Im sure this has been talked about on the BBS already, but in light of some new products out there
: 10GB HD players from Sony (click here) and pioneer(click here) is the market finally ready for this type of player? The Sony and Pioneer models go for $2K and $1.5K respectively, and dont look like they even offer the full featureset of the rio! (they do include tuners and CDs).

-Ted

(not to be picky, but they cost 1.5K and 2K respectively, at least in the way you linked them )

Man, it certainly would be sweet if the product was popularized. Of course, I still don't think people would get it. They sure didn't before. I also think those people who didn't get it before were the ones who complained about not having a CD player in it.

But who knows, in the future, there may be very similar products out there.

I would dearly love the empeg to be a real product again, but Sony and Pioneer can obviously afford to have a niche market product that Sonic Blue cannot afford.
Given the price tag, I don't think they see the market as being huge either.
Don't forget, the empeg is basically a pc in a small box, the others are a CD player with a hard disk.

Of course, I still don't think people would get it.

Are you kidding me? People are getting it quite rapidly. MP3 players are becoming more and more mainstream because MP3s themselves have saturated our society. I took mine to work for the first time last week, and I spent about 6 hours of an 8 hour day talking about it to various people who wandered by to look at it. In that one day, I generated 5 potential customers (one has 50 GB of MP3s, and is trying to fit them onto a 20GB iPod) out of maybe twice that number that I showed it to. Nobody that I showed it to cared that it had no CD player, and no one cared there was no tuner (of course, being in LA, that's not much different from a regular car stereo for what it's worth). Granted, once I started talking about hijack, their eyes glazed over rapidly...

People are getting it quite rapidly

I must respectfully disagree.

I still stand by this post I made some time ago.

The empeg is, and will remain for the forseeable future a very small, not feasibly profitable, niche market.

tanstaafl.

I took mine to work for the first time last week,...

You might consider using a laptop lock cable if there are lots of people around who now know about it. Yours wouldn't be the first to be stolen from a workplace.

I saw the sony hard disc player for the first time in person at bestbuy lastnight. I must say, its the uglyiest thing i've ever seen. I'm shocked that anyone would ever pay $1500 for it. I'm glad that the rio is EOL, even though my friends wish they could get one, i like having something that there is a limited ammount. The only time that i would wish that the empeg would go back into production is when both mine break

Ah, when he said people aren't getting it, then went on to talk about lack of CD player, I took "getting it" to be synonymous with "understanding it". If that's what he meant, then I think he's wrong -- look at the popularity of the iPod despite it not having a CD player or tuner, and you still have to rip and upload. Do you think it would have sold as well if it had been introduced back in '97? I doubt it, but MP3s are so ubiquitous now that the market can support such a device.

So what's the difference between the iPod and the empeg? As I see it, the iPod is a walkman style device, and the empeg is a car stereo (and home stereo component, in my case). Just by being a car stereo puts the empeg in a niche market -- the average car buyer doesn't even bother to upgrade their head unit, let alone dig into the options deep enough to hear about the empeg. I only heard about it because somebody else on the Nissan Frontier forum mentioned it once in passing (sadly, I don't recall who it was). On top of that, the quality of it puts it into a niche of the car stereo market. The Sony and Pioneer units are also in that niche, but looking at even just the spec sheets side by side, it's no comparison which is better. In that respect, people are getting it.

However, if by "not getting it", he meant that people still wouldn't be purchasing more and more of them, well then of course he (and you) are correct -- it's still a product that fills a niche that only a small segment of the population fits. I doubt the Sony or Pioneer units will sell well, either.

A

[something about getting a laptop cable lock]

I'll take that into consideration. After being at my present company for about six months now, I don't think it's necessary, though. We have people with TV's and hundreds of dollars of DVDs sitting on their desks, not to mention the stereos and CDs, personal laptops, and thousands of dollars in McFarlane toys (I'm sure loren knows what that's like). I've never heard of any problems with things disappearing. Our company culture is also very family like, which helps immensely. Now, if I were still at my *previous* company, they'd never even see it -- they had problems with spare change disappearing!

I'm glad that the rio is EOL, even though my friends wish they could get one, i like having something that there is a limited ammount. The only time that i would wish that the empeg would go back into production is when both mine break.

My sentiments exactly. However, I don't have any spares. On the plus side, I've discovered that if the screen breaks, I'll still keep using it, since it's so simple to operate. Hurray for down, down, down!

I'm glad that the rio is EOL, even though my friends wish they could get one, i like having something that there is a limited ammount.

I'm not. I ride in other people's cars, sometimes.