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Pods Unite
burgburgburg writes "Apple has released the QuickTime video of the new commercial they made in conjunction with Volkswagen. The connection between the two? Buy a New Beetle. Get a new iPod. Take a look at video.
It's the 15 GB iPod and all the accessories needed to hook it up to the new Volkswagen." It uses a casette adapter, which is really lame. Of course, I use a casette adapter with my iPod, but I am not a German engineer.
This would have been back around the '94 model year or so (on a friend's car, not mine). As I remember, the sound was not great, but certainly better than any of the tape adaptors available at the time. No idea why they ditched it...probably so they could sell you their $349 single-CD player, or $699 changer...
For all the people who do not want a cassette adaptor. Check out the ITrip. I need to order one of these. My brother stated that he has good luck with it. http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/itrip/
Some people figure out ways to hack an aux-in from the cd-changer interface, but it seems so trivial for manufacturers to provide this, I don't know why all of them don't.
Why, oh why, can't they just start giving us a 1/8th input jack on car stereos?? I've been wanting this for years,
There are plenty of them out there. I've never seen one on a stock auto-stereo, but take a trip to your local Best Buy / Circuit City etc.. and you'll see them available.
The very first model to pop up on Best Buy's page has one. I'm sure you can find more.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
If you don't have a CD Changer installed, you use this adapter. It will change the CD wiring to a standard RCA plug. It also provides a serial line, which with some hacking can be used to control your iPod from the head unit.
In 2003 beetles, the CD Changer is prewired to be installed between the seats (remove the insert). In the older models, it's wired to the trunk. There are also adapters that plug in behind the head unit, rather than using the cd cabling.
This way you don't need to use a FM transmitter or casette adapter, and you don't need to change the stock radio (and run into the K-wire problem)
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Good lord man, why would you want that? From the video (which is a wicked commercial, btw) the iPod swivels and is fully exposed so you can, you know, use it. Plus it was on a fairly convenient angle. Much better than those things that clip to the vent or whatever.
Belkin makes the iPod cup holder thingy incidentally; you can email them with questions about it and they're fairly responsive.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
I think the Honda Element has a minijack on the stereo faceplate. If you have a stereo with CD changer controls built in, you can use something like this.
I've driven pretty much every late model VW that there is, and every single one that had an OEM stereo had incredibly terrible sound, this for a car that is basically bought and marketed towards younger people who DO play music. In a new Jetta for example, the sound was so bad I couldn't even belive that was possible. My 1993 Cherokee puts out better sound, and the two rear speakers don't even work, and to top that I'm using a tape adapter as well. So, I wouldn't even want to put an iPod in there at all... who says it has to live in your car? It would just be a waste since the sound systems stink so much.
There is no official support (of course) but the iPod works just fine on Linux. You need to a recent kernel with firewire support (2.4.21 works best for me) and some software to write the DB - gtkpod (gtkpod.sourceforge.net) is by far the best I have found (it is better than the windows software IMHO).
Getting the modules installed and mounting the ipod, especially the whole hotplug daemon thing, can be a little annoying, but it is pretty well documented.
PhatBox
I know, it's not cheap and doesn't support vorbis files and the manager is Windows only.
But to me the ability to control it through my factory head unit makes that a non-issue.
It does support mp3, wma, flac and audible.
If I wasn't leasing my car I would have gotten one as soon as Audi officially supported and started installing them.
The original air-cooled Beetle (introduced back in the 1930s) is discontinued. The New Beetle (front-engine water-cooled) is still being produced worldwide.
I bought a 92 Honda Accord from a friend, and she had installed a Blaupunkt CD stereo. The cool thing about this stereo is that it has an aux in cable that is connected to the stero and ends up in the glove box. I have a 2nd generation 10gig iPod and I connect it to the stero using this cable- and leave the iPod in the glove box playing away. There is a button on the stereo that lets you choose the source of the music, aux, cd, or stero. It's a nice set up. You might want to check out the Blaupunkts to see if they fit your needs.
Maybe your just in a city with too many radio stations. Though, I live in San Francisco, which I think has a fair number of stations, and I use the iTrip with no problem. I'm not a radio listener, in general, so I can't say how many radio stations there are in San Francisco, but I started with the low end of the dial, and ended up on channel 89.7FM, which works like a charm for me.
This has also worked in two of my friends car, but admittedly they were just local trips, so I can't say how well it would travel from say San Francisco to San Jose or further. The sound quality is fantastic, well on my stereo, in the cars it was as good as the radio, which was ok to better than average. The only other issue I notice is for some purely instrumental songs, especially with quiet sections, the connection may lose its signal, this has happen to me when playing "Elegia" by New Order, but then skipping to the next song returns the signal, nice and strong.
Some manufacturers are getting the right idea. Honda's Element has a power source (cig lighter thing) and a mini-jack input in the glove box. It also has a third power plug in the cargo area for a cooler.
Of course, the Element is targeted to the surfer wilderness crowd, but hopefully they'll start to see that other people have iPods, too.
Kevin Fox
You do realize that a restored beetle is much more affordable than a Toureg. I've seen some really nice frame off, nut and bolt, complete restorations go for around $10,000. You can get a Restored VW for each day of the week instead of a Toureg. Lets say an Oval window for Monday, A split for Tuesday, A Super for Wednesday, A convertable for Thurdsay and a Baja for Friday.
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
There are a few head units that have AUX in. The best I've seen so far (price, features, etc.) is the Blaupunkt San Jose. Right around $200, plays MP3 CDs, has a nice interface, and sounds pretty good. I'd offer up a link, but the last time I went to Blaupunkt's site, I couldn't find info on this particular model. Go down to your local Fry's (where I found mine). Other than the Blaupunkt, I seem to remember that most of the Aiwa decks I looked at had AUX in, as well.
I remember looking at head units a few years ago, and Aiwa made one (apparently they still do) that had a 1/8" input on the front. They're not very expensive. Probably not the loudest thing in the world, but I don't like waking up the neighborhood, I just like listening to my music...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
Would it kill these guys to put a mini-jack on the dash (or somewhere) and an AUX setting on the stereo.
I have been using the cassette adapter option in my 4Runner, but recently I started looking into the option of having a direct plug in to the stereo from my iPod. A little poking around lead to this company. The short of it is that I can plug one of these adapters into the CD-changer input on the back of my factory stereo and then run a mini-jack from the iPod directly into it. My local Toyota dealer tells me they can install it with a factory appearance for $40 making this a must have option.
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I have a FM transmitter in order to listen to my mp3 player on my car's audio system. It works ok, but it also transmits electrical noise from the car, so there is always a low volume, but high pitched tone being mixed in with the music. It's not too bad if the car is idling, but it gets louder as the engine's rpm increases, so it gets annoying after a while.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
MacWhispers did a review of four different iPod FM transmitters. They liked a product called "AudiaX".
Their conclusion, however, was that FM transmitters kinda suck in general. Much better to simply get a line-in.
I have one of those Aiwa's too, got it for ~$100 at Best Buy. It also has a line-level output on the back which I use with my Infinity BassLink subwoofer. It's plenty loud enough to fill up my little Saturn. I think it's a pretty good unit for the price.
When I bought my car stereo, I discussed that topic with the seller. It was available in the expensive stereos. His conclusion (quite a reasonable one) was that the manufacturer didn't want you to plug your cd-mp3-whatever in a cheap player, they wanted you to buy their options (12 cd loader, etc.), with their semi-standard back connector.