Mmmmm... I'm just looking to implement something on my new(er) E46 M3. I'm going down the CarPC route. The existing OEM Nav works very well although the maps available lag by about a year in Australia. So really I'm looking for a media player only and maybe a few other smaller things. Not really looking into DVB-T, or DAB+ just yet.

Using the existing Nav screen limits options since it's only 400x240 and has no touch screen (basic technology is about 15 years old). I'm not real keen on ripping it out and replacing it. There is a drop in Chinese head unit but I'm not convinced about the integration and quality of it.

I've been playing with media frontends on my laptop and they really are quite crap in general. There are some BMW looking basic ones (Carmedia and CarX). SD seems pretty average in my evaluation. XBMC is probably the best contender but I'd need to create a skin from scratch since it's aimed more at HD TVs with small fonts (on big TVs). Uses stacks of CPU too. Centrafuse doesn't really play well with the existing controls (and no touch screen) kind of ruling it out.

Others like RoadRunner (now RideRunner), mediaengine, openmedia are really bad. Simple stuff the equivalent of tab order are all over the place. Bad configuration and generally just amateur software (which in most cases they are). Even XBMC fails at skipping to the next song. It stops the audio to skip and then when it starts the next song, you hear a bit left in a buffer from the previous song. Ugh. Could be drivers but Winamp, WMP etc have no problem at all.

I did come back to think how I could integrate an empeg into a CarPC. Seems a bit silly to have to do it like that but not out of the question. Or somehow emulate the empeg hardware even to run the player app (if only the source didn't go into a virtual blackhole of company acquisitions). Edit: Obviously this isn't happening ever but that's where the thought process ends up...