A dumb question for all you smart people...what is the difference between mp3 and mp4, and if mp4 is better, does Empeg support it yet? I read some posts from like 2002 or 2003 where it seems as though it wasn't...but not sure about now.
Thanks

You can't just compare .mp3 and .mp4 as they're totally different things.

MP3 or it's full name is MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 and is a lossy audio compression system. You only get audio in .mp3 files. Various hacks have been made to add song information e.g. ID3 and other random bits of data.

MP4 is actually MPEG-4 Part 14 and a file container system which can contain multiple streams of data for multimedia. It can contain audio, video, pictures, subtitles etc... It can contain MP3 streams or a whole bunch of other things. Normally you'll use AAC for audio in .mp4 files which provide better quality for a given bitrate than MP3.

MP4 is not supported by the empeg with any version of the firmware.

From what I know, MPEG4 is more for satellite broadcasting and similar media presentation. DirecTV is slowly moving away from MPEG2 to MPEG4. They will be allowed to get the same or most likely better picture quality yet use a smaller data stream so they can squeeze more channels on one bird.

Sky are doing the same for their HD service.

Sky (or NewsCorp whatever) purchased DirecTV in the USA and I think that was part of their decision. Also part of their move to dump (or less enthusiastically support) Tivo because they offer their own MPEG4 recorders.