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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.
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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