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http://www.ssiamerica.com/products/neo35/
You can use it at home, on your pc or even in your car. The price is a wee bit high though.

I like the trunk mount. I have a NEO Jukebox MP3 player that I love.

I'd love to have wifi though...pull in the driveway and have musical updates pushed to the car. http://www.ssiamerica.com/

It is nearly the same as the NEO-25 (the patent description not the iPod). They dropped support for the NEO-25 before Apple filed the utility patent or the provisional it is based on. The NEO-25 represents significant prior art to this patent. Apple could have chosen better ways to distinguish the patent to eliminate the conflict, but didn't do their homework. As you can see from this the last update they did for the firmware was in April of 2000.

I think the iPod is cool, but it just doesn't work in a car. So I went with an in-trunk HDD player that has adapters for Alpine, Kenwood, Pioneer, and VW head units to make it appear to be either a Siruis radio or multi-disc CD changer. The only cable is hidden in your car just like an ordinary in-trunk disc changer.

When I want to sync music, I slide the unit out of the trunk and slide it into a USB bay connected to my Mac. The disk mounts on the desktop. It all works fairly well.

Since the unit is in the trunk, it's not sitting in a cup-holder in plain view as a tasty morsel to a passer-by theif.

I just bought a 40 gig maxtor drive (Cheap for a firewall) it came with a claim of being able to withstand 70Gs of force while running. I'd imagine a better build SCSI drive could withstand more. They currently have MP3 player mounted in cars that run utilizing hard drives Neo Jukebox, which is veru cool. I haven't had any problems with mine for about a year. I've done some serious offroading with it... It keeps playing...

Hard Drives are getting smaller and better engineered all the time. Think about how much abuse your laptop gets...it still boots.

ok..a crash at 70 MPH, may damage it, why don't they add a wireless interface to constantly upload recorded data (data to save). Use something in the 900 MHZ area so it does get blocked as easily. Throw repeaters on each tower the 2 way radio has them.

hmm... off to the patent office I go...

What I want too. Go to radio shack, get a clamp-down style cell phone holder. Get one of those FM modulators. Pipes directly into the antenna via wire. Or grab one of their head-end cd changer emulator units. Either should work. iPod heaven. :)

What hacks me off is the fact that the new iPod has a proprietary plug at the bottom now. :( In order to fully integrate the thing into my car I'll have to hack an iPod dock, or make a plug. Me hates it. Hates it me does...

Anyway, I ended up getting a Neo car jukebox. It mounts on your desktop computer as a hard disk, then you unplug it and plug it into yout car. The nifty thing is that they have adapter units for various head units to fool them into thinking it's a CD changer.

1. It could be connected to stereo via "Line In", RF modulator, or cassette -- can be used in anyone's car, with the right adapters

2. Uses standard 3.5" hard drive -- easily swap for another drive, uses USB 1.1 or EIDE for file transfers

3. Portable mass storage device.

Here's the link.

In the mean-time, I bought one of these.

Yes, I am aware of those things that allow you to broadcast iPod output on an FM frerquency, but (1) they're awkward and bring back bad memories of CD/cassette adapters with wires all over the place, and (2) they don't work very well from most accounts I've read.

Not nearly as messy, 30 gigs of storage, and if that isn't enough you can just toss a bigger drive in it.
Neo Car Jukebox

on the down side, it's about 400 bucks :(

I have an Alpine stereo with the MP3 player as AUX. The MP3 player has a 5 line text LCD, which assists in selecting from the 300+ albums in mine. Mine is the Neo 35 (Now out of date, see the Neo 45) from SSI America. It is a pullout cartridge that slides into a bay on my PC. Or into a base station for use as a home stereo device. I put a 40Gb HD in mine. Most of the players use off-the-shelf IDE hard drives, and are user installable.

If purchasing new I would recommend the Kenwood Music Keg (based on the Phatnoise Phatbox). Simply because of the level of integration between the head-unit and jukebox. It turns out that using a separate interface to control your CD player and Receiver versus the MP3 player, has really annoyed me. The Music Keg displays song titles, time remaining, etc. on the stereo faceplate, operates just like an OEM CD changer. It also works with BMW, Audi, and VW stereo systems.

I like the idea of the new systems with USB support. This allows me to buy CDs, rip them with my laptop and sync to the drive on the fly.

I have an Alpine stereo with the MP3 player as AUX. The MP3 player has a 5 line text LCD, which assists in selecting from the 300+ albums in mine. Mine is the Neo 35 (Now out of date, see the Neo 45) from SSI America. It is a pullout cartridge that slides into a bay on my PC. Or into a base station for use as a home stereo device. I put a 40Gb HD in mine. Most of the players use off-the-shelf IDE hard drives, and are user installable.

If purchasing new I would recommend the Kenwood Music Keg (based on the Phatnoise Phatbox). Simply because of the level of integration between the head-unit and jukebox. It turns out that using a separate interface to control your CD player and Receiver versus the MP3 player, has really annoyed me. The Music Keg displays song titles, time remaining, etc. on the stereo faceplate, operates just like an OEM CD changer. It also works with BMW, Audi, and VW stereo systems.

I like the idea of the new systems with USB support. This allows me to buy CDs, rip them with my laptop and sync to the drive on the fly.

there are a few solutions. the empeg is extinct. the ssi neo is cheap. it's not good, but it's cheap. the phatbox is probably the best solution for you (especially if you're getting an aftermarket stereo). if you're scared of small companies, the phatbox also comes as the kenwood music keg (it runs linux, too).

10 gigs in my car. haven't listened to the radio in months.

It already exists and I love mine.

Neo Car Jukebox

Very cool device, but $269 is pretty excessive considering you can get cheaper fully contained players for less. For example the 10G Neo Jukebox for $220. Hmm paradoxically you can buy the Neo Jukebox without the hard drive for an extra $10 at MTE.

I'm not saying don't buy one. The point is that you just know devices like this sliMP3 could be sold profitably for less than $50 if the volume was high enough. They are essentially the same as the Neo jukebox but with all the expensive components removed (battery, hard drive) and with an ethernet chip added. The Neo has a dinky remote control as well.

If you check out Slim Device's photos page, you can see just how 'garage' the company has been. It's pretty cool how they take you through the whole production process - almost makes me want to buy one just for that.

the neo25 is a regular old usb-drive with mp3 decode hardware and an lcd display on it.

you can copy TO and FROM it with zero issues. and recently, you can even use it with linux now that there's an update to the firmware (works with 2.4.latest kernel just fine!)

the computer-geeks (store) has them for sale for $122. I paid close to $300 just a year ago. the only downside of this unit is that its bad on batteries (li-ion only lasts 2 hrs or so). and don't use 5400rpm 2.5" notebook drives with this unit; there's not enough power to spin the drive up! stick with the slower 4200rpm notebook drives (30gig works well).

I own a Neo 25 portable MP3 player, produced and distributed by SSI America. It was rather expensive to get, but it has no copy protection mechanisms, and it doubles as a portable hard drive. It uses a 2.5 inch IDE laptop drive, which is replacable, and a rechargable lithium ion battery.

I love this unit. It has played MP3s for me 8 hours a day for the past year.

The Neo Jukebox is their latest Neo product, replacing the Neo 25. It looks even nicer than my unit. They also mape the Neo 35, a car MP3 player.

mp3.com reviews a large selection of mp3 players, many of which are not SDMI.
Any combo hard-drive/mp3 player like the neo jukebox, the archos or the nomad jukebox can't be SDMI compliant.

I have a Genica roopaq (originally neo 25)with a 20 gig hard drive plugged into the input on my cd player and it works great. I used a cell phone clip on the back, and mounted it on the dashboard. If you want the newer relative to the neo25/roopaq line you can go with the neo jukebox Which is basically a better version of the roopaq / neo 25. The best part is that under 2000 and XP i didn't even need to load drivers. I plugged it into the usb port and it recognized the scanlogic usb2ide controller and mounted it as an external usb hard drive. To copy songs, just drag and drop. With the latest scanlogic firmware i've read linux success stories for using this device with linux as well. (works with macos too, but if you have a mac, you probably have a ipod) The only complaint I have is that it took a little more than 2 hours to copy my 20 gigs of mp3s over usb.

w.r.t. the pile of CDs in the car, do what I did and buy an MP3 player, like this.

It's a whole lot better than a pile of CDs in the trunk...

All of those are good points... but:

1. The Neo 35 is a third of the price of the empeg
2. Sure the Neo35 doesn't have fancy graphics... but I drive with my eyes on the road, not on the head unit. The fancy visualizations mean squat, its the sound dude... (The neo has awesome playlist features as well, btw)
3. The Neo35 does have a built in amp (40x4 AFAIK)
4. Why do I NEED linux on it? That's what my server/workstations are for.

As far as bang goes, the Neo35, available from carplayer.com or SSI America has more for the buck.

I recently purchased the Neo 35 MP3 player from carplayer.com. Its also available from the manufacturer, but I didn't realize that until AFTER I received the unit.

For about $800 CDN, I received a very complete and well thought package, including:
- the head unit
- with a 30 Gig drive
- remote LCD on a nice long serial cable
- docking bays for the car and PC
- IR remote (don't use it much though)
- RCA/antennae (sp) cables
- extra velcro straps, IDE/power cables, etc
- Music Match (~$20 value, but for Windows so I don't use it)
- carrying case for head unit

You can also get the Home Stereo docking bay, which is appealing to those with nice surround sound home stereos...

Since I already had a good CD deck (top Panasonic unit from '99), I had the Neo 35 mounted in the trunk instead of in the dash. This means I can still listen to AM/FM/CDs using the Panasonic deck, and switch to AUX IN and use the Remote LCD to control the jukebox. The only issue I currently need to resolve, is that I'm getting some feedback coming through the speakers while switched to AUX IN. By feedback, I mean I can hear a high-pitched whine of the engine as I accelerate and decelerate. It appears that I need to get a ground loop isolater and/or better RCAs.

What others have done, is plug this jukebox into the Kenwood or Aiwa decks... so that you have all your own MP3 cds on the 20-80 gig drive, but can still play CDR/CDRW/MP3 cds from your friends or that you have already.

To copy files onto it and otherwise manage the contents, I just slide it into the the PC docking bay, power it on, run "mount /car" as user, and use Konqueror (or cp, whatever hits the mood) to manipulate the directory structure. To remove it, I just umount /car, hdparm -Y /dev/hda (my main HD is SCSI), power it off, and slide it out. No rebooting required.

The playlist is really nice as well... Since it has a four line display, its really easy to see where you are in your directory structure. Just remember to organize by Genre->Artist->Album->Song.

$800 CDN may seem like a lot more then a $4-500 Aiwa or Kenwood unit... but remember that it does have a 30 Gig drive, which you can use as a backup drive in your system. It's also really simple to move between your car and PC, so you can use it as your /mp3 store as well, freeing up space on your existing partitions.

To upgrade the firmware in the unit, all you have to do is copy the update (neo45.bin or whatever) to the root of the drive, and powerup the unit while holding in the P(rogram) button.

Just remember to scandisk (or dosfsck) the drive once in a while. The system gets pretty finicky about problems with the file system, even when Win2k/Linux can see/mount it just fine.

Overall, I give it two thumbs up, and highly recommend it to anyone else. This may not be the prettiest unit, but it definetly makes it up in functionality and ease of use.

http://www.ssiamerica.com/products/cj510/

Looks pretty freaking rad, but is it coming out? the website says "Summer 2001"...looks like it needs to be updated one way or another.

Anyone have any insight on this company?

The archos jukebox 6000 which is supposed to have excellent sound quality and pretty similar battery life to the nomad jukebox and 100 dollars cheaper.

The pjb which superior to the nomad jukebox, (longer battery life and comes highly recommended), thinkgeek sell this, very expensive ($690 I think)

And also you should keep an eye out for the treo which is going to be pretty gun, 8 hours of battery life, tiny, the next incarnation of the pjb and only $400 dollars

Also there is the neo-25 which is cheap, but only got mixed reviews, so I would be a bit careful about buying it.

Cheers
Sam

How about the Neo 35 (
http://ssiamerica.com/products/neo35/)?

I don't know if it runs under linux, but it sure does give bang for the buck.

other than that, if you can ignore its gawdy looks, it seems quite a nice player.

I'm more inclined to use a hard-disk player, like the NEO 35 . add your own hard drive, order the remote lcd panel and install it and you're good to go. it can be more stealthfully mounted (the aiwa is a detach face - not sure if theives are deterred by this) and you have ALL your music online at all times.

--

The Neo25 is USB and uses laptop hard drives.
http://ssiamerica.com/products/neo25/
Now if it only had a car charger for the battery...

https://www1508.boca15-verio.com/napdec/purchase_1 .php3

$249 for "pc deck" version

$359 for USB version (with remote and carrying case)

$59 for a car dash or home stereo bay

$69 for wired-remote panel (i.e. trunk-mount the sucker)

... no hard drive though ($139 for 20GB)
Manual is here.

The Neo PC version w/o hard drive is "$309, special offer." Usually about $50 more, I think. They offer a $400 model with a 10GB drive, and a $450 version with 20GB.


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They have another link that appears to work.. I haven't ordered one (yet) So cant tell for sure

www.ssiamerica.com/ecom/itm00001.htm&l t;/a>

no, the correct link is here.

$449 for unit with 30 GB hdd. i bought one.

If you look at the bottom of the FAQ, you'll see this:

Where can I buy the Neo 35?

The Neo 35 can currently be purchased online here. It should soon be available in stores. We have stock, so you order now, we ship now.



As you can see, the order link is broken!


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If you look at the bottom of the FAQ, you'll see this:

Where can I buy the Neo 35?

The Neo 35 can currently be purchased online here. It should soon be available in stores. We have stock, so you order now, we ship now.



As you can see, the order link is broken!


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