IMHO an open source player would be the best solution, and if it were pulled off I have no doubt that project would end up on many targets other than the empeg car player. Unfortunately I can't see that happening - a certain level of functionality and commitment is required before an open source project is taken seriously enough to gain wider momentum. The original (pre-1.0) player was written in a few months essentially by one person (Mike) if you don't include drivers (Hugo - but open source, so no need to duplicate) and visuals (Toby). I'd say that level of functionality would generate interest in the project, so we're looking at a commitment of maybe six months full time development by someone. If that someone expects reasonable remuneration then that's probably £15 - £20K.

A player with 3.0 functionality would be considerably more work. I'm planning a project of similar scope for a different market (closed source, sorry!) and working on the assumption of 6,000+ man hours. To make that a reality in an open source world it would be necessary to attract more developers with time on their hands than we're likely to find in the empeg community - hence targeting other platforms (e.g. generic in-car PC's).

As another option, I suspect a couple of weekends of work by three or four key people at Rio would yield an acceptably usable 3.0 Beta. At one time job satisfaction and a few pizzas would generate sufficient motivation for this, but these days I suspect it may take something more tangible.

Rob