DAB+ has been around for about 18 months now in Australia, but to date there has been precious few ways to listen to that crystal clear digital broadcast in your car, and the options that have been available have all been external units, not a cleanly installed DIN solution. Crystal Digital Audio have finally broken the integrated DAB+ in-car drought, with their EDB410BT head unit. More »
Earlier this week, the guys at Pioneer let me drive around in one of their cars for a couple of days to test out the AVIC-F10BT in-dash satnav entertainment system. And now that I’ve tasted the supple delights of the AVIC, my own car’s stereo system seems old and tired, like a Hollywood starlet who’s let herself go. My satnav – once the pride and joy of my glovebox – now seems clunky and cumbersome. If I could, I’d take my car and the AVIC system to Vegas and get them hitched, because the simple fact is that they belong together. More »
Pioneer’s just announced their latest AVIC in-dash satnav system, and considering it’s got an RRP of just $1,199, it made me wonder why we aren’t seeing more companies getting behind the in-dash satnav option. More »
You haven’t seen a traffic accident until you’ve seen Blu-ray in your car.
Come this spring, parents will have another tool at their disposal when it comes to shutting up kids in the backseat. Called Cruisecast, it’s AT&T’s foray into car-based satellite TV, and it’s expensive.
newVideoPlayer("alpineixaw404ho.flv", 475, 286);Alpine’s iXA-W404 with its 4.3-inch QVGA touchscreen and iPhone compatibility is fully capable of navigating all your iPhone’s music, movies, tv shows, and more by the touch of your finger.
Mercedes has announced plans to implement what they call a Splitview Command display in new S-Class models—a means for the passenger and driver to see different images on the same surface.
Intelematics, those traffic-lovin’ Victorians who created the SUNA traffic channel for your satnav, are bringing their traffic updates to digital radio when it launches in May next year.
While the service won’t be anywhere near as comprehensive or practical as the navigation built-in to your satnav (which lets you reroute to avoid congestion), this service will instead act more like the traffic updates you get from the radio already, except in text form on new DAB+ radios.
It won’t cost anything to the user, so long as they have one of these new radio receivers in their car. And while most people aren’t going to head to the local auto shop and buy a new radio for their car, within a few years pretty much all the new cars will come standard with these new radios, meaning traffic information will be readily available for people who own shiny new cars.
Actually, even though this is a pretty cool service for digital radio (which is almost certainly going to struggle to gain traction here), it’d still be cheaper to just buy a traffic-enabled satnav…
