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Definitely not ultimate, but for my old consoles, I have a couple of these daisy chained together:
http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?g= 15270&I=158SBV55A

Since I don't have a HDTV, I just have my Tivo, DVD, etc all going into them. Whichever I turn on gets auto-switched to, be it the Tivo receiver, dvd player, or gamecube. They due great for me as far as ease of use. I have an older TV and I've found that these do a better job of downgrading S-video to Composite then my DVD players' internal converter, so I feed S-Video to them where possible.

There might be options with more inputs and component support there as well:
http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/ProdGroup.asp?g =15270

Yea, sorry about that... my office's websense filter blocks www.xmradio.com. You believe that? well, here's the Crutchfield page to the device I purchased, Here, but I purchased mine off the shelf at circuit city for about the same price. Of course, Circuit city wanted to charge me $100.00 to perform the 5 minute install, but hey, this is capitalism, right?

JVC has a couple of decks out with a USB port on the front. I have a friend with one, and he loves it. If you don't already own an iPod, why drop that kind of money just to listen to music in the car, when you can pick up a 1GB thumbdrive for $20?

I am amazed that you are letting the cost of a $180.00 part affect your decisions regarding a $25,000 car.

Just get an aftermarket stereo. Here's my recommendation: http://www.crutchfield.com/S-MEZTmbfCxvl/cgi-bin/P rodView.asp?g=266150&I=500CDE9852&search=alpine+cd e/
It's only $180. I can attest from personal experience that the 2006 model works quite well. The 2005 models, however, were plain horrific.

You ever seen one of those Tivoli things? Some people seem to be into sort-of-but-not-really-retro colors and styling, so maybe the brown one is supposed to appeal to them (personally, I'm waiting for hickory - I'd overclock the sucker, and then even my pockets would taste good!).

Very savvy consumers will hack together ["PC-TV hybrid"] setups themselves.

Yes, we are indeed building them ourselves. However, we are doing so primarily because we can't find what we want on sale anywhere for any price. The below is an adapted version of a recent Usenet post of mine describing what I have come to daily take for granted with my high-definition MythTV setup:
------------
. . . MythTV works, and works well, for those who are interested in a "HD TiVo" without any of TiVo's limitations. I must admit to chuckling whenever I see a question in alt.tv.tech.hdtv or elsewhere asking how to record from a HD video source with a computer in terms that make it clear the poster and the respondents view the task as something akin to cavemen discovering fire.

I work long, long hours and, when I get home, often don't have any more energy left to do more than want to just relax in front of the tube. When I do so, I want to have as much choice in what to watch as possible. Let me tell one and all of what I with 100% reliability do with my MythTV setup every day:

• Push a button on the remote[1] to wake the 47" 1080p[2] LCD panel[3] from its DPMS slumber.
• Pick from a gigantic library[4] of high-definition programs that MythTV constantly adds to[5] based on my choices.[6]
• While playing the program, rewind, fast-forward, and jump to arbitrary points as desired. I can also adjust the playback speed anywhere from 0.5X to 2X without affecting audio pitch.[7]
• I can push a button to instantly and accurately skip over commercials.[8] If I've gone too far, another button will skip me back to the previous spot.
• If I exit a recording, the next time I watch it the playback will continue where I left off.[9]
• If I ever need to restart MythTV, pushing a button on my remote twice within three seconds will cause it to do so.[10]
• If I want, I can run MythTV on my MacBook and watch the exact same programs[11] with the exact same elegant and attractive user interface.[12]
• All this time, MythTV is silently recording yet more for me to watch.[13]

If any of this intrigues you, I recommend visiting:

• The MythTV Wiki and the mythtv-users mailing list archive, the two largest repositories of MythTV knowledge.
• The terrific Fedora Core-based installation guide I used.
• A well-regarded MythTV reference design for those who want to either buy it off the shelf from the vendor or build it themselves. I'm neither a customer nor an employee; all I did for my own setup was buy a Sony Pentium 4 system on sale at Fry's then add the video card, ATSC capture card, gigabit Ethernet card, remote, and NAS. However, in retrospect, there's something to be said for buying at once all the parts except the NAS in one convenient, already-integrated form.

[1] Home Theater Master MX-500 universal remote. I programmed it using a $30 infrared keyboard/mouse combo.

[2] MythTV does an *excellent* job of deinterlacing 1080i recordings into 1080p for those displays that can handle it. Any Nvidia video card from the FX5200 to the present will work.

[3] Westinghouse LVM-47W1. Under $2500 from Crutchfield for 1080p LCD goodness.

[4] MythTV tells me that I have "242 programs, using 1.7 TB (427 hrs 33 mins) out of 1.8 TB (54 GB fr

I know a lot of manufacturers have started including iPod connections in the glovebox with stereo's equipped with direct control of the gadget, but has anyone made a headunit with a cassette-like bay for the iPod? It would be like, retro cool. I guess the problem comes with the different form factors of all the different iPods, but I suppose they could include various shims

No, but you can buy an aftermarket CD player/head unit that has an iPod interface & cable. Very slick. $200.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-dqg3xoV8x67/cgi-bin/P rodView.asp?wm=fp&I=500CDA9856

That's an idea I've had for a while... A car stereo sized device that basicaly contains an amplifier and volume control, maybe a display for equaliser effects. 3.5mm socket for plugging your mp3 player into. A USB HID interface (per the above user) might be a plus too.

I'd go for producing it but the price would probably end up higher than a cheap stereo from a supermarket.

You get all that, plus AM/FM and the ability to play CDs & MP3 CDs for $200.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-dqg3xoV8x67/cgi-bin/P rodView.asp?wm=fp&I=500CDA9856

OK, you don't get USB, but you can plug in and control an iPod.

You can get a $100 casette player with an AUX input if you don't want/need a CD player.

The minuses are that it's in my arm rest, I can't see what's playing, the display on my head unit doesn't know how to cope with the iPod and try to treat it as a CD changer so it display's a loop of disc one tracks 1-3.

It'd be the perfect setup if I could navigate my iPod via my steering wheel controls and my head unit could essentially mirror iPod Display (or something similar.)

I just got an Alpine CDA-9856 to replace my worn out Aiwa. It plays CDs, MP3 & WMDs (or whatever MS calls their music format). It displays the MP3 tags on the head unit, and using a $30 cable plugged into an iPod, it will recharge the iPod as well as control it and display tags on the head unit. Not bad for $200, three line outs and a fairly hefty amp built in.

It doesn't integrate with steering wheel controls,. but I can live with that.

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-dqg3xoV8x67/cgi-bin/P rodView.asp?wm=fp&I=500CDA9856

While it's not a general interface, I have this in my car. My ipod stays in my center console where I ran the plug to and made a little docking interface. Browsing music is quite nice and it works just like a CD changer would, except you have more information and more songs available. Plus it avoids the FM modulator which sounds like crap.

Any recent (e.g., last 4 years) factory stereo has a special port on the back for connecting a CD Changer to the unit. Some ingenious companies have figured out ways to use this port to bridge any music player into the stereo system -- essentially fooling the head unit by emulating a cd changer with an iPod or whathaveyou. These bridges generally include a true iPod cable connector which allows the iPod to be controlled directly at the head unit, so using your ipod is about as safe as changing CD tracks.

Most also include a less-safe option of an RCA bypass jack that you can use with other players. Online car stereo places sell good quality ones for between $100 and $200 depending upon your model of car. Not bad for CD-quality sound out of your ipod, through your car, when the Griffin iTrip FM adapter costs about $95 these days.

Read more info here:
http://www.crutchfield.com/cgi-bin/ProdGroup.asp?g =227450&avf=Y&skipvs=T&secure=off&s=0&cc=01

i have one for my new corolla... took about 10 minutes to install and works flawlessly.

What's your evidence that the HD-DVD player is easier to build and cheaper? Or that the Blu Ray player will around $800-$1000? I've heard credible arguments that the HD-DVD discs are cheaper to produce, but no one has given any evidence that the player will be, given that both HD-DVD and Blu Ray support precisely the same complement of codecs. What's your reasoning here?

Crutchfield has a side by side comparison between the two first generation HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players, along with price here.

HD-DVD: The Toshiba HDA1 costs $499, and Toshiba HDXA1 $799.

Blu-Ray: The Samsung BDP-1000 and the Sony BDP-S1 are both $999.

The buy-in for Blu-Ray is significantly more expensive. If you must go Blu-Ray then the PS3 at $599 is the cheapest alternative.

At Crutchfield the cheapest HDMI cable is $60. At Circuit City, they're $120 and up. To me, that's a mighty pricey cable.

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-Xr97zu029xe/cgi-bin/P rodGroup.asp?search=hdmi+cable&skipvs=T&o=v&g=2310 0
http://www.circuitcity.com/rpsm/catOid/-12885/Ntk/ All/Ntt/hdmi%20cable/rpem/ccd/categorylist.do

What!? What good is a navigation system if you can't see it from the front seat!? If you believe that TVs are never installed in a location that is conspicuously visible to the driver, then you obviously have never been to a Circuit City recently. Just about every head unit over $399.00 these days has a flip-out 7"-10" display and a DVD player. And they go right in the dash. Want proof? go here...

Actually, you're wrong. I don't know of any HDTVs you can buy today that don't have HDMI input.

I'm in the market for a 400 CD changer and after much research, I had decided to buy the Sony CDP-CX455. Well, that was last month and fortunately I postponed the purchase another month. And today I'm ready to go with my previous second choice from Pioneer. I was seriously considering getting my wife a Vaio laptop on her birthday, Dec 1st. I'm in between Toshiba and HP now.

Sony and the others should begin to realize that they cannot treat their customers as criminals. They depend on us, not the other way around. The same people who bursted a vain in their forehead when they read about the rootkit are the same people who go out shopping for TVs, CD-Players, computers... To tell you the truth, I was happy with Sony products up until this huge pile of steaming crap surfaced, and let me tell you, they will never get another penny from me. Never.

These devices do exist in the form of DVD/HD recorders. Instead of video tape, they store recorded programs on an internal HD. Then if you want save that recording, just pop in a blank DVD and transfer it to the disk, then erase it from the drive to reclaim the space.

They're a bit more complex to operate than your standard VCR (since you have to bother with such things as setting the compression for any HD and DVD copy,) but it's nothing that an average /. user couldn't handle.

I bought one over a year ago, and I haven't used my VCR since.

"So, does anybody actually know of such a device? They sure don't exist at best buy. All they have is tivo and tivo clones.

Maybe you should extend your search beyond Best Buy. For instance, the online and mail-order company Crutchfield currently has that 7 of these babies available for purchase (http://www.crutchfield.com/S-iuI0CUlXGrp/cgi-bin/ prodgroup.asp?g=69800&nvpair=AG_General_Features%7 CYCHard_Drive_Recorder#see_all)

Uh oh. I was doing a web search for "Nano voice recorder" and found a merchant selling a Creative Zen Nano. Do I smell a law suit?

The Apple Nano + Creative Zen Nano = Nanonano

Get one of these: Factory to radio adapters

Heh. Here's one: Arista Optical Digital Audio Cable

Is there any point to having 24k gold-plated contacts on an optical cable other than 'bling' factor?

A quick google found me the KDF-70XBR950 (and Here) with GPL'd software. Also, Sony's GPL Downloads

if you get and alpine cda-xxxx head unit, say like this head unit here, and also get this adapter you will be able to control the ipod from the head unit and have song titles and other info display on the head. this is not the same as the bmw thing...it is much much better.

if you get and alpine cda-xxxx head unit, say like this head unit here, and also get this adapter you will be able to control the ipod from the head unit and have song titles and other info display on the head. this is not the same as the bmw thing...it is much much better.

No TV has to be fitted with HDTV receivers, because there is no such thing. There ARE ATSC receivers

-1 Pedantic. The media and manufacturers label ATSC receivers as "HDTV tuners". So let's return to the point of the argument: With the continued jobless growth of the U.S. economy, how will the lower 30 percent of wage earners, who can't afford cable or satellite TV, afford to purchase an $250 ATSC receiver for their $100 TV?

Are there any products besides the Tivo that support transfering video over the network or perhaps via firewire/usb2?

The new Panasonic DMR-E500HS has an Ethernet port and the ability to stream video to other units through a network. It also has a bigger hard drive than any other recorder I've seen.

All it needs is somebody to make some software to emulate the unit and save the streamed video to the hard drive. Maybe the guys who emulated the ReplayTV can do that for this unit?

On the downside, I must warn you that I have the older model and the hard drive crapped out after only 2 years or so, which is outrageous. And a look in the owner's manual of this one gives the impression they know their hard drives are fragile. If you get it, make sure you get some kind of extended warranty or product protection plan.

By the way, I doubt we'll have any luck transferring video via firewire. The Digital Rights Police seem to have restrictions built into any device that supports Firewire. The best option I've seen is the ReplayTV with the emulator software. I don't remember the name of the software but I'm sure somebody here can tell you.

Interesting idea cause it means you could theoretically write a receiver to decode digital signals (like TV) without paying for it?

Holy shit! Decode digital TV signals without paying for them? Kind of like any HDTV tuner can already do?

I wouldn't touch a plasma screen with a barge pole: after only two years of use the brightness will be down to less than half of what it was when you bought it.

This is inaccurate and misleading from several perspectives.

First of all, plasma brightness loss is related to hours of use, not time in general. That means that whatever dimming you get is proportional to the hours you have the thing on -- so saying "after only two years of use" is a bit bizarre, unless you're talking about leaving the thing on continuously for two years, which would be out of line for most situtations.

Secondly, plasma brightness loss is also related to how bright you have the display turned up; most plasma monitors have a setting for viewing in bright rooms (which is brighter, of course) and another for viewing in dark rooms. Lifetime with the slightly dimmer setting is vastly improved. Ten seconds spent setting this up can vastly increase the lifetime of your plasma monitor.

What you want to look at is the number of viewing hours a particular model is expected to produce, and then convolve that with the number of hours you spend in front of the monitor. If you can do this honestly, you'll end up with a reasonable approximation of the monitor's expected lifetime.

For people who use the monitor to view movies 2-3x a week (as I do), the useful lifetime of a plasma monitor you purchase will most likely be defined by obsolescence, resale, electronic death or your own death, rather than by brightness fade.

For people who want to use an HD plasma screen to watch television for many hours a day... well, at that point, you'd probably be better off with a traditional glass TV anyway. It'll fade too, but at least they're inexpensive. You can get a high def, widescreen glass TV for under a grand right now. You can check here for some examples... there's a 26 inch HD monitor there for $599, for example. Toshiba, Sanyo and Hitachi all have very reasonable models in the 30 or so inch range. Shop around; Crutchfield isn't the only source out there. You can almost certainly do better if you work at it.

You might consider one of these instead.

Certainly cheaper, with higher capacity storage and an RS232 port for advanced geekery. I'd love to have by-wire controls on mine rather than using the IR emitter I'm using now, but other than that these things are a lot easier to deal with.

Plus they're SACD players as well, which is cool.

I *have* a 2TB Snapstream server and some interfaces for moving video content around my house (either from my HTPC or from my receiver). It's nice for a lot of things. It's also a hassle to set up and deal with controls (I generally use a laptop + VNC, rather than trying to read text from the sofa), and it took me a couple years to get it to a point where I'm more-or-less satisfied with it... except for the fact that the damn thing crashes from time to time (I'm aware of mythTV but Snapstream's control for my satellite tuners worked out of the box, and changechannel for myth didn't). Even if I were just using it for DVDs, I haven't found a GREAT 10' interface for any PC DVD-playing application, either. If I'm storing .vobs and .ifos I have to basically make a playlist for each movie and if I'm storing MPEG4 files (which I do, for a lot of porn) I lose video quality and audio options compared to the source.

When I look at how much equipment I need to make my HTPC really awesome versus what my jukeboxes cost, the $700 ($300 for the step down to a non-ES model) is a much more appealing option.

What is the purpose of the Blu-Ray disc.

HDTV resolutions.

that doesn't mean that they will start putting movies on them

Sony has already committed to doing that.

most TV's don't even do dvd's justice

My HDTV supports more resolution than DVD's contain (480i). About 20% of TVs currently sold are HDTV capable, and that percentage is increasing. People that own HDTV's are prime customers already for upconverting DVD players with fancy deinterlacers so that DVD's don't look like crap on their HDTVs. They will jump all over Blu-Ray movie players with 1080p output capabililty.

There are quite a few aftermarket head units that provide aux input of one sort or another. Observe:

Blaupunkt Montreal CD34

Kenwood KDC-MP6025

Sony CDX-F5700

Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP

Panasonic MXE CQ-C5410U"

Rear auxilary inputs are far from being a new feature or found only in high end in dash recievers.

There are quite a few aftermarket head units that provide aux input of one sort or another. Observe:

Blaupunkt Montreal CD34

Kenwood KDC-MP6025

Sony CDX-F5700

Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP

Panasonic MXE CQ-C5410U"

Rear auxilary inputs are far from being a new feature or found only in high end in dash recievers.

There are quite a few aftermarket head units that provide aux input of one sort or another. Observe:

Blaupunkt Montreal CD34

Kenwood KDC-MP6025

Sony CDX-F5700

Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP

Panasonic MXE CQ-C5410U"

Rear auxilary inputs are far from being a new feature or found only in high end in dash recievers.

There are quite a few aftermarket head units that provide aux input of one sort or another. Observe:

Blaupunkt Montreal CD34

Kenwood KDC-MP6025

Sony CDX-F5700

Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP

Panasonic MXE CQ-C5410U"

Rear auxilary inputs are far from being a new feature or found only in high end in dash recievers.

There are quite a few aftermarket head units that provide aux input of one sort or another. Observe:

Blaupunkt Montreal CD34

Kenwood KDC-MP6025

Sony CDX-F5700

Clarion ProAudio DXZ545MP

Panasonic MXE CQ-C5410U"

Rear auxilary inputs are far from being a new feature or found only in high end in dash recievers.

Are you REALLY that far out of touch with the aftermarket entertainment offerings or is this a Troll? Most of what the OEMs offer is utter crap and built by the lowest bidder. MANY people replace their stereos with aftermarket components and $500 for a good headunit is CHEAP. Hell, there's an entire industry revolving around aftermerket entertainment systems for vehicles and several magazines devoted to it as well. Pull your head out once in awhile and look around for kripes sakes. Crutchfield http://www.crutchfield.com/ is but one example of a thriving online business revolving aorund this and if you take a look around one day you might even notice stereo shops in your community. I can think of three within a 5 minute driving distance of my home and I do NOT live in a city...

sure: here's one from delphi, another from kenwood. i can't seem to find the sony ones.

obviously, these are only for their specific products. making it work with your average line-out device is all part of the challenge.

sure: here's one from delphi, another from kenwood. i can't seem to find the sony ones.

obviously, these are only for their specific products. making it work with your average line-out device is all part of the challenge.

On Cliff's moderation: I posted your exact same question about a year ago and it got rejected.

yeah. but then you need to factor in $20 or $30 for a tivo-compatible USB 802.11b adapter... but the reall killer app for Myth that TiVo just doesn't offer at all is the burn-to-dvd option included in the parent's spec.

Tivo lets you play stuff back through a VCR or standalone DVD-R, but that's a half-assed solution at best. The integrated TiVo + DVD-R boxes from e.g. Pioneer are over $500 for just the hardware. add $300 for lifetime service, and that MythTV box starts to look downright cheap.

why would you want to burn to DVD? well, because you might want to archive something on broadcast, or make copies to give to your friends. As a for-example, I'm on a masters' water polo team, and I'm fanatic about watching and playing polo. But there is never any polo on American TV... except during the Olympics! So yes, I went to Circuit City and bought a $99 TiVo with the 40-gig disk for the SOLE PURPOSE of recording olympic water polo matches. But guess what? Everybody on my team wants to watch them too, but since Tivo records the whole 8-hour block of programming, I had to delete some games from Tivo to make room for the next games. And I noticed something interesting- whatever algorithm Tivo uses to compress the video stream, it has some problems with water, especially at the lower quality settings... Often I could see rectangular divisions in the surface of the pool, and it's even worse on the VHS tapes I tried to make from the TiVo.

When you buy a Tivo, you're buying convenience, but if you also want to buy the ability to make archival copies on DVD, you're going to spend $500 on hardware either way... and then the MythTV box does save you money because you don't have to subscribe to get progam listings.

Kinda. If you just want to skip to the next song, you can probably do it, but you might do something else by accident. There's also an inline remote control (or use this link while the Apple Store is down) that would probably work better for you.

My real question is why it's harder and harder to find stereos with front-panel auxiliary plugs these days.

It looks awesome, and I've never seen such a perfect list of media types that it can access. (Although I don't see DVD-R MP3, just CD-R MP3)

Anyway, why don't they make these things that can be accessed by a computer? THAT is what I'd want.

The radio data system that is in a large chunk of new stereo's should make this service fairly ineffective. Most major radio stations now broadcast the song title and artist along with the music, and many new stereo's can do this. Why pay a buck for each song when you can buy a decent stereo and get the same thing for EVERY song. An example of a stereo with RDS can be found here. Not to mention satellite radio. If you look up a song every few days, you'd be able to pay your satellite radio bill instead.

There are some great adapters out there ti fit DIN equipment into oddball dashes. Here is just such an adapter for your Taurus! You'll find it blends in quite well. I used their adapter for a Focus a few months ago. It works quite well.

Another site with a plethora of information on doing this is MP3car.com If you have the time, I recommend going through the site. Tons of information about the kind of power supply you will need (obviously a DC~DC converter).

It's probably worth noting that it doesn't take a PC to play MP3's in your car. A (usually) cheaper solution is just to buy a car stereo that does it.

I'm waiting for a Tivo unit with a DVD/R built-in.

wait no longer: pioneer makes one

Rather than ripping 1000 DVD's (who's got the time??), I'd go with a pair of Sony's DVP-CX985V 400-disc DVD jukeboxes ($399). It does progressive scan and handles CD's, MP3 CD's, SACD's and DVD's. This is the ultimate weapon for those with huge DVD/CD collections... not to mention getting all that shelf space back!

I have one of the 300-CD changers and it's worked extremely well. I'm considering upgrading to one of these to merge my CD and DVD collections into a single unit.

It has a big brother too - the DVP-CX777ES which is the same size but has various additional features.

Rather than ripping 1000 DVD's (who's got the time??), I'd go with a pair of Sony's DVP-CX985V 400-disc DVD jukeboxes ($399). It does progressive scan and handles CD's, MP3 CD's, SACD's and DVD's. This is the ultimate weapon for those with huge DVD/CD collections... not to mention getting all that shelf space back!

I have one of the 300-CD changers and it's worked extremely well. I'm considering upgrading to one of these to merge my CD and DVD collections into a single unit.

It has a big brother too - the DVP-CX777ES which is the same size but has various additional features.

It's nice, but it costs $1200 on sale and is a tempting target for thieves. Gimme one where the expensive bits are in the trunk any day.