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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...
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!
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.
Its already out and wonderful. I've been using mine for a few months now, and its wonderful...marvelous (yeah, yeah, and other showtunes). I've used it in friends cars as well, and it works fine. I would assume easier to use than an adapter kit, once you've selected a radio channel, and just overrides the current stream of music with your playlist (of course this works better on stations that you can't get a clear single from, otherwise its battle of the competing radio streams).
I mostly use iTrip with my home stereo system, because the external speakers attached to my computer are puny. My only compliant is the little prong that goes into your firewire port on the old iPods. I don't like my port covered, because you can still charge and stream, if you rotate the iTrip slightly. That said, blasting my iPod to my stereo for work, play, and even those relaxing evenings spent reading in my garden, is fantastic. The iTrip is the best $30+ dollars, I've spent in awhile.
The original air-cooled Beetle (introduced back in the 1930s) is discontinued. The New Beetle (front-engine water-cooled) is still being produced worldwide.
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.
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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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.