My opinion, as congealed from other responses to questions like yours, is that we're unlikely to see anything like the empeg from any company that is not employing the same team that made the empeg. Take, for example, the products that have appeared so far. There were and are the MP3 CD players, but you still have to swap CDs, getting away from which was my personal number one reason for getting an empeg. Then there are the basically brand-new hard drive based MP3 players from Pioneer and someone else, both of which require that you rip the CDs while in the car, and they only have about 10GB worth of unupgradable space on them. And at least one of them was ATRAC anyway.

Then you've got the assumption, which seems to have some legitimate backing, that the empeg team is making a new player for some ``OEM'' car audio player. I don't know if that means GM or Ford, or if it means Pioneer or Sony. (I'm personally inclined to say it's the former, but that has no basis.) Regardless, though, whatever company it is is likely to be much more conservative than a group of hobbyists is (or was), and, for that reason, I'll bet that while the new product might be a little more polished, and possibly a little more stable, it will probably have fewer features (other than probably one big flashy thing), and, in general, be much less cool.

Also keep in mind that many of us bought our empegs for well over $1000, so the prices you see, while somewhat exorbitant, given the price for which they were likely purchased, is actually fairly cheap. But you seem to have noted that already.

In other words, if you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up. It is so choice.