We haven't sold any Beta hardware to clients. The current empeg car player hardware is NOT Beta - I'll confuse the issue the issue and point out that what you currently have is a Mark 4 player and the next public release will be Mark 7.

We test the hardware Beta releases in-house, plus maybe a few local external testers who know exactly what they're getting.

In your post you listed a whole bunch of SOFTWARE problems and then complained about Beta hardware. The only hardware issues you mentioned are the tuner and the hard drive that crashed. You have a point with the tuner, it's not ideal, and in fact it was our original intention to remove it entirely from the next release - at the last minute we came up with the external module idea. The hard drive crashing has nothing to do with our product - we had a small batch of bad drives from Toshiba that died very early in their lives with spin-up problems. We replaced them with a new model and I haven't heard of any of those failing, or for that matter, earlier drives from batches that weren't affected by this manufacturing fault.

With the partial exception of the tuner, the "Mark 2" player is not a bug fix release. It is an update of the current player, with several new features added as a direct consequence of customer suggestions. The "Mark 1" continues to be fully supported because IT IS ESSENTIALLY THE SAME PRODUCT - no, really, it is! The vast majority of the codebase is common - any new feature which isn't exclusively related to a new hardware function will apply equally to earlier and later players.

I'm not saying that the Mark 2 isn't a better product - it is. However I'm unimpressed by arguments against progress in order to protect technology investments up until that time. We could have not bothered with the improvements and we would have made just as much money and shipped just as many players - in fact we would have made MORE money because there would have been more "Mark 1" owners willing to upgrade at a later date. Perhaps we shouldn't have made any mention of the updates until the day the new player was released, an event that is still four months away.

I can see where you're coming from, especially as you've been unfortunate in your empeg experience, however from my perspective (influenced as it may be by a residual hangover and prospects of a 19 hour flight tomorrow including 7 hour stop over in Cleveland of all places) I believe we've been responsible - a little unconventional - but fair to our present and future clients.

Rob