the original article whether the 700,000 units from the new factory are 700,000 car-player units or not. 700,000 units a month is a healthy production for a flash-based portable; it's an extraordinary production for a winchester-based head unit. That's about the Ipod sales rate.
Peter
Posted by: mdavey
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 07:55
Quote:
With the sheer mind power we have in this community, why don't we make like Hugo and create the MKIII?
I'm surprised to find myself disagreeing with you. Is there really a lot that the Empeg doesn't do that this community wants and hasn't figured out a way to make it do? Large colour screen, touch screen, OBD-2, more serial devices, USB2.0 master?
While I would certainly buy a MKIII if it became available, I think a better strategy would be to look at one of the following:
A "smartscreen" - Colour touchscreen, StrongArm processor, some kind of NIC (probably Bluetooth), headphone socket (or better, IR headphone support) and a small flash Linux OS containing a web browser and touchscreen interface. Configured to fetch a pre-determined URL over its NIC (the Empeg web interface). Case designed to fit both in a 2-DIN hole and to be strapped to a headrest. Apart from the hardware and software to support tcp/ip over bluetooth and a web interface that is better suited to to the touchscreen, no changes to the Empeg would be needed. This would also open up the possibility for movies from the Empeg.
Processor upgrade - replace the StrongArm with a socket and daughter card that contains a new StrongArm, USB master and a more generic DSP (to work in combination with the existing DSP). This would require a new HD bay that is only able to take 1 drive (or perhaps could be designed to take two drives with a smaller form factor).
Now, I'm probably wrong about this but my gut feeling is that there are a couple of people on the board who could design the hardware for my first suggestion and a fair number that could write the software using the Arm-Linux kernel as a starting point. There are probably only two people on this BBS that could pull off my second suggestion.
Of course, at some point either the demand for Empegs will exceed the number of working Empegs available or Moores law will apply such that our needs will not be met by the capabilities of the unit. For instance, I took a cursory glance at decoding DAB in software and it isn't immediately obvious whether the Empeg has enough processing power to achieve this.
Posted by: thinfourth2
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 09:17
This might just be foot up the arse that rio needs to look into making a car player i wonder if the top bods even know what the empeg is might be worth rummagging around and sending them one as a "prototype"
Posted by: Shonky
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 11:57
I notice there are no pictures anywhere. Sounds a little like vaporware to me. You'd think there be some sort of prototype photo/CGI
Perhaps they have a very, very early prototype and are testing the water? Doesn't sound like they'll be coming out in the short term at least.
Posted by: genixia
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 13:08
Quote:
Processor upgrade - replace the StrongArm with a socket and daughter card that contains a new StrongArm, USB master and a more generic DSP (to work in combination with the existing DSP). This would require a new HD bay that is only able to take 1 drive (or perhaps could be designed to take two drives with a smaller form factor).
Why? Under most circumstances the CPU is not doing much. The biggest thing that we could do to reduce CPU usage on the empeg would be to offload IDE transfers from it. I don't know whether it would be possible to hack in a DMA capable IDE controller, but it could certainly be beneficial.
Posted by: mdavey
MKIII? - 14/10/2004 15:35
> Why?
1. So we could have USB 2.0 master capabilities. This would allow all manner of things to be connected. As I understand it, it is problematic to connect a seperate board with the necessary components to the main board, but much easier if there was a daughter card containing the components and the processor - whereby the daughter card would plug into a socket where the processor used to be.
2. So we could do complex software defined radio or even software defined TV stuff.
3. So we could have even more fancy visuals such as more complicated rendering, millions of colours and higher screen resolutions. This might be done on the StrongArm, in the generic DSP or a mixture of both. Kinda irrelevant right now, but if we did get some kind of remote colour screen working...
Posted by: tman
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 14/10/2004 17:05
Designing, making and installing this daughterboard will be a huge amount of work.
You'll probably want to use a XScale as a CPU, you'll need RAM on the daughterboard as well since the existing RAM isn't going to be fast enough, the USB 2.0 controller will require another chip which can attach to the PCI bus and as you're doing all the other upgrades then you might as well put in a 10/100 ethernet PHY. Oh and don't forget that since you're upgrading the display as well then you'll need to put a connector on the daughterboard for that.
All that's really left on the main board that you'll still use is the Phillips DSP, Crystal ADC and HDD connector. You might as well start from scratch if you're going to be doing all this since the daughterboard will contain nearly everything by itself.
Posted by: mdavey
Re: MKIII? - 14/10/2004 17:32
Quote:
Designing, making and installing this daughterboard will be a huge amount of work.
Agreed. However, I recall purchasing a similar upgrade for my aging Acorn A3000 several years ago.
Quote:
You'll probably want to use a XScale as a CPU, you'll need RAM on the daughterboard as well since the existing RAM isn't going to be fast enough, the USB 2.0 controller will require another chip which can attach to the PCI bus and as you're doing all the other upgrades then you might as well put in a 10/100 ethernet PHY.
I don't know about the RAM - perhaps with the right choice of processor that wouldn't be neccesary. I agree about the USB chip and possibly about Ethernet.
Quote:
Oh and don't forget that since you're upgrading the display as well then you'll need to put a connector on the daughterboard for that.
Personally, I wouldn't bother with an upgraded display connected directly to the Empeg. I think multiple smartscreens connected via Bluetooth (as I outlined above) would have more mileage. Plus, the smartscreens would be fairly generic - I'm sure that other uses could be found for them.
Posted by: FireFox31
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 15/10/2004 02:23
See, I'm thinking beyond hacking the empeg. Instead, creating a new product to suit consumers' uptake of HDD-based portables. There's no financial feasibility in making a hardware hack for a product that there are only 5,000 of. Why not create something new with a goal to produce 5,000 a month. Full-on product development, manufacturing, marketing, etc.
Maybe I shouldn't have called it "MKIII" because that implies an empeg revision. Rather, give it a new name, because it's a new product to fit a new demand.
How about a revision to my original suggestion. Make the master control box small enough to mount under one of the front seats. Boxes in the trunk are stupid. Then the remote display could have one clean wire to carry power and maybe the data from the controler, if not using bluetooth. Create three individual adapters for portables to wirelessly communicate; Rio, iPod, Nomad. Though I guess we'd have to license the technology to communicate over their interface ports.
But the remote display is the trick. Sure, make it 2DIN size with four buttons and a knob, full color, good viewing angle, etc. Car manufacturers could choose to integrate that into their dash and into their car's computer. Fine, have our control box interface with theirs. And if not, the customer could put the screen wherever they want. Air vents, cup holder, who knows.
And the control box would be the hard worker. Maybe have storage just for buffering, but the portable does the main storage. The control box would need the code to work with three different devices presenting one common interface to the user. Use it to emulate as many cool empeg features as the portables will allow, all with ellegant empeg interface. Imagine the flexibility. You're driving around with your Karma, but your girlfriend wants to hear a tune on her iPod. Fine, plug in her iPod and use the same interface to access her music.
I'm dreaming again, I know, but there must be a real demand for this. Portable music/storage will saturate the market, so it's only logical to extend the user experience to the car by leveraging their portable. Now, if only I could get together about 20 guys and a million dollars to start........
Posted by: msaeger
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 15/10/2004 02:36
The problem is that people never having experienced a good dedicated car player are happy using their portables. So now instead of why buy that I can make on with an old 486 and some chewing gum you'll get why buy that I already have an ipod.
Also just making it interface to a portable you would be limited in the HDD size area.
Posted by: SuperQ
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 15/10/2004 13:32
yea.. i got tired of all the people saying "you could do FOO hack job" without any real idea on what it takes to do such a thing.
Posted by: tman
Re: MKIII? - 15/10/2004 16:50
Quote:
Agreed. However, I recall purchasing a similar upgrade for my aging Acorn A3000 several years ago.
Did you have to remove a BGA though to fit this upgrade board? It's a pain to remove a BGA even with a proper SMD rework station. The empeg would definitely have to be sent off to get this upgrade done.
Quote:
I don't know about the RAM - perhaps with the right choice of processor that wouldn't be neccesary.
The RAM on the empeg board is only 60ns so won't work with any of the IXP/PXAs. It's far too slow.
Posted by: FireFox31
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 15/10/2004 20:03
Quote:
why buy that I already have an ipod
Buy it because it doesn't replace the iPod, it *enables* the iPod; and ideally the Rios and Nomads too. It's one step toward having your HDD portable be your only music source. Use it on the go with head phones, use it at work or home with one of those docks with speakers, and use it in the car with the control box I'm proposing.
And it would appeal to the non-DIY group who are unable to make a "h4x0rd" 486 box in the trunk. It's something that could come bundled with the car (ideally) or you could have your local installer put in. Imagine the conversation between car salesperson and buyer:
sales: "So, those are the options. By the way, do you have a Karma, iPod, or Nomad?"
buyer: "Yeah, actually, I love it."
sales: "Well, how about using it to replace tapes and CDs in your car! For $399 extra, we can add the interface module to your new car. No headache, just plug it in and all your songs are there."
buyer: "Hm, that's kind of a lot, but... ah, it's worth it. Put it in."
Seems like a logical need that's currently not being filled. But I'll stop rambling now because I have no way to bring this to fruition; at least not right now.
Posted by: mdavey
Re: MKIII? - 15/10/2004 20:23
Quote:
Did you have to remove a BGA though to fit this upgrade board? It's a pain to remove a BGA even with a proper SMD rework station. The empeg would definitely have to be sent off to get this upgrade done.
No, my SMT socket recognition skills aren't particularly well developed, but it isn't a BGA. Picture attached. The work was done at the time by Watford Electronics - who also produced the upgrade board. Looking at the picture now, I'm not that sure they had the best tools back then - looks to me like the card was reworked after assembly. The board replaced the 8MHz ARM2 with a 25MHz ARM3.
Edit: to clarify, the surface-mounted ARM2 on the main board is removed and replaced with the appropriate IC socket, into which the daughter card is plugged. This was all done by Watford Electronics. I assume they destroyed the ARM2 in the process of removing it (by cutting off all the legs and then desoldering the remains).
Posted by: tman
Re: MKIII? - 15/10/2004 21:12
Bleh. For some reason I kept thinking the StrongARM was a BGA chip even though I've opened the empeg and installed extra RAM myself. It's the PXA and IXP chips which are BGA packages.
It makes it easier to remove the StrongARM with it not being a BGA but you'd still need to put RAM onto this board as the existing RAM is way too slow. I've got a 266MHz IXP here and that requires 7ns RAM at a minimum. The RAM on the empeg board is EDO as well which won't work.
Posted by: altman
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 18/10/2004 15:51
I think the 700k units/month is for the new factory, which I would guess makes every player that iRiver churn out. I'd be suprised if the entire *aftermarket* head unit demand worldwide, for all models right from the most basic CD or tape deck, is up to 700ku/month.
I'll be interested in what they do with it, though, as (as I've said before) it's getting hard to fit DIN units into cars nowadays, which is slowly eroding the entire aftermarket stereo business.
Hugo
Posted by: belezeebub
Re: MKIII? - 19/10/2004 17:52
Count me in, I would love to see a full color LCD screen (maybe even touch screen) with 5.1 output or atleast front rear and sub outs and a build in tuner, maybe even have a drop down face and a bay so you could add an extra drive with out taking the unit apart. give me all that with the Empeg interface and you will get my money so fast it will make your head spin.
Posted by: tonyc
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 19/10/2004 18:47
I don't find myself wanting/needing many new features on my in-dash player. What I would want to see more than anything else is a dockable portable player that can be used at home, in car, or as a true portable. I don't know where the Moore's law hard disk corrolary is these days, but we can't be more than a year or so off from Grzelak-ish music collections being able to fit on a Karma-ish hard disk. If that happens, then there's no good reason for anyone to own more than one mp3 player, which can then be dropped into a DIN-sized dock, or a traditional home stereo-sized component at home. Then you have none of this business of keeping a subset of your collection on this player, then forgetting that your other player's collection is out of date... Let's keep it all on one player, and just plug that player into a shell with controls and display to suit the environment.
Posted by: tfabris
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 19/10/2004 18:55
Actually, I forsee a future when we've got a box that's our cell phone, our MP3 player, and our digital camera, and perhaps other stuff, all in one box. I mean, we have that right now but they have limited storage capacity and they aren't the best-in-class at each of those tasks. We'll get more storage and the integration and quality of all those devices will improve. But having a universal car dock for such a device would be nice.
Posted by: tonyc
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 19/10/2004 19:13
Very few companies, if any, have domain expertise at the cutting edge of those 3 different devices, so usually when you see combination MP3/Digicam/Cellphone/Toaster devices, one of the functions is lagging. With that in mind, I'm okay with my cell phone, music player, and digital camera all being different devices.
What you're talking about may happen down the line, but I'm talking about something that could be developed now-ish. I admittedly don't know the state of iPod/Karma type HD technology these days, but assuming storage density is going at a nice rate, it can't be that tough of a nut to crack.
Posted by: pgrzelak
Re: iRiver tooling to make 700K in dash HDD players per month - 19/10/2004 19:20
And, if Microsoft has their way, that device that can do all these things will be your (non-portable) computer...
Posted by: tman
Re: MKIII? - 19/10/2004 21:34
Sure. I'll design and make a "Mk3" for you. Each unit will cost $1,000,000 however since the market for such a device will be so small. Still interested?
Posted by: rob
Re: MKIII? - 19/10/2004 21:58
I'm pretty sure Patrick would be very happy to do it for a lot less than $1m per unit, so I think you're out of luck.
Rob
Well Patrick... if you want to do that, I'll Paypal to you now! Go on go on go on go on go on...
Posted by: tman
Re: MKIII? - 19/10/2004 22:23
Doh. Bang goes my MAKE MONEY FAST!!! idea. Anybody want a diploma from an accredited college? Or help a good friend of mine shift a few million out of Nigeria?
Posted by: wfaulk
Re: MKIII? - 19/10/2004 22:31
1. Build empeg MkIII
2. ???
3. Profit!
Quote:
1. Build empeg MkIII
2. ???
3. Profit!
Sure beats stealing underpants!
Posted by: canuckInOR
Re: MKIII? - 20/10/2004 04:43
Quote:
Quote:
1. Build empeg MkIII
2. ???
3. Profit!
Sure beats stealing underpants!
Well, now that Ebay has banned auctions consisting of lightly used undergarments, yes, I suppose it does.
Posted by: webroach
Re: MKIII? - 20/10/2004 05:33
Quote:
Quote:
Sure beats stealing underpants!
Well, now that Ebay has banned auctions consisting of lightly used undergarments, yes, I suppose it does.
There's still vending machines! 
Posted by: Daria
Re: MKIII? - 20/10/2004 05:43
The guy with the 10000 yen note looks like one of the men from the Chinpokomon episode of South Park.
Posted by: andym
Re: MKIII? - 20/10/2004 08:13
For a minute there I thought,
'Those cigarette packets look funny'
Posted by: webroach
Re: MKIII? - 20/10/2004 08:46
Quote:
For a minute there I thought, 'Those cigarette packets look funny'
Probably hard to keep lit, too. 