There’s just one thing that could make your drive to work less agonizing when the GPS is telling you there’s no way around the endless traffic: access to your Criterion Collection Blu-ray discs. Or at least that’s the scenario Panasonic is envisioning now that it’s including Blu-ray players on its satellite navigation units.
To start there will be four models featuring built-in Blu-ray support that will range in price from just over a grand, to just shy of $US1700. If there are always kids in your car with a clear view of the navigation unit on the dashboard, it’s probably not a bad idea since it will certainly serve as a great distraction on long drives.
But if it’s just the driver watching movies on the way to work, this might not actually be the smartest idea. Especially since the seven-inch touchscreen displays on these units only boast a resolution of 800×480 pixels. That’s well below HD, which is pretty much the main reason why most home theatre enthusiasts invested in a Blu-ray collection in the first place.
In a time when many of us have already switched to using our phones for GPS navigation in our cars, could built-in Blu-ray actually convince anyone to buy a dedicated sat-nav unit again? [AV Watch via NewLaunches]