Will there ever be an Empeg 3?

Was this the image you were refering to?
Skunk's MKIII

Id love a real one of those

Camelot!

Well, Rio/DNNA are highly unlikely to do one, but....

I like the sound of that "but...."

With all the cars that have unremovable stereo systems I think the best way to go about it would be to have a box with a removable HDD that could be mounted anywhere and have a seperate display / control panel. Kind of like the neo 35 only not crap.

Naw, keep the storage/portable player in your pocket or glovebox and have the tunes stream to the purpose built headunit via bluetooth!

Fine by me, I don't own anything with bluetooth, I just hear about it all the time!

You could even stream to a caravan of cars w. the same headunit!

That would be gppd except that 1.8" HDDs do not have enough capacity.

...yet.

Actually, it is a single din design. If the components were to be small enough, the screen half would house the touch screen LCD and player circuitry.

The bottom half would house a drive, buttons and a small single character display with circuitry.
The space not occupied by a traditional second drive would house the A/V components including video-in capabilities.

That would be soo sweet.......... [sigh]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Touch screens are SUCK for in-car stereo equipment.

Tactile feedback is key.

That looks very neat, but can you actually move your finger over the panel "feeling" the buttons, or do you have to press a button before the feedback is activated ? If you can't run your finger over the panel to feel where the buttons are they it is probably not very useful.

I've played around with that thing in my friends car and it's weeeeird. You can actually run your finger across it and feel the buttons. Only thing is they all feel similar despite having 8 different patterns. It's a really odd sensation, hard to describe, but sort of a light vibration. It's definitely impressive, but not a replacement for physical buttons imho.

tactile feedback

edit:

Damn i'm slow

I'd love to see a player that could display through the (touch ) screen of my Prius, and I think that after the current period of gratuitous incompatibilities (mainly due to the rate of change in car audio technology), we'll see some interconnect standards for audio storage and playback, so devices from different manufacturers can speak the same protocol (i.e. cassette, AM, FM/RDS, DAB, XM, CD/MD changers, HD MP3 players, and NYMHFT*), with provision for 3rd-party nav systems and the like to 'borrow' (bits of) the display and input systems.

(Hmm, I really ought to learn - when I have time after all the other calls on my Copious Free Time - how to reduce my outpourings substantially, or else how to divide them into shorter, sharper sentences to ease the load on the reader who, even now, is desperately clinging on to the opening context in case I should return to it once more - but, alas, I fear I shall not.)

* Next year's must-have flash toy

I thought people had figured out how to hook up to the Prius' screen, and if so the hijack web server exporting the "visuals" would be enough, right?

I think somebody has video through the Prius display (using the inputs the reversing camera would use), but no way of getting user input through. This is all a bit vague, as I haven't been following in detail. There are some bright people out there (and Prius is something that naturally attracts geeks!), so the future is promising...

That gets me thinking. Instead of using hijacks webserver, or together with, just use Tony's Face program. Create a large skin that fills your touch screen, and there you go. Of course then you have just put a car-puter in which could play MP3's anyway. But the key is you are still using the empeg software and UI (and a complex over-done install! )

Probably!