thinking of going from empeg to phatbox

So soon my lease will be up on my current car. The next car I plan on buying I dont think I want to rip out the radio and mount the empeg. I thought about mounting the empeg in the glove box. With this option I will lose all functionality of the player. So recently Ive been looking at the PHATBOX. The harddrives are cheap and the unit is capable of doing the job. I sure will miss the empeg and I might find it a new home.

Can anyone think of a way to mount the empeg in the trunk and have it send video/audio to a nav system?

There was work on a remote display in another forum here. Not sure of the status, but check it out.

I do understand, if my empeg ever fatally breaks or gets stolen, I have to plan for life after empeg. I didn't but up a spare... oh well.

. . . life after empeg.

I've heard that there are some who believe in such things!

Can anyone think of a way to mount the empeg in the trunk and have it send video/audio to a nav system?

Until the remote display becomes a reality, the only simple method anyone has been able to come up with is to mount a cheap CCD camera aimed at the empeg's front panel, and use an infrared repeater to control it remotely.

This assumes that the CCD camera has a composite-video output, and that your LCD screen has a composite-video aux input.

Actually using in the glove box isn't that bad. I have mine in the glove box slightly angled at the drivers seat. I just leave the glove box open when I'm the only person in the car. When I have a passenger it is shut with and IR repeater mounted in the glove box aimed at where the EMPEG would be when shut. This way I can still control the unit with it shut. I'm sure most people here use the EMPEG enough to memorize all the key presses to get to certain playlists they want. I know I have and can easly navigate the menus without looking.

In reply to:

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Actually using in the glove box isn't that bad.

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Ooh, thought I was the only one to do this. Have you a sled in the regular slot as well ?

...CCD camera aimed at the empeg's front panel...

When I tried this once (not for trunk->dash, but for room->another room in my house) text wasn't very clear, dimming the display to 30% made text readable. The problem is however that my CCD seems to catch pretty much of the light coming from the cathode filament wires. I guess it would definitely work better with a CCD cam that allows to manually set the brightness (mine autosenses). But why does the CCD cam amplify the light of the cathode filament wires? Hmm, maybe it isn't amplifying it... could it be that the cathode filament wires emit IR? Are there different CCD technologies that would do better?

Pictures were taken at 0%, 30%(best) and 100%.

But why does the CCD cam amplify the light of the cathode filament wires? Hmm, maybe it isn't amplifying it... could it be that the cathode filament wires emit IR?

Heh, cool. The CCD is picking up infrared (as they all tend to do). Neat pictures!

A simple infrared filter gel (available at camera stores) over the camera lens should take care of the problem just fine.

Can anyone think of a way to mount the empeg in the trunk and have it send video/audio to a nav system?

You mean something like this? http://strobos.cee.vt.edu/EmpegVNC/

I have the factory cd player in the dash. Then a custom made box in the glovebox with the sled and everything. It's actualy quit nice for those short times that I do leave the EMPEG in the car simply close the glovebox and everything looks factory.

those short times that I do leave the EMPEG in the car simply close the glovebox and everything looks factory

exactly why i put a second sled in there - as well as for short journeys. otherwise i use the sled in the centre console. Docked ethernet in the glovebox is the next step, but i got some comms issues to resolve first with my linkys

Im very familiar with VNC. Actually i was just using the knock off trida. This solution would not work being I would need a pc also in the trunk. I really need video out from the serial port like the winamp plug-in does. someone please help me. I LOVE MY EMPEG and dont want to change to this PHATBOX!

There isn't a car available at this time that I would not try my hardest to modify to get the empeg in and whatever POS it comes with out (or at least "out of the way"). Not a BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, NSX ... you get the idea.

Really... PHATBOX? Come on. Incidentally, I've updated my comparison table to include recent Phatbox news and empeg changes. www.mypocket.com/mobilematrix

I believe some new Phatbox models may now be using a Burr Brown DAC. It's hard to tell when their website seems to be designed to keep you running in circles guessing. They never want to come out and tell you that what they're advertising isn't actually available yet (all models *should* be available by now though).

Bruno

A friend has a PhatBox in his BMW. It works amazingly well considering the limitations of the interface, he can pull up a song as fast as I can on the Empeg. It's a passable solution if you don't want to pull out your head unit in your nice new luxury car.

What kills the PhatBox is it's not hackable. Why don't they let you swap out the drive yourself? Why doesn't it have serial/ethernet? They're really losing out on a good end-user development community like the Empeg has. Though it does play Vorbis, which the Empeg doesn't do yet.

Thanks for updating the matrix, Bruno!

And speaking of The Matrix, I just got back form a "night before" sneak-preview showing. It basically rocked.

Note to all who see it: Stay past the end credits, there is a "coming attractions" of the November conclusion film at the end of the credits.

I just got back myself. I agree, it rocked, overall anyway.

The teaser after the credits is, well, short, to say the least, but worth sticking around for. I'd recommend using the facilities and stretching as soon as the credits begin to roll as the credits take quite a while. There were a TON of people that worked on that film (and the third).

3 minutes of browsing information about "them" led me to find that there's something called "AT&T Natural Voices Desktop for Linux" which should sound better than Festival, but I'll be damned if I can figure out where to buy it.

Greetings!

This is an easy one. You are not alone, and AT&T is just as confused as your are - trust me...

Some searching reveals you *could* buy the desktop for $50 at some point. It's a shame, because I'd drop $50 on them *right now* if I could figure out a way to do it.

Greetings!

As an employee for a major Telegraph company, I know that things are a little confused now. I will see if I can find anything out about ordering it. And I will give Joe a prod to see if he has any updates.

Looks like they've made headway with the SDK!

http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/buy/

For Windows only.

my thread has been hijacked

Which subthread? The Matrix subthread or the TTS subthread? Or the soon to occur thread-hijacking subthread?

<serious now> My apologies. The TTS was just a followup on the feature matrix and comparisons between the phatbox and the empeg.

All this talk about matrices really makes me want to leave work and go watch the matrix that's playing every 5 minutes at theaters around town.

- trs

@nelson_muntz(Ha ha!)

No probs. I updated it a week ago or so and then again last night after seeing this thread. Both times I was pretty sleepy. Today I'm about to touch up a few mistakes and again: I'm sleepy and also have a bit of a throbbing headache (after being hit in the left temple by a softball at tonight's league opener - before play started )

I'll be ditching a bit early tomorrow with a few people from work to watch Reloaded. Of course I'll be trying to get in a bit earlier - if I can get up. I'm sure the gf will see to that.

Back on topic for a sec, the Neo now also has a module allowing it to be conrolled from many headunits. Of course you're still using a Neo - and I doubt they've fixed all their wonderful firmware quirks.

Bruno

and I doubt they've fixed all their wonderful firmware quirks.

They haven't. The last firmware update was the one that implemented TTS I believe.

I've looked at the Neo forums last week and they were still asking for a new firmware that would fix the shuffle play.

So not much has happened there in the last 2 years.

Unlike IBM ViaVoice, which was licensed in Mandrake, SuSe, and maybe RedHat, the Natural Voices Desktop for Linux never seems to have made it into the world. That, or I'm not searching for the right thing and so if someone has it in a public area on a web server I'm not noticing.

Don't get me wrong. All I want to do is pay money and get something I could have gotten before, had I known to get it!

The same thing happened to ViaVoice for Linux, but if you look carefully, you can find it.