Gosh, I haven't been around this site since I received my empeg last summer. Did I say that it's SUPER SUPER piece of technology? :) No problem with it so far.

Well today I recieved an email asking for a survery about empeg. Okeyy Dokeey, as a satisfied customer I felt
obliged, and to my shock I noticed that it's no longer called Emged now, look at the Rio site, they have the
empeg with the RIO CAR as a label/logo. I felt so disheartned. What happened :( I guess I got annoyed that Rio
will take all the credit for the hard work of empeg people of the UK. *sniff* *sniff*

I better go to bed and sleep a little before my little boys start waking me up at nights.

Aouali empeg #12307 18Gb amber

It's OK, we all still work on the product - and on a number of equally exciting Rio projects. The empeg team are now one of Rio's major development centres.

This is basically good news all round - Rio can afford to make lots more car players than empeg could, and empeg don't have to mess around with production and sales as much. Luckily the Rio Car product team are all very clueful and totally into the product, which is rather important if you want to sell something of this nature.

Rob

I haven't been around this site since I received my empeg last summer.

And we've missed you! Don't stay away so long next time.

Not to worry about the empeg --> Rio transition. Sonic Blue (formerly known as S3 and parent company of Rio) didn't just buy the empeg player -- they bought the entire empeg development team and it is my understanding that it is their intent to keep that team together. After all, it's not the hardware that is so impressive about the empeg, but the software and the people behind it. Sony or Panasonic or Pioneer could build a clone of the hardware in pretty short order, but without the software it would be only a very pale imitation of our empeg. There are only a few software teams in the world capable of doing this kind of work, and Sonic Blue was pretty smart in recognizing that.

Keep in mind that almost exactly a year ago Rob said that they had invested more than eight man-years in their software (see here) and by now that figure will have increased substantially.

The only downside I see to this is rather small-minded of me: with Rio's marketing strength behind the empeg, they will sell a lot more of them, and I'll lose some of the high-tech-toy-exclusivity I now enjoy.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I must agree with some of your points mentioned above.. I too like having something thats rather exclusive. But after showing my player off for almost 6 months now, most all my friends are familiar with it. When the Rio version becomes mainstream my friends will know who was here first.

The only other fear I have (and this is inevitable, especially in this industry) is that my friends will by their shiny new mass produced players for less money, and then make fun of me. Ahh, the price we pay for being first. Its lonely at the top.

Carl

080000506 12gb-green

yeah, I know :( I guess I am annoyed that they changed the label and logo :(

On another note, any update/news about including a gps to the empeg? I have ordered the latest Garmin Etrex Vista gps.

Aouali

I am also very interrested in a GPS-interface. I guess one would have to change /dev/ttySwhatever to a named pipe
(or even to /dev/null) to avoid having the player tie it up?

My wishes for GPS-interface:
1) I can enter a list of "waypoints" to the application, and it
will "beep" when approaching one of the waypoints
2) An on-screen display of speed/direction/position/time

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)