It's been a good symbiotic relationship, and it'd be nice if that could eventually lead to an arrangement where the community could take some part in the development process of a fully functional empeg player app...

Is there anything (other than some sort of motivation) keeping this from happening without any of DNNA's source?

I myself am probably not representative of the majority of empeg owners;

- I don't need GPS functionality.
- I can't take advantage of a lyrics-viewer (because I'm not retagging >170GB of music)
- I don't need complicated button re-maps, etc.
- etc.

What I need is a deck that holds as much of my music collection as possible, plays the music, and allows me to organize it as I like. And that's what I have in the empeg.

What would I add/change?

- Add (at least limited) Japanese tag support, which would save me retagging about 1/3 of my collection.
- Make it simple to add custom INFO modes. XML simple. As in "/drive0/var/infomodes/my_mode_1.xml"
- Add in color support. So if someone ever managed to hack on a new screen.... <drool>
- Etc.

I suppose not having visuals could be a problem for some, but for me, not so important.

I by NO MEANS have the programming skills to tackle something like this, but it's always seemed like plenty of the people on this board do. Hell, I'll offer up as much of my own time as possible to do anything to help (ie. learn more programming, etc., order pizza) if people were interested in really starting something on this.

Lest I be misunderstood; I love the empeg. Other than seeing mojibake when I play 1/3 of my MP3s it's perfect. And there are no words to express how much I appreciate the work (and time and blood and sweat and X-Mas eves) Hugo and Rob and everyone have put into it. It's an amazing product. But sadly, it's also a product they don't have full control of. Not to mention it sounds like they have their hands full at their regular jobs.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, and that it's taken in the spirit that it's intended.