Terratec is a German company - sorry, I suppose I should have posted the URL - they are behind www.terratec.de. The M3PO player allows you to play burned CD-Rs (and what have you), but it does also have an IDE hard disk built-in as an option, similar to empeg car.

I know it's really a home unit, but (to me, anyway) it's the nearest comparable unit to what empeg car achieves. I eventually intend to pick up a second hand Mk1 to build permanently into a hifi unit with a fixed power supply, but the M3PO is about as close to this as I have seen.

As for big name MP3 players - well, I know that somewhere near where I work, there has been a fully functional box on the bench for about a year now...