That is where I was coming from. My current situation is fine with the empeg, but in looking at new cars I start to think about wanting DVD and/or GPS, and there simply isn't enough dash space in most these days. The Alpine units look nice, and several different brands now tout "high speed" ipod interfaces (usb). Most of these also play from USB thumb drive.

Interesting comparison of features. I have never used an ipod for more than 10 minutes, but I have played with my son's nano a bit. The biggest questions for me were how do I use this like my empeg?

- I.e. down down down shuffle all (is it the same? non-repeating?)
- How do I tweak the playlist while playing? I.e. add more "dire straits" while playing?
- Can I "enqueue" / "replace" etc?
- Crossfade? Auto Volume Adjust?
- The "clickwheel" seems great for sitting there, I wonder how the interface is for DRIVING though.... seems like it would require too much hand-eye coordination, rather than "click click click"

Possible plusses of the ipod over empeg (untested, just thoughts)

- smaller, and can go with me anywhere
- Newer generation is comparable capacity-wise
- Video (do any of the car DVD players support playing video from the ipod?)

Anyway, I'd love to hear from anyone who has compared some of the in-car ipod solutions with the empeg. Admittedly, this question might be asked on some ipod forum, but 99.9999% of them have never seen an empeg.

I still think the empeg is far superior, Im just curious (blame crutchfield).

Jeff