If you are going to CES, check out the Visteon booth (4919 I believe) and ask to see their MP3 Jukebox head unit concept. The software may seem rather familiar..

Features include:

Fully self contained in-dash design
Large full colour TFT display
Internal hard drive
Slot load CD drive for playback and ripping of Audio and MP3 Data CD's
"Soup View" content selection (now called Rio LogicTrack)
Background encoding for fast CD recording
Full colour visualisations that react to the music

..and many of the other features found in Rio Central and the car player.

Thanks to Visteon for letting me talk about it here. For those who don't know of Visteon, they are one of the largest automotive suppliers in the world and supply the 19 largest vehicle manufacturers worldwide as well as the aftermarket. We have worked closely with them on projects since 1999 are pleased to be working together on this exciting concept.

As a point of trivia, the Tux start-up animation was created by our very own tfabris :-)

Rob

Any chance of some pictures?

Pretty, pretty please

I'm sure someone will take some photos at the show. I don't have any photos with the latest front panel.

Rob

"Soup View" content selection (now called Rio LogicTrack)

I thought it was called "LogiTrack", with no central "c", to be more 1337 and trademarky? It's certainly spelt "LogiTrack" on the Riot web page, and it was the Riot crew who invented the word IIRC.

Peter

I think we're so hungry for new stuff that we'd all love to see old pictures as well, if you're able.

Just how conceptual is 'Concept'? Are we talking about a engineering prototype or pre-production model?

You've mentioned that you've been working with Visteon since '99, which would imply that that pre-production is a possibility, and since engineering prototypes aren't usually exhibited at CES....

I wonder how the HD running at cold temperatures issue has been resolved?

I have a million questions... does it have any features like removable face? Is cd the only way to get mp3's onto the thing?

I think the 99 project with Visteon involved a seperate product - a trunk mounted mp3 player.

Is it any of these?

http://www.visteon.com/about/features/2003/010303.shtml (Look at the bottom of the page for links)

I think that Visteon made/is making a trunk based player based on the PhatNoise platform called MACH MP3 Jukebox.

Maybe the fine folks at Visteon were talking to the Empeg folks before that?

http://www.visteon.com/about/features/2001/071201.shtml

Right now I need to let Visteon talk for themselves if they want to, at least until I find out what information has been made public at CES. I think I can say that the product on show at CES is not the furthest progressed project we're working on right now, but it is the most impressive for a show.

Rob

I'd love a "large full-color TFT". My wife would like the CD drive, but I wouldn't, and we have that argument all the time

As Rob says, the product shown at CES is a good attention grabber for the type of mass market that Visteon traditionally sell to through the major automotive OEMs. A full production version of that particular product would very much depend on the interest seen. However, more immediate and hopefully more interesting variants are being investigated as well. Hopefully, we can share more information shortly.

Nick

I wonder how the HD running at cold temperatures issue has been resolved?

Y'know... I think the cold temperature issue may be somewhat overstated. Perhaps my player is unusual, but it will start up and run pretty reliably at temperatures down to about -10 degrees F -- that's about 50 degrees colder than the documentation says it will do.

IBM Travelstar, 18 GB.

tanstaafl.

No. It is not mentioned on that list, but is shown on the stand at CES.

I agree, it really does seem overstated. Down here in Georgia, it gets really cold. Even when it gets so cold that it is nearly freezing outside, my empeg still seems to work.

-Biscuits

Even when it gets so cold that it is nearly freezing outside,

I'm talking about 40--50 degrees colder than that!

tanstaafl.

im buying one.

Most of the issues with getting a hard drive to survive automotive specs are lifetime related. The typical automotive spec requires -30/-40°C to 75/85°C and a 10 year life!! - hard drives will often work at these temperatures, but with the lubricants, bearings etc used in standard models, the life drops right off. We're a cautious bunch! The automotive aftermarket has a bit more leeway with specs.

Nick

Has any hdd lasted 10 years. I Think it would be better to make the unit removable and the hdd easy to replace.

That is a feasible approach to help get products to market quickly, if the maker thinks that they need the product .

But the automotive industry thinks very statistically - design for 10 years, and the percentage failures in the 1/3/5 year warranty periods become very small. Depending on the OEM, it is all a trade-off between reliability/technological image of the company/profit etc. Some will be quicker than others to embrace new technology.

Entertainment (Audio and Video) applications have the luxury of not being safety-critical - if your empeg hdd dies, you won't lose control - and so can make some of these trade-offs easier. Automotive hdds are also wanted for all sorts of other uses, which require complete robustness or else the car stops or crashes!! There is a tendency to want to hedge their bets and wait until the full-automotive hdd is good and ready, before using it anywhere.

Unfortunately for all technofans, OEM car manufacturers are not very big risk-takers!! As they start to appear though, hopefully everyone will feel they have to follow....

Both my Mk1 and 2 will start and play at the current temperatures we have here (-13 C this morning, Mk 2 ran OK). One is Travelstar, the other is Toshiba.

Yea, Please someone go to the show and take pictures LOTS of pictures for us, who can't attend such events Please!

Jabz

The empeg meet went well. Once we met up, we headed over to Visteon's outside booth to play with the "Camelot." (I think that's the code name). It was basically a RioCentral for the car with a color screen. Looked pretty awsome. If the GPS on it ever comes to light, this may be the empeg killer.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Woot!

You're almost making me regret just buying another empeg.... Anybody have a rough estimate on when these things will come out? By next xmas? Will they be oem-only or will aftermarket units become available?

I'm guessing the price would approach that of the Rio Central at $1000?

-Biscuits

Bump. I edited my above post with a few more images.

Anybody have a rough estimate on when these things will come out? By next xmas?

The man in the booth said 3-4 YEARS!!! It seems like it's targeted at OEM markets right now.

it looks really ugly.

I also dont have a double din slot in a TJ.
empeg rocks!

Why so long? Are they waiting for the price of hardware to come down or something?

As far as I can tell, this is an empeg with better hardware and accessories (CD player, GPS). Well, much better. I can understand how that would take a while, but it seems like Sonicblue has quite a headstart b/c of their other audio products (Empeg, Rio Central). I could understand a year, maybe even 2, but 4 just seems out of whack.... I mean, y'all already have a prototype. Is it really going to take that long for development?

-Biscuits

Thanks for the pics Rob!

Looks very promising, 'cept for the 3-4 year time estimate! I wonder how much of that is really due to technical/development, or whether it is due more to market forces - component costs, OEM integration and supply chains, legal issues etc.

One thing that caught my eye - it's touted as not needing an external PC connection for loading up music. It's also touted as being able to automatically do 'freedb' type tagging. I'm not sure what the total size of freedb is currently, but I'm sure it would take a sizeable chunk out of the drive space, and that still wouldn't resolve the issue of database validity wrt newly released music. Maybe the device is intended to be integrated into an 'Onstar' type system to obtain this information, or maybe they're looking at periodic database updates via distributed CDROMs...although that'd have to be monthly, would cost money, and would still be 2-3 months stale by the time it got there. Any other ideas?