Well we know know what is comming next. For those who missed it, heres the details:

Visitors to Comdex will have seen the prototype of our next production model. It's the good old empeg that you all know and love, but with some extra bells and whistles.. First is on-board 10BaseT ethernet, which will be offered as an option on a special edition model aimed at developers. Then there's an extra 4Mb of RAM, giving 12Mb as standard, and a front panel control (gradiated rotary with push function). The display is unchanged although there's an LCD interface inside, for which we have no plans at the moment. Red display panels will be available (we finally found one that works with IR). The tuner has been removed from inside the player - instead we've created an external tuner interface, for which we will produce an AM/FM/RDS module initially, with DAB planned for the future. A cell phone muting input is provided, and the wiring loom has moved to a standard ISO connector. The grounding leads are nolonger required, and all filters are integral to the player and/or wiring loom.

I saved the best til last - we've licenced some very sophisticated voice recognition technology and fitted a microphone input. Proper nouns (e.g. artist/track names etc) can be taught to the system via the PC software, so you can simply tell the empeg what you want to listen to and it will deliver.


I am very excited to hear the new features, as this will add so many new possibilities to the player. It should allow a remote web based control on the player like I currently have for playing MP3's off my Linux server to my amp here at home. It will definitly be interesting to see what programmers do with an ethernet interface.

Out of curiosity, what is the external radio tuner? Is it a seperate box that will have to be hidden, or simply a heavially shielded box that sits inside the new unit?

Also, anyone from Comdex get any pictures of the prototype? I'd love to see what it looks like. (/me kicks himself for not being able to find decent hotel accomidations to be able to go to this Comdex)

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Reg 1640, 6gb Blue empeg-car mark 1. SN unknown

Great! i am envious already! Of course I hope development wont be stopped on our models :)

Empeg Kicks Ass
S/N 00203
http://www.iretro.com

The external tuner is a seperate box, but it will be very small and easily fitted behind the dash somewhere.

The prototype at Comdex looked just like a regular empeg, apart from the back panel. This was because we couldn't get the new front screen in time for the show, although I think there was a display board PCB there showing the new rotary control.

Rob

No, we won't stop development on the old models - most of the circuitry is the same, so a huge majority of the code is common.

The tuner is a faceless box that just needs to be hidden somewhere behind the dash. It's totally controlled by the empeg - you can't tell if you're using an internal or external tuner model.

Hugo

Can you sign me up for one already??, will there be a list as it is now???


TommyE

Will there be an upgrade path made available to current empeg owners, or are we going to have to sell it on ebay to be able to get the new one?

Pretty please, 100meg RJ45! 10baseT is slower than USB! It would be nice if it was used as a transport for getting mp3 onto the unit, as well as being 'for developers'.

Regards
Simon

Awaiting delivery... #5833

new screen? what will the new front entail? color display? any tidbits for us to whet out appetites with? i second the question about a new registering que. if there is a new one, i want in :). will the next newsletter contain more info about what the new model consists of?

i guess it is good that i couldn't afford an empeg when i was offered...

jeremy

oh, i wish i wish i had an empeg...

I definitely want to be on the upgrade list as early as possible too :)

Still glad I had the money to get the Mark 1 - it's been a blast so far, and it can only get better!

Geoff
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Reg No. 554, s/n 00064 - It's mine I tell you.... all mine :)

Sorry, the design is now fixed. 100Mbit ethernet isn't really possible for a few reasons:

- Bus bandwidth. Though there are one or two chips which do 100mbit on an ISA bus (the SA1100 has a fast ISA bus - faster than standard ISA, but not PCI).
- Space. The chips that do hook up to our bus require external RAM (etc) for 100mbit. There really is no room.
- Approvals. 100mbit is a major headache as far as emissions is concerned. Yes, we could do several board revisions and try and optimise this, but for an option which isn't even going to be shipped on the majority of players, it's not worth the expense.

10mbit is pretty quick - I think we were getting >700kb/sec. Remember the drives don't have DMA, so disk rates are limited (2mb/sec-ish). 100mbit would just saturate the bus. Remember this isn't a server PC, it's a car radio :)

Hugo

The new screen is basically the same but with a rotary control on the right (which has a pushbutton action too). We also added a display dimmer with 256 levels.

Hugo

There won't be a seperate registration queue. Existing queue positions will be honoured, and there will be a preferential route for existing owners, although the details haven't been finalised yet.

As Rob said, this hasn't been fixed yet. There won't be a "trade-in" path, but there will be a discount to existing owners if they want a new one. You'll have to sell your player to one of your friends who have been drooling over it ;)

The old model is not going to be unsupported though - we have no plans to stop doing releases for it. It still has the same CPU & the same power (in fact, the old model has 2 IDE busses, the new one only one - ie you need a custom 2-drive cable), the same DSP, the same display.

Hugo

No trade in :(

> As Rob said, this hasn't been fixed yet. There won't be a "trade-in" path, but there will be a discount to existing owners if they want a new one. You'll
> have to sell your player to one of your friends who have been drooling over it ;)

Hmm. Too bad all my friends are college kids that barely have enough money for food, let alone a 1200$ car stereo.

I was kinda banking on the fact that there would be some kind of a trade-in opportunity. Of course, not a even swap, but couldn't you guys use the parts off of the trade-in units in building new ones or something? ;) I just have been waiting for the empeg for almost a year now, finally got mine, and 2 weeks later find out that there will be a newer, better one released very soon... Makes me kinda disappointed that I got involved so early and felt privelaged by getting one of the first units (especially since it was already outdated when I got it)...

:-(

PS: don't get me wrong, I love the empeg. I've loved it from the minute I received it.

(O|||||O)
Q: 0596 S/N 00246 6GB Blue

Will there be an option for the rotary dial on the left? We drive on the left side in the U.S. (Hope that doesn't sound to picky!)

We can't re-use parts - these things aren't made on the kitchen table, they're constructed by robots on a fully automated surface mount production line! :-)

I don't think you'll have much trouble finding buyers for secondhand players, though.

The alternative to us releasing an improved player now is... not to release one! It doesn't make any sense for us to hold back the technology, and most people realise that continuous improvements are a fact of life in the technology market. We started shipped the current release in August, and the next release will start to ship in March - seven months is a long time in technology terms.

Please don't get the idea that the current players will become scrap - just because Intel release a faster processor every few months doesn't mean that last years models are now useless. We will continue to fully support our existing products, with much on-going development being common to both models.

Rob

A suggestion/request for the Mk II...

Firm up what the connections between the docking bay and the unit can/should/would-ever be, and use that.

The logic I am thinking of here is to make it work in such a way that I could remove the Mark II unit from my car, open up the box to my Mark III unit (down the road) and insert it into the same chassis, giving the new chassis I received from the Mk III to whoever I sell the MkII to.

I understand the connections, etc, are changing on the MkII unit, so if you go THIS route, then future upgrades won't require professional reinstallations, reducing the upgrade cost for users and increasing the chance of people doing it. :)

If this was already planned, then please feel free to bitch-slap me at your convenience. :)

I've got to say, I am disappointed with this news. I understand the motivations for imporving the unit, but after shipping so few of mark 1? I am feeling less fortunate that I was #1249 in the queue.

I sincerely hope that you do honor mark 1 customers with software support. The way these things usually work is that you won't forget about us until you've shipped a ton of mark 2's, and then all of a sudden, making the interface on mark 1 operate smoothly will fall by the wayside due to simple economics and resource constraints.

Sounds to me like the Empeg was shipped a few months too soon.

Gosh, my computer takes a year, but my Empeg is obsolete after a couple months.

I think it's a little melodramatic to say that your empeg is obsolete!

The new model is essentially the same product. We had to make some changes to the main board because the current one is far too inconvenient to manufacture, what with many through hole components and complex wiring looms. Whilst we were about it, it made sense to act on suggestions from clients (as well as a few ideas of our own) and add in some extra features.

Why would our clients make hardware-related suggestions if it was not expected that we would produce new models?

If we were dropping support for the current model then I would say that you would have a right to be dissapointed (to say the least) - but we're not! The new model is the SAME product with a few enhancements, so if we add a new visual or user interface feature to one, the same code will run on the other.

Software updates will be released simultaneously for both revisions.

In any case, it's not accurate to say that the Mk 1 has been superseded within a couple of months. The product as you see it today was finalised in January, but a series of production difficulties delayed shipping to August. The new model has only just been finalised (we got a prototype just before Comdex and hand assembled it - no mean feat for a 99% surface mount board) and will start shipping around March.

Even the very final clients to purchase a Mk 1 will have about four months to enjoy it before anyone gets to own a Mk 2. I'm sure most of them will continue to enjoy their players for years to come!

I have to say, though, that this is the first time anyone ever complained that we shipped too soon :-)

Rob

We always try and predict the future, but every time we find a connector (and finding the connector for the MkII took a specialist in the field about 3 months...) we use all the pins :)

The MkII has a 24-way connector (MkI was 16). 5 of these are for the external tuner - which we hope to offer a DAB option for - and the others are microphone, accessory/lights on sense and mobile phone mute (which can be used as CTS on the dockable serial, allowing things like Ricochet with brain-damaged flow control to work correctly).

We do hope to stay with the same connector. We've had to buy thousands of them to make the price even vaguely reasonable. Everything but the audio now goes to an ISO connector, which means fitting should be quite a bit easier.

Hugo

Any possibility of connecting the new external radio to the Mark I units, e.g., through the aux inputs? The radio in the Mark I is its only disappointing feature, IMHO. Offering us early adopters an external radio at a decent discount would certainly be looked upon as a friendly gesture.

-- Roger

S/N 00205, 10 Gb, blue

This is a possibility, but unfortunately you'd lose RDS - the mk2's radio feeds in at MPX (ie L+R+RDS) level, not just left/right. You'd also use your external serial port to control it.

But yes, this is a possibility. We're not done yet with the mk1 radio software though, at some point we should be doing a full align on it which will improve the quality of the signal when the car is moving.

Hugo

...speaking of radio; I thought it was kind of interesting - I had to do w/o the antena amplifier in my car - simply WAAAY too much bleeding.. And surprisingly, I'm receiving the same stations as I was w/ my old radio.. only a little bit worse quality on some of the weaker stations..

I don't even know where my antenna is at! my car doens't have a visible antenna (honda accord '99) - what did they do, incorporate it into the car?:)had to remove my antenna amplifier the very next day after putting it in.. Even as it is, RDS signal from a local station (103.7) leaks over to 105.3...
-mark


...i'm so glad I was an early adopter w/o the privilage of getting a tradeup incentive

Any chance we can see some digital pics of this? It would be cool to see an Empeg unit in the middle of production.


We can't re-use parts - these things aren't made on the kitchen table, they're constructed by robots on a fully automated surface
mount production line! :-)

Errr, there will be a tradeup incentive. MkI owners will get a discount on the new model - it's not fixed yet how much, but it will be preferential both in terms of when you get the unit and pricing.

As we've said, we're not leaving MkI's unsupported, as the MkII has almost everything in common. The only thing we're not doing is taking MkI's back in part-exchange: it's easier for you to sell them to drooling friends than it is for us to have a large number of units back here :)

Not wanting to labour the point, but as Rob said it will be 3-4 months from when the last MkI ships to when the MkII ships. Your unit is still exactly what you originally paid for, and most other companies (Apple, etc) wouldn't give you any discount on a new model even if you bought it the day before the new model came out: things move on. Either we keep up or fall behind - I'm sure you'd prefer us to keep up.

Hugo

We have got some home video of this, all we have to do is find someone with a video in card.... hang on, I've got one now (I didn't at the time). I'll just have to find the tape :)

Hugo

Curious - you are the first person to mention this, but I am observing very similar behaviour from the radio. I can actually disconnect the antennna and with the empeg in the sled, I can also still receive at about the same signal strength! Almost as if the empeg is receiving without the antenna connection at all; the seperate antenna amp has made very little difference whatsoever.

Anyone else observed this?

Rob, is there any likelihood whatsoever of a retro-fit of any of the new features to a Mk1? Have you considered the possibility of fixed price hardware upgrades such as the replacement of the display panel for the new one with the rotary control? I can understand the real practicality/costs of this sort of work (which would probably be quite high), but I for one would be interested in the possibility of paying for a subset of the Mk2 features as a retro-fit carried out by the factory - the display control panel being the most interesting.

I was under the impression that there was an expansion slot in the Mk1 (I could be horribly wrong here), so is there any scope for a memory upgrade/piggyback board for ethernet to the Mk1?

Finally, have all the options for the on-board radio been exhausted? For example, has the software tuning/discrimination got any improvement left? Is there a known source to radio problems which could be fixed with a hardware change as a fixed-price modification?

I for one would be interested in this kind of piece-meal, fixed price upgrades idea if you were to offer it as there is absolutely no way my spouse would tolerate me buying another empeg - what about you other Mk1 owners? Would you be interested in a Mk1a?

I'm afraid right now I'm a technology manufacturer's dream come true... no wife, no current girlfriend, disposable income, reasonably large credit limit, a cavalier disregard for things like food, etc... Basically, I'm game for buying whatever new technology appears. As long as the discount option is good enough, I'm considering myself in the queue for a Mk 2 already. I'm just wondering what to do with the Mk 1 - might build it into a hifi component if I can't sell it...

Having said that, I can see where a clear, modular upgrade path would be a good idea though - it has pretty much kept the IBM PC alive for almost 2 decades (make up your own mind if that's a good thing or not )

Geoff
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Reg No. 554, s/n 00064 - It's mine I tell you.... all mine :)