Space shouldn't be a problem. For those of use with only one drive (most of us, right?) we could add a second drive (maybe only 5 or 10 Gig) format it ext2fs and mount it for use as a recording repository.

You'd be able to use this in conjunction with a CD player on the aux-in to "rip" CDs. But I doubt many of us would consider that a practical application... You'd get no CDDB info, you woulnd't be able (without a lot more research) to assign your new acquisitions fids and add them to existing playlists. But for recording radio, I wouldn't see those as major issues.

Naming files could be done by XDS info (the tuner I can't buy provides XDS, right?) or at least the station frequency and the recording date & time. E.g. 92.7 - 02-02-05 - 22:32.mp3

You'd have to use hijack to play these back since they'd be regular ext2fs files, not fids.

However, the part about not having enough CPU power to compress and playback at the same time makes it rather unattractive.

The other drawback I see is that what makes a TiVo functional is that it's on 24x7 to record shows when you're not able to watch (sleep and work have been known to cause viewing disruption). If the only time your empeg is on is when you're in the car, then why not just listen to the radio in real-time?

I can see one potential use that sounds like it might be feasible to impliment: the ability to "press record" while listening to the radio. Then you can save what you're listening to for later playback. It's very TiVo like, but I think it would be a more practical and desirable use of the empeg.

After having recorded several segments off the radio, you can then HTTP to your empeg, download your saved radio .mp3 files and upload them as fids with emplode. Then you can add them to normal playlists instead of having to use the hijack menu option to playback radio recordings.