· Can I output the display to a video monitor?
(Entry last updated on January 24th, 2007)Not easily. There is no "video out" connector on the unit, and no way to convert the display signals into a TV-compatible format.
There is the possibility of connecting a video title generator to the player's serial port. A configuration tweak will cause the player to put song data out on its serial port. This would (at significant expense and hassle) get you bare-minimum ASCII track titles on the TV screen.
But this still wouldn't help you to mount the unit in the trunk, as it wouldn't give you any feedback to infrared commands or button presses.
Some users have done this, though. Do a search on the Unofficial Empeg BBS to find more information.
One lateral-thinking user was able to get a decent video display simply by mounting a cheap CCD camera aimed at the player's front panel. Details can be found on the Unofficial Empeg BBS. If you want to try this, you might need to use an infrared filter over the camera lens, because some CCDs will pick up the infrared glow of the cathode filament wires.
If you're serious about trying to do an actual true video out for your player, it has been done. Once. It was commissioned by a special customer who was extremely serious about making a video out board. It was demonstrated at one of the user meets, and it was billed as "the most expensive empeg ever made". It required designing and building a custom interface with 516 individual parts, on a double-sided 8-layer PCB. The components included an ARM 7500 CPU, 4MB of RAM, and 1MB of flash. The board took about 10 months to design and manufacture, and even after the board was done, it took about 20 hours of work to assemble and solder the components onto just one of the boards by hand. The total cost of design/parts/assembly, although not publicly disclosed, is hinted to be in about the same price range as a reasonably expensive sports car. If you still want to try it, the plans were posted here in January 2007.
Sure you're still serious about trying to make the player output to video? Or is simply mounting it in the dash and connecting an amp starting to sound more attractive?
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