Just wondering what people here think about the acquisition announcement recently posted on the Empeg website.

I can't help but be fearful about this new development. Historically, I've noticed that those things which endear the company to their original customers get lost in the interests of the new greater whole.

I just hope that the level of support that we have all come to appreciate from Empeg does not diminish as a result of them becoming part of S3.

On a more positive note, I would like to think that this tie up with S3 will provide Empeg with a more solid financial foundation, and that they will be left to work on more great products for us to enjoy.

A big thanks must to go to everyone at Empeg, for making ownership of the empeg-car such a pleasant experience. Never have I received service as good, or as prompt. Please don't allow this to change!

Andy.

Very surprising. Not that this happened, but that it happened so soon. I agree that often times these acquisitions have a negative effect on the product (a la Winamp, ICQ, etc.)

However, we can't deny that there are certain things that a small company like Empeg can't do themselves. Exhibit 1: Hugo's statement in the press release:

In reply to:

---

"The deal enables us to focus on what we're best at - developing cool products," Hugo Fiennes, empeg's Technical Director explained. "S3 brings manufacturing skills as well as sales and marketing expertise: together we get to shape the future of listening itself."

---

S3 does, indeed, excel at manufacturing, sales, and marketing. These are things that Empeg, as a small company, has had to deal with, and may indeed distract them from their design and implementation of new features. Did we really expect the co-founder of the company to be soldering our Empeg units forever? I would much rather the guys spend their time on thinking up and implementing new ideas, instead of fixing broken units and responding to tech support requests. I agree that you can't get much better support than from the guys who created the damn thing, but who among us expected that to last forever?

This also opens up the door for service facilities in many countries, and increased availability of replacement parts (A/R coated screens, custom remotes, etc.) The hurdles and pitfalls of this adventurous project can now be cleared much more quickly with S3's technology and marketing muscles waiting to be flexed.

I can see no way in which the negatives of this acquisition will outweigh the positives, and I'm normally skeptical when something like this happens. While I'm sure we would love to keep Empeg as our own little "cult" technology, it's just too far ahead of its time to be kept in a bottle. I'm happy that the Empeg product is going to receive the attention that it deserves, and that the hard work everyone put into it has paid off. They deserve it!

-Tony
MkII #554

Agreed.

I think you guys at empeg have done a great job, and I've enjoyed every minute
of my empeg purchase.

Hope that you guys don't disappear into a big black hole....Do what your stomaches tell you to, not the big suits.

Good luck with the big guys.

TommyE

Greetings!

I, too, am extremely happy with my empeg purchase. Based on the announcement, I only have two (big) questions:

1) How does this affect the folks@empeg? I hope Rob isn't out of a job. I hope that development on new products and features will continue. I hope that everyone is happy with the change.

2) How does this affect current Mk1&2 customers? Especially given that the Mk1 is really "manufacturer discontinued". There are a number of currently open items (tuners, antireflective plates, knobs, handles, voice recognition, etc.) that will hopefully continue to be priorities in the new environment. The fabulous level of customer support that we have enjoyed in the past is something that will hopefully continue going forward. Should we be concerned about upgrade path from the Mk2?

Any comments (official or otherwise) from the folks@empeg?

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (40GB Green)

1. No, all the jobs are safe & we're expanding rapidly; development is obviously going to continue - it'd be rather silly to buy us & stop us developing!

2. Support shouldn't be affected. As we said before, the mk1 continues to be supported, though at some point in the future it will reach a "final" state (mainly due to the limited RAM) as adding more code would reduce caching too much. We're nowhere near that point yet, though. We're continuing to manufacture new empegs and sell them.

All the current mk2 issues will be addressed, but I can't guarantee that current owners will necessarily get discounts on any newer models - that won't be in our hands anymore. The discount for the mk1 owners was to show our appreciation for the early adopters. VR is still on the "coming" list, but is not anywhere near shipping yet.

Hugo

Greetings!

Sounds great! It sounds like you have made a good move.

Congratulations!!!

Paul G.
SN# 090000587 (40GB Green)

I'll answer some specific concerns, in my own words as I see the situation:

Q. Whats the future of the car player?
A. This is one of the key reasons for the acquisition - the car player will continue to be sold and developed. For the time being the branding will continue as "empeg" but at some point it is logical that the product will be integrated into the hugely successful Rio brand.

Q. Will the faces or roles at empeg change?
A. All of our staff are highly valued, and will continue within the company - this deal brings well deserved security to a group of people that have staked their own career on the success of a startup company. We have been recruiting developers recently - two new programmers start this week (Andrew and James) with several additional roles expected to be filled by the end of the year.

The staff at empeg are expected to continue in their current role, although Hugo and Steve will now have many additional responsibilities. Mike will continue to lead the (somewhat larger) UK development team, and I will continue as Operations Manager for the UK operation.

Q. How will the acquisition affect empeg culture?
A. We have been working closely with S3 for many months, which is one of the reasons that we are enthusiastic and confident about this acquisition. S3 understand how empeg works, and they have no intentions or wishes to change a winning formula. This announcement is really just the formalisation of an arrangement that has effectively been in place for some time already. We have found S3 to be a very compatible company in terms of culture, and I have yet to see an S3 executive in a suit (which I consider a good thing!).

Q. Will empeg employees continue to post to the BBS?
A. The BBS has always been an unofficial forum which employees are free to post to, or not, as they wish. This will not change. As always, messages posted here by empeg/S3 employees should be considered the personal opinion of that person and not necessarily company line.

Q. Will empeg support become less personal?
A. For the time being support will continue in the same way as always, with the exception that we now have access to a servicing facility (in Germany) which will handle most hardware repairs. The level of service will be as high, or higher, than currently. Your contact points will be the same as now - primarily David, Daniel or myself. The alpha group, and public beta releases, are expected to continue as before.


Feel free to raise other concerns you may have. I'm about to fly back to the UK so I'll be out of touch for about a day, but don't think I'm ignoring you. I'll catch up on the messages tomorrow.

Rob

My post further up the thread should answer most of that.

Outstanding issues - tuners, panels etc - continue to be a priority for us and offers made previously (e.g. free tuner to upgrading clients, free replacement AR coated panels) will, of course, be honoured.

The morale at empeg is high - we all benefit from this deal in many different ways. Mostly, it's good to have the resources to work on projects we would otherwise have been unable to develop - and to see some of those projects in the highstreet!

Rob

Don't forget to let them know about my free Mk2 unit too

Do what your stomaches tell you to, not the big suits.

You mean "eat Thai food?"



--
Mike Crowe
I may not be speaking on behalf of empeg above :-)

That's the one word that kept coming up in my mind as I read the announcements: "Manufacturing".

From what Hugo told me, the Rio Receivers will be selling in the sub-$250.00 range because S3 has some great manufacturing facilities at its disposal. This allows for cheaper end-product.

So. The next logical question: If S3 begins manufacturing the car player, does that mean the price of the Mk2 will come down?

Follow-up question: Does this also mean we'll see the Empeg Car being distributed through more traditional channels (Crutchfield Crutchfield Crutchfield Crutchfield Crutchfield Crutchfield)?

___________
Tony Fabris

CONGRATS!! Amazing, i'm sure you guys@empeg are excited about the future of all of this. Wow, i must say i have the same concerns as everyone else, but i'm sure that Rob, Hugo, et al. will do more than their best to keep the service level and quality up. So much for our little cult. =]


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

So much for our little cult.

Yeah, no kidding. I just got license plates! Hope the name stays on the product for a while!!!!

___________
Tony Fabris

HAHA!! i didn't even think about that. Ah well, I'm still trying to get mine. EMP3G II to the end! =]


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

Congratulations guys! I hope you can continue to offer excellent support for the empeg and continue to develop it like you have been. I hope you all got raises with this deal!

Sean

Empeg 12 gig green 080000078

I am highly skeptical that anything will be the same once S3 takes complete control and empeg loses control. Right now everyone at empeg cares about whether we are happy or not with their product, and if it breaks they fix it. FAST. That will never be the case with a big company like S3 and its just kind of scary to me.

bboyd
MKI #301

That thought has already passed through my mind as well, but theres nothing we can do about it. On the positive side of things, they will have more money to get things done. I think they will remain free do to whatever they see fit within reason.

Sean

Empeg 12 gig green 080000078

I hope so, it just seems that almost all products produced by small compnays that get bought out by a big boy seem to go down hill. The quality of the product produced is lower becuase of the mass producing and the CEO's that dont care as long as they are making more money. I'm just glad I will be able to laugh when I hear a sales man say, "this is the first true mp3 player for a car, it doesnt require a cd it actually reads from a hard drive", while he's pointing at a box with RIO on it.

bboyd
MKI #301

But if the company is to grow, some larger organization would have to be developed, or otherwise accessed in order to deliver support. Unless we're suggesting that the business not be grown (and thus condemn the guys to eternal poverty in sun-scarce England), some change from the current 'system' is inevitable. Well done guys! - I hope the negotiations went well - and I'm sure there were many worse options for us than S3. I love my Empeg and am glad to have been there on the ground floor.

Dave Upton
36G Blue waiting for Amber and Radio...

If they change the name of the product, think how much more valuable it will be on Ebay when you advertise an "Orignal EMPEG Player" as a true collectors item

Dave Clark
Austin, Texas
12g Amber

Then the Mark 1 guys can display at the antique computer show in San Jose! ;]


|| loren.cox
|| 080000446

Or at least *my* big question:

Who's going to be responsible for the overall engineering for future units, S3 or Empeg?

Or to put it more specifically, if S3 wants to make the Mk3 unit a totally closed and proprietary unit that runs Windows CE, will any ex-empegers have anything to say about it or is that Just The Way It Will Be?

I personally really enjoy the hackability of the empeg because of its embedded Linux OS. It makes the hardware less "a dedicated car mp3 player" and more like "A cool tiny little computer to play with and hack on that also happens to be a killer car/home MP3 player." Yeah, I'll still have my Mk2, but when the Mk3 comes out with the 160BG harddrive standard, firewire, PCMCIA slots, wireless ethernet and the holographic projection display, I'd like to be able to bang around on it just like I do with my Mk2.

A lot of people I know are saying "S3 are really cool and they're about the best company to have done something like this" but it's still, IMHO, "a few guys in their garage building a really cool piece of hardware being acquired by International Megacorp" and that usually scares me.

If there had been a really compelling reason to use WinCE, we probably would have done it. It would have had to be *really* compelling, though - we didn't use linux specifically to make it easy to hack on, it was just the best OS for the job.

Bear in mind that the Rio/Dell box we did for them runs Linux, and we have a lot of knowledge on the embedded linux front. It'd be a shame for that to go to waste in future products, wouldn't it? :)

Hugo

Not heard anything yet to say what will become of the original hardware designer, Patrick Arnold. Rob? Patrick?

I reckon this just about consigns my Mk1 to the heap, I'm afraid

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

I just hope that the empeg folks will still have their descretion in the release of new software, and that it isn't controlled too much by S3.

That's a good question, will S3 make us pay for upgrades? That sounds like a big-company policy that could possibly get implemented. I don't think I'd mind too much, as long as it wasn't like $40 (which is conceivable for S3), and it would be nice if at least 1.1 were released free.

That is another question. Does this delay 1.1 at all?

And my last question is out of curiosity. How much involvement does S3 have in empeg for now and in the future? Are they basically going to leave you to your business for now? Will they be having a say in what you do in the future?

I think this could be both good and bad, as it will mean more money for empeg and greater backing for the company. I don't like that S3 will invariably change the product name, most likely to something as uncreative as "Rio Car Player" instead of "Rio empeg". But I suppose it's okay.

Tony, is there a way to store the existing empeg logo so I can replace the S3 logo that is almost definietly going to be replacing it?

DiGNAN

Patrick was never an employee, he preferred to work on a contract basis - and the hardware design was definitely a joint effort (he did schematic capture, pcbs, etc, but I did a lot of the design - the digital audio interface, the VFD, IDE, PICs, etc). I suspect he'll be rather busy with his other projects :)

Why do you think your mk1 is consigned to anything? It's still a supported product. We have plenty of spares and have no problems with servicing them either.

Hugo

S3 will invariably change the product name, most likely to something as uncreative as "Rio Car Player" instead of "Rio empeg"

If they are smart, they will leave the brand name alone, and just provide manufacturing expertise, reliable manufacturing facilities and the parts supply possibilities of a big manufacturing concern, plus a good distribution and marketing chain. The "empeg" brand should be part of the S3 group of companies.

One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015

Tony, is there a way to store the existing empeg logo so I can replace the S3 logo that is almost definietly going to be replacing it?

That's in the Kernel. The Kernel is open-source, so you can change it right now if you want. My logo editor program doesn't work at that level, it only sends a logo into a reserved area of flash (outside the actual kernel code).

___________
Tony Fabris

Why do you think your mk1 is consigned to anything? It's still a supported product. We have plenty of spares and have no problems with servicing them either.

The only question is how long will that last? Will S3 want to bother with us old Mk1 owners :) ... and earlier I meant to say congrats on the deal. I do hope it goes well, just hope the quality of the product doesnt decline.

bboyd
MKI #301

I think the point is that *we* bother about it - and mk1 support wouldn't ever get passed on from us as it's a very very low volume undertaking :)

Hugo