...I own an empeg (which Ive just removed from my car and gone back to the stock unit - cars going soonish) which is still the best mp3 head unit around, and its been out for 4 or so years (3 revisions). Unfortuanately theyre not made any more (They were independant, got bought by rio and renamed the played to riocar, then went bankrupt and got bought by denon and marantz)...
Considering the fact that they stopped selling the players in 2001, theyre still developing the software in the background, a couple of months ago they released a new version of software.
The head unit was developed by techies, so it has the ultimate quality in dacs, it has the ultimate in quality option fm/am radio (inc. rds text). It runs linux and you can run other programs on it, for example there is a gps navigation program available, it has a very bright vfd graphic display - oh and space for 2 laptop harddrives. It plays mp3 & wma & wav, theyve promised a new version of firmware which includes ogg, flac etc. Upload/Download by USB or ethernet.
Only thing is...
1) Not made any more, expect to pay between £350 and £600 quid for the base 10 gig model second hand - usually youd have to import from the US - ive only ever seen 2 or 3 for sale in the UK)
2) You need an external amplifier, this thing only has line outs.
3) You need to remove it from the car each time you leave, no removable face, only the whole unit is removable.
Check out
http://www.riocar.orgwww.riocar.org for a bit more info if youre interested. I know of at least one other empeg user on this board.
Adrian