SONICblue and Visteon Prototypes at CES

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?

I wonder how you are supposed to get the music on it. Am I supposed to sit in my car and rip hundreds of cd's like the sony and pioneer models.

Nah, it will come with a docking bay where you plug your Rio "Pearl" into the trunk unit and voila all your songs are synced to the unit - 20 or 40Gb at a time...

in any case by the time they release this thing, CDs and Mp3s will be so old hat, that no-one will want to buy it - it'll be like the 21st century 8 track...

Half_Geek wrote:
> if your empeg hdd dies, you won't lose control

Maybe you won't lose control...

Those anger management classes are paying off!!

Actually, the times I have had Camelot in my car, it is far more distracting when it is working! It just begs to be fiddled with!!

Content can be loaded via audio CDs, data CDs, or emplode - Just like the Rio Central.

The database is a few hundred megs and can be updated via CD or online if connected via USB to a network - Just like the Rio Central.

Now that you have cross fading running in other products, are there any plans to back port that feature to future empeg betas?

Sean

yes

Ok, this is really starting to sound like the Canine's Testicles. Where do I sign up..

Half_Geek...
As I suspected, you are a Visteon mole...Welcome to the BBS, and thanks for your insight.

I'm one of the droolers mentioned in a previous thread!! I'm keen to get these products into production, as basically I want one too!! I'll share what info I can, but there are always the frustrating barriers of corporate secrecy! Hopefully soon...

That is pretty cool... unfortunately won't fit in my dash.... damn.

Ok, this is really starting to sound like the Canine's Testicles. Where do I sign up..

For canine testicles? At http://www.neuticles.com -- check out the cool "Merchandise Mart" section.

Peter

LMAO!

I would have never suspected that such an item was commercially available.

Heh, Rob didn't show the best picture of all... my animated boot logo, still there in the prototype box...

Boot logo image

Tux, driving a red convertible, power-slides onto the screen and waves. The front license plate is a scan of mine (hard to see in the photo).

I'll see if I can dig up the animated GIF of it and post it here (would that be OK, Rob V.?).

Put me down for one.

Looks very cool.

C.

Sure

"LMAO!

I would have never suspected that such an item was commercially available. "

Yep, I'm in medical devices and we used make these out of Cobalt chrome for horses or any other animals that required them for shows. Amazing what people will do for pets!!!

ok, this thing has features that sound cool and all, but please tell me, why does this thing have buttons? couldn't it all be driven by a touchscreen? The screen is too small to be of any real navigation use, and the face is too crowded to be easy to use, and if it has to have buttons, why is so much of the face taken up with such useless ones as "genre" and "year"?

besides, the design of it looks like it came straight out of a Chevy Tahoe. Yuck.

i hope i'm not offending anyone who worked really hard on this. its just my $.02

I would assume the buttons it uses will depend on the buyer (BMW, GM, Ford, etc.). I think this is just a very basic prototype that Visteon is trying to sell to these companies. I think an aftermarket version will not even be released from Visteon.

I envision the empeg software becoming what the TiVo software is today. Sony and Phillips have the same innards, but a different face. Hopefully an aftermarket supplier will come out with this design or possibly another based on the empeg software.

Yep. In fact if you look at the 4th picture rob put up, it is not a Camelot, but one of our production navigation radios. Nice screen, lots of buttons, made it a perfect candidate to demo the capabilities of the hardware behind it. That particular version didn't have a tuner, so we had a lot of buttons that were no longer relevant. Looking at the photos, the one actually on show didn't have all the buttons relabelled (good to see my stick-on labels lasted the show!) - there were some other shortcuts, but they would be changed from what we know now.

This drops straight into a Ford (obviously my own Focus being able to take it had no impact on the choice of donor radio!), but any other OEM customer would be able to decide buttons, displays etc.

We do have an aftermarket division as well though.

I'm not entirely sure what a Chevy Tahoe is, but I'm guessing it's not pretty!

Nick

A Chevy Tahoe is a BIIIIG SUV, if that is what you are asking.

Anyway, I am somewhat heartened by the thought that you are talking about aftermarket models as well. I'm guessing that some of the delay in the OEM sector is due to the timeframes cars are designed upon? I imagine the 2005 or maybe even 2006 models are already being planned. The automotive makers probably don't just drop in different parts the day before they start the assembly line.

Might we possibly see aftermarket units out before the OEM models?

-Biscuits

I'm not up on my American cars!

2005/2006 models are already being designed in a lot of cases! The automotive industry is aiming to reduce the time for a new car to around 18 months, which is why you are seeing common platforms across brands/models, but it still takes longer than that in a lot of cases.

Aftermarket is a good place to start for new audio products, proving the idea, then OEMs usually go for optional or dealer fit units, and then into proper line-fit units, especially with this sort of product. It could go many ways!

This drops straight into a Ford (obviously my own Focus being able to take it had no impact on the choice of donor radio!), but any other OEM customer would be able to decide buttons, displays etc.

I thought the shape looked remarkably similar to the stereo slot in my wife's Fiesta...

The number of buttons is one of the best things about the Camelot. On the car player, Central, Receiver, in fact all our other products there are very few controls which is neat and versatile, yet requires careful control and attention by the user.

For an automotive application, however, this approach is not really suitable since it means that everything must be menu driven, and menu navigation does not mix well with driving as you will all have experienced with the car player. Furthermore, removing functionality from buttons results in deeper menu structures.

I think if you actually used the 'genre' and 'year' buttons you would change your mind. These buttons give you a direct shortcut into the play by 'artist', 'album', 'genre', & 'year' menus. The latest software will also put the currently playing 'album', 'artist', etc at the top of the menu allowing you to quickly select music from the same 'album', 'genre', etc.

As 'Half-geek' mentioned the design was not specific to the project, but taken from a stock radio for ease-of-prototyping purposes.

A touchscreen wouldn't really help in my opinion, particularly for an automotive application, because 1) The controls would have to be moved from the buttons to the screen, resulting in loss of screen estate. 2) As already mentioned, it is convenient to be able to control the device 'blind' - A touchscreen would have to change the on screen button context to maximise use of the screen space. This would mean that again, the user would have to look at the screen to control the device.

Finally, yes, the screen is small, but it is a good resolution, and a very clear, crisp, and bright image with a high refresh rate - The best screen on any product we have ever worked on in fact. The screen size could not really be increased without making the device take up 3 slots, or having an external display. The photos posted on this thread really don't do the screen justice.

I am unable to comment on the navigation side of things as we have not coded that yet, and I have never used the original radio in a car.

Toby

But... the most important questions:
- Will it be removable from the car?
- Can it be loaded with music from a computer?
- What ports are available?
- Is that a CD-writer like on the RioCentral?

And...
What about VideoCD's, when you have such a good screen anyway :-)

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

And by the way... I have never seen this in use, but one good way of making use of a touchscreen without sacrifising screen area would be to implement "gestures" as commands, like the Opera Web browser does for Mouse-gestures.
Or a simple handwriting recognision like on the PDAs, only using the entire screen and your finger.

Marius (Escort Cab + Mark II)

we've already established that content can be loaded via emplode.

Yes, it would be good if it could play video CDs and DVDs.

No, the most important question;

Will it be Hijack-able?

Some of the 3rd party apps would really benefit from the screen and buttons...

What an interesting idea.

All sorts of images spring to mind, but none of them relevant, and some of them obsene.

At its simplest level this concept could work by mimicking the four way compass pad on a car player, Central, or receiver, translating touches in the top, right, left & bottom of the screen, and perhaps the centre of the screen for enter. More complicated gestures like tracing out a play symbol to make it play, or worse still a FFWD symbol to seek, then a pause symbol to stop it seeking would probably lead to more 'hands off the wheel' time than the deep & populated menus resulting from minimal controls.

Also, the user would still have to look at the screen to position their finger in the right place. At times like this I always remember Fabris describing his 'groping for the nipple' procedure for using an empeg remote whilst driving in the dark. In the same way, you could 'grope for the knob' whilst keeping your eyes on the road with the current Camelot design, but tracing out a decrease volume symbol would certainly require more attention.

A touchscreen can be made very user-friendly;

Use the four corners and middle for five buttons. If the screen is large enough, then adding 4 tactile dots on the surrounding bevel at the center of the edges would allow a further 4 buttons at the middle of the edges. Use a beep to replace the tactile feedback that buttons would normally give. Make sure that the touchscreen has a (configurable) delay so that the first touch can be used to 'gain bearing' on the screen. If possible, make a couple of (tactile) thumb index positions at the bottom left and right of the unit, so that the user can place their thumb there and 'learn' the screen position. This is especially useful in the car where bumps and jolts would otherwise move the hand.

Touchscreens can be done well, but it's rare that they are!

Yep. In fact if you look at the 4th picture rob put up, it is not a Camelot, but one of our production navigation radios.

Ah-HA. Now I know who you are.

Did we shake hands at the Visteon booth?

I'm afraid not! I don't get to travel that far to nice places with lots of other interesting stuff that might distract me

You would have met some of my US colleagues on the stand - hopefully they did a passable imitation of knowing all about the stuff on show. I haven't had too much feedback from the show yet as they have just got back, and we are no longer at work over here! However, I do hear reports that some apparently knowledgeable people turned up mob-handed at the Visteon stand!!

So, my secret identity is safe for now!

I have a question... It's been stated that the content can be updated by emplode or emplode like software, but is the UI "skinable"??

Some of those screens look... how can I put this... a little too "Festive" for my tastes.

Okay, here's an animated GIF of the boot logo for the Visteon unit:

Tux Car

Warning, file is 1.2 megabytes. The timing of the animation speed is a little off depending on what browser you use to view it.

Tom: I put that in the FAQ-pics folder on riocar, hope you don't mind.

Can you make one like that for the empeg? That's pretty cool.

Thanks! Not sure if I could downsize that very well... the pixel rez and color depth of the empeg is so much lower...

An absolute cracker, shame my empeg's screen isn't colour..... Hold on, I'm in the wrong topic!

Love the license plate!!!

Nice driving

Love the license plate!!!

That animated logo has always been a popular demo point when we have been showing Camelot around. Nice work!

Nick

Does Camelot have a tuner?!!! And what would the likely cost be for an aftermarket model?

Some of those screens look... how can I put this... a little too "Festive" for my tastes.

That's not a production UI. You would get ill if you had to look at that colour scheme for too long!

Rob

The tuner wasn't fitted for the demo, but it would usually have one - along with satellite navigation and all the nice things you would expect of a highly integrated head unit.

Rob

That animated logo has always been a popular demo point when we have been showing Camelot around. Nice work!

Thanks!

I literally threw that together in a hurry for their initial prototypes last year. I didn't have a 3D rendering program so I downloaded a freeware one and had to learn to use it. I never got the reflections of the car body or the chrome right the way I wanted them. If I had it to do over again, I'd work more on it, get the animation smoother, do more effects, motion blurring, that sort of thing.

If we need one for production we can negotiate

Rob

If it's OEM in a specific car, I could do multiple ones if the company would give me a CAD file of the car...

Nah, too much overhead for managing multiple boot logos. Never mind.

Do it! you can't pass up an opportunity to make a logo that will be playing in thousands of cars around the country. You could even add in a single-frame subliminable message of your choice.

Pretty cool animation, Tony!

I imagine the prototype head unit looks nice in your car as well..

Thanks, Mark!

Heh, I wish I had one to mess with, but I'm not a Visteon beta tester unfortunately. The animation was created with merely a HxW pixel specification, and I e-mailed individual frames off to Cambridge. I didn't have anything to do with getting it actually installed onto the player.

In fact, I don't even know what the final format for it ended up being. I'm curious to know if the player is playing back an animated GIF, or if the frames were converted into a proprietary format. Anyone willing to tell me?

It's playing the animated GIF. Peter's very familiar with this sort of thing, as you might find if you did a google search

Hugo

At its simplest level this concept could work by mimicking the four way compass pad on a car player, Central, or receiver, translating touches in the top, right, left & bottom of the screen, and perhaps the centre of the screen for enter. More complicated gestures like tracing out a play symbol to make it play, or worse still a FFWD symbol to seek, then a pause symbol to stop it seeking would probably lead to more 'hands off the wheel' time than the deep & populated menus resulting from minimal controls. Also, the user would still have to look at the screen to position their finger in the right place.

Actually, I think one could do this without having the user looking at the screen, if you use true gesture recognition instead of mapping different screen section to certain commands. User would then just touch their way to the screen and do their gesture command, for which it doesn't matter if it's on the right half of the screen or on the left.

Directions would be mapped to a single finger tap + slide. Tap one finger and slide it right to ffwd. In a sense this creates a even more natural feeling, because the finger can go faster over the 2-dimensional sensor array or slower. So there's a direct relationship between action and command. Just like a dial does feel more natural for volume adjusting than constant speed (or even accelerated) up/down buttons. Now traditional touchscreen sensing technologies can only track motions of a single finger, but if it would feature one of these multitouch arrays we could map a two-fingerslide to a skip. Again, by moving two fingers slow and a just a bit to the right we skip one track. Fast and/or further to the right for skipping several tracks, while speed of motion determines how far the fingers have to slide to skip one track. The faster the shorter it is. This would enable you to 'accelerate' ...in a way. Two fingers up/down slide could be ... vol up/down.. Tap a single finger without sliding to play. Tap two pause....whatever.. you get the idea.

That being said, I still think knobs, dials, and buttons are the better solution for a car. Above gesture recognition does well for a HID ,allowing to map copy/paste, alt-f4 and the like shortcuts to gestures, but it doesn't provide the tactile feedback I'd like to have in a car situation.