Empeg Car

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The Empeg Car is the first in-dash MP3 player developed. In 1999 a British company called Empeg was formed to build the unit, which shipped later in that year.

One of the founders of Empeg, Hugo Fiennes, was the man behind the MP3mobile. MP3Mobile was one of the first in-car MP3 players to be documented on the Internet.

The Empeg Car was a Linux-based unit that transferred MP3 tracks from the user's computer to the player via USB, Ethernet, or a serial port connection. Prices started at $1,100 US for the 4GB version and went all the way up to a $2,400 28GB unit that utilized two laptop drives (to accommodate what was then considered huge capacity). The Empeg Car garnered quite a following and became beloved among the small group of users who bought one.

SONICblue - the former S3 company that had already acquired both the Rio line of MP3 portables by purchasing Diamond and the Rave-MP line by purchasing Sensory Science - took notice of the unit and decided the Empeg Car would fit into its plans. On November 1st 2000 Empeg was acquired by SONICblue Incorporated and the unit was renamed the Rio Car. The original British development team was rolled into the company and eventually took responsibility for all audio software development at SONICblue.

Unfortunately, SONICblue did not have a clear game plan with how to promote the Rio Car. Rio did little to market it and soon left it to languish. Despite their owners' strong devotion to the product, sales of new units were modest and on September 24, 2001 SONICblue discontinued the line. Fewer than 6000 players were ever produced.

Most of the resources, including people, code, and design work, behind the Empeg Car went into the following products:

  • Rio Receiver - Network enabled client for streaming music off a computer to anywhere in the home
  • Rio Central - A home stereo component that ripped CDs to MP3s and stored them on an internal hard drive. Supported Rio Receivers as clients.
  • Rio Karma - Portable 20gb music player

SONICblue went bankrupt in 2003, but the Rio division was purchased by D&M Holdings. The former Empeg employees still with Rio went on to produce the Rio Karma, the Rio Carbon, and several recent flash memory players. In 2005, D&M sold all of their audio player technology to SigmaTel, including all of the Empeg technology, and all of the patents, source code, and designs related to the Rio audio players. The former Empeg employees as well as other Rio technical employees are now employed by SigmaTel at their Austin, TX or Cambridge, England offices.

In 2006 Hugo Fiennes left SigmaTel to work in the iPod team at Apple.

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