Hardware MP3 Players

Watchman writes "EE Times Online Mag has a story about the new MP3 HW players like RIO that are being developed by upstarts around the world. Most of the article is about the Linux powered empeg-car unit from the UK. Also some stuff about the MP3 controversy with RIAA and the rights to the MP3 format."

Cost gripes, empeg & autopc

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of folks gripe about the nearly US$1,000 cost of the empeg [empeg.com] but keep things in perspective... the AutoPC [autopc.com] (love child of Microsoft [microsoft.com] and Clarion [clarion.com], retails at over US$1,200.

The empeg [empeg.com] also is a low production unit, totalling only a few hundred units in this run. If someone like Pioneer or Kenwood or someone like that buys them out, expect the price to come down considerably in 10,000 unit production runs. Especially once the other competitors hit the playing field.

The empeg [empeg.com] sounds sweet, certainly. But for the money I can think of better ways to get rid of unwanted cash.

One problem that really needs to be addressed, and this is out of Hugo's hands really, is the temperature problem. Right now you need to remove the empeg [empeg.com] from its chassis and take it with you whenever the inside temperature of the car will get very high or very low. Considering how cold it gets in, say, South Dakota and how hot it gets in Arizona, it'll be a wonder if the thing can ever stay in the car for five minutes unattended.

We need to see severe duty hard disks available cheap for this to really take off.

URL Reliably Crashes Netscape

[Jordy]

Can anyone but me view this thing with Netscape 4.5? Mine crashes the second it starts pulling data.

Hardware MP3

[gavinhall]

Posted by Assmodeus:

its about time someone built one of these for the car. i was fretting about having to go buy a laptop with an enormous hd just to hold all my mp3s, and then running a cd to tape converter into the stereo so i could listen to all my music. i would gladly plunk down 950 dollars for a unit like this if it proves to be a quality product. call me crazy but i really dont care....

Cost gripes, empeg & autopc

[asmussen]

I wonder if any types of removable mediums like zip disks or optical disks or something are durable enough for this kind of thing. Maybe the operating system could be in memory, and all of your data could be on removable disks. Then even if your disk did go bad, if you had a PC that could read the disks, you could write a new copy and slap it in. Probably all sorts of logistical reasons why this is a really bad idea, but it's a thought, anyway...

Interesting...

[Hallow]

It's interesting to note that the empeg isn't
really a hardware MP3 player. It uses the
Xaudio libs from the people who make mtv.

On a side note, we were talking about this
in #linuxos last night. There are MPEG1 and
MPEG2 encoder/decoder cards right? Why not
a pci card that actually does hardware MP3
encoding? Preferably IRQ-less and integrated
into a sound card (we don't all have 12 pci
slots :) ), with the ability to handle multiple
simultaneous streams. That would be so sweet...

good idea

[Hallow]

Decoding isn't such a big deal. But the 2hours
of audio it takes me under 10min to rip from cd
takes me close to 9 *HOURS* to encode at 160k
(using bladeenc). A dedicated, specialized board
could get it done *A LOT* faster.

I mean, technically, if we have to pay royalties
to frauenf*c*er, I'd rather it go towards hardware.

good idea

[Hallow]

It might be. The problem is, the Xing
encoder is win32 only as far as I'm aware...

URL Reliably Crashes Netscape

[Tet]

Can anyone but me view this thing with Netscape 4.5? Mine crashes the second it starts pulling data.

It doesn't crash, but my Netscape (4.06 for Solaris/SPARC) renders it as a completely blank page. I can read the HTML fine with "View page source"...

Here's another one

[K-Man]

Here [koreatimes.co.kr]'s a Zip-drive player that I found last Friday. I'm not sure how well Zip's play in portable use, except when they're stationary.

Cost gripes, empeg & autopc

[ShootThemLater]

One problem that really needs to be addressed, and this is out of Hugo's hands really, is the temperature problem. Right now you need to remove the empeg from its chassis and take it with you whenever the inside temperature of the car will get very high or very low. Considering how cold it gets in, say, South Dakota and how hot it gets in Arizona, it'll be a wonder if the thing can ever stay in the car for five minutes unattended.

From a UK-centric point of view, temperatures are not an issue even if they are extreme. Espescially in London, if you leave a nice bit of kit like that in your car then someone is likely to attempt to give it a new home... Having said that, I am on the waiting list... Dave

MP3 decoding cards DO exist

[Baggio]

Fraunhofer [iis.fhg.de] discusses that they have redused the required number of DSP from 5 down to one, and that you can get their system for broadcasting MP3 streaming content. The problem is in the Real-time encoding. Fraunhofer is being very protective of their intellectual property, and don't want anyone else to create high quality, low bit rate audio without giving them money. A real-time encoder is very expensive. From a bussiness perspective, this makes perfect sense. As anyone who has encoded their own MP3's knows, encoding CD quality audio is time consuming, and even a DSP hardware implementation is usually two slow for a real-time application.


In the mean time, HW decoding soluions are just now becoming a viable option. Several companies are now creating IC's with MPEG 1-Layer 3 (and Layer 2.5) decoding, but these are recent developments. Prior to the release of these chips, only DSP implementations were posible. MP3 decoding is avalible from some sources in the from of a PCI card, my roomate is also trying a different approach using these chips for a school project. Decoding is a reality, but encoding is a few more years down the road for the average user. This means that a real-time MP3 CODAC is not a viable concept, yet.


Baggio
Time flies like an arrow;

Cost gripes, empeg & autopc

[daviddennis]

Why shouldn't it be in Linux?

Windows CE would require substantial royalties, and the Linux world is obviously going to produce a cornucopia of software for the thing (based on the extremely high level of enthusiasm I see for it here).

I predict that it stays in Linux, but you may have to dig to find that out - I doubt that Linux will be used as a marketing tool by a mainstream company. They'll just package the best free applications and poof.

I think mapping software, a GPS receiver and a larger display would all be good ideas. This is one place where American cars have a significant advantage - their form factors for car stereos are much more generous. Pity I hate American cars for other reasons. :-(

D

i have no problem

[Balance]

i don't have any problem and neither does the guy across the hall from me.

CD quality audio? Not.

[cak]

It seems rather bogus that they're claiming CD quality audio - MP3 is nothing of the sort. It's compressed - and audibly so. It might well be that in a car environment you don't miss it, but what happened to truth in advertising?

The Sony MD's audio was "just as good" as a CD ... then why didn't it succeed? For exactly the same reason - compressed audio isn't CD quality.

URL Reliably Crashes Netscape

[wakko]

I've see this many times with netscape. Basically on the same pages... Try turning off java/java script (Had a high hatred for it anyway =)

Might not help, but it's only my few bits
1001 0011 1100 1010 0101

Other portable MP3 players.

[Sharp]

One dosnt have to spend a fortune getting a portable mp3 player. Or even buy a rio with its proprietary memory cards. XAudio has released a very functional mp3 player for WinCE, and the newer WinCE units have stereo headphone jacks and quite functional audio hardware. And with the advantage of using standard off the shelf Flash Ram cards, its probally cheaper and easier to expand. Besides, you can use it as a pda if you can stand the WinCE platform. New Wyvern class P/PC devices (Palm PC) will probally all have color displays and stereo headphone jacks. They will also use standard compact flash cards, which most geeks already have a bunch laying about from digital cams and the like. A final word, I have tested Xaudio's MP3 player on a hp320lx, hp660lx, and a Nec Mobilepro 750C. On the later two, the mp3's played back with all the fidelity one would expect from a mp3, aka FM radio :) On the 320lx, it just sucked badly due to a slowassed cpu coupled with a shitty OS. But since I already have a WinCE device mounted in my car as a mobile GPS unit (using Solus Pro from Delorme and Rockwell GPS receiver), I figure I might as well use it to play MP3's as well.

Hardware MP3

[trazom28]

When the cost comes down, the empeg car player would be worth considering. I'm not ready to set down $999/shipping quite yet though..