Blaupunkt rolls out SD card-based car stereo

It's not the first such unit we've seen, but car stereos with SD card slots instead of CD players are still rare enough to get our attention, which is exactly what Blaupunkt has managed to do with its new Melbourne SD27 system. If that's a bit too limiting for you, you can also make use of Blaupunkt's optional iPod and USB/Bluetooth adapters, which will let you grab music off any suitably equipped MP3 player or cellphone. You'll also, of course, get an AM/FM radio with 25 preset station options, and a plain old 3.5-millimeter auxiliary input to plug in the audio device of your choice. If that's not too much change for you to handle, you should be able to pick up a Melbourne SD27 now for a suggest retail price of $160.

[bard @ Sep 20th 2007 3:30PM]

Eh, this REALLY isn't anything new, or worth what they're asking...

I bought a cheap wally world stereo deck that includes a CD player, FM stereo presets, SD card reader, iPod jack AND a USB drive for about $80 out the door. Works just as good for about half of what this is going for, and it doesn't sacrifice the CD drive.

[Woody @ Sep 20th 2007 3:38PM]

Bard, you obviously don't know much about car audio. Blaupunkt is not some cheap company that makes crappy players like your wally world deck. I doubt your deck has the features and the sleek look of this unit.

[Derbeste @ Sep 20th 2007 3:41PM]

Perhaps, but I doubt he cares. I know I wouldn't.

Substance > Style imo

[Ohng @ Sep 20th 2007 3:50PM]

Yep .. because you can get such high fidelity in a car while driving through traffic, the city, construction, with kids, windows open, etc.

Except to show off, I have no idea why people spend gobs of money on stereos.

[Grant @ Sep 20th 2007 3:52PM]

i would hardly call blaupunkt high end, granted they aren't crappy, but you can get something with better sound quality from any other company that does audio well for about the same.
and i've seen SD slots on blaupunkt stuff for a while, no?
I can't really see anyone justifying the utility of a head unit with no CD player though, unless you go all MP3 player these days... and even at that it doesn't have ipod controls out of the box, but how much more will that run you?

Even though it has a 3.5mm in, i can tell from personal experience trying to rummage through your DAP while driving is a dangerous and troublesome chore, especially when it's on some small screen instead of the units display.

[JeffDM @ Sep 20th 2007 4:31PM]

Ohng; I hardly think that a $160 head unit is a huge waste of money, it's really not that bad. Some do spend a lot of money, but $160 is nowhere near spending a lot of money. It's probably better than most factory optional sound systems and at a much lower price.

[Dankoozy @ Sep 20th 2007 3:42PM]

Jeez when will they ever make one of these that uses compactflash? or any other type of memory card but I just hate SD. I guess the USB reader is good but slightly messy


Blaupunkt is a good make though so probably worth the extra cash - I have a 50+ year old valve-based blaupunkt radio that still works good

[4honor @ Sep 20th 2007 4:13PM]

Yeah, I agree, all the big capacity memory cards seem to come out for CF first... probably due to most of the high end dSLR cameras use CF, except Nikon's. Therefore I think including like a 5-in-1 reader should be a requirement if you were to exclude CD reader.

They really should just go with one type of memory card anyways, like all SD or microSD.

[JeffDM @ Sep 20th 2007 4:36PM]

CF is nice if you need the highest capacities, highest speed or you need to boot from it (it's an ATA drive too), but SD is fine for most media uses. Except for their use in dSLRs, I think CF is fading. I'd prefer it not to, but it is a physically large card now and it's often more expensive than an SD card. The only thing I don't like about SD is that there's three different sizes in use now, and juggling the adapters is a pain.

CF used to have two physical sizes, but the thicker went away quickly.

[Javi0084 @ Sep 20th 2007 3:45PM]

I have a cheap unit that has SD slot, USB, AUX input and CD player but its crap, I think the brand is VR3 or Roadwarrior. I wouldn't mind buying this Blaupunkt if it was cheaper, all I use is the AUX input anyways and it probably sounds better than the cheap one I have.

[Phour ZwanZig @ Sep 20th 2007 10:21PM]

Yeah, thats the WallyWorld one.. I had bought one for my gfriend, which she ended up returning to the store, so I never got to use it..

[OnlyRoger @ Sep 20th 2007 7:14PM]

I am very happy with my Pioneer DEH-4900iB, which is $138 at Amazon. Another $20 bought me an iPod interface, while there are XM, Sirius, and USB connection options available as well. Six pre-amp outputs, auxiliary mini-stereo input, remote control, iPod controls and readout on the head uniy-- that's a lot of features for the price. No SD though. :)

[Mr. B @ Sep 20th 2007 3:54PM]

This is interesting but it would be better (future-proof) with SDHC.

[mark @ Sep 20th 2007 4:02PM]

nice!

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-0pyIggG7Sr8/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?search=SD27&i=023MELBOUR

[mark @ Sep 20th 2007 4:04PM]

nice!

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-0pyIggG7Sr8/cgi-bin/ProdView.asp?search=SD27&i=023MELBOUR

[Walter @ Sep 20th 2007 4:16PM]

Why do the buttons on aftermarket headunits always have to be so small?

[teej @ Sep 20th 2007 4:45PM]

because you touch yourself at night

[Tristan @ Sep 20th 2007 4:34PM]

This is new? I've had this stereo installed in my truck since July! It does hook up to your ipod but you cant control it with the head unit.

[john from Buffalo @ Sep 20th 2007 6:58PM]

Old news. Owned a Sony Xplod head unit with USB, which is FAR more user friendly than any stick reader. Honestly, I think this was a waste of spec. space.

[Greg @ Sep 20th 2007 5:55PM]

Am I the only one that laughed when I saw they were using a 256MB SD card?

[Kozzi @ Sep 20th 2007 5:19PM]

I hope there will be a microsd-only car stereo, it would be challenging.

[CoolTri @ Sep 20th 2007 5:31PM]

PC Services : Part Arrived

[James @ Sep 20th 2007 5:30PM]

Nice features, but that screen is horrible for the kind of directory navigation you'll probably want to be doing with the number of songs you can fit on a modern SD card.

[Jonathon @ Sep 20th 2007 5:44PM]

I was thinking the same thing myself. I bought a high end Alpine deck maybe 6 years ago that could do mp3 cd's. Yeah, you could store a decent amount of songs (less than what could fit on a SD card though) and it was nice to have several albums or tons of random songs, but navigation was HORRIBLE. It was limited to ~13 songs per folder and ~13 folders, so you have to burn these cd's just for it.

All that to say, tons of storage can be made useless if you can't find what you are looking for. Blaupunkt makes decent units, but I've got my doubts as to how much time/effort they put into usability for this somewhat niche ability.

[CoolTri @ Sep 20th 2007 5:32PM]

Personally i am tired of CD. They hold to little, they scratch easily, they take up way to much space, and they skip. there are so many negative to CD's that we have gotten used to. It seams to be much easer to drop a SD card in and out to keep you library up to date. You can get a 4gb SD for the price of a stack of 100 CD's

That and i have yet seen a cheap DVD reading Head unit that also plays mp3's.

[Galley @ Sep 20th 2007 5:33PM]

I loves me some Blaupunkt gear, but they're one of the few companies that don't support AAC. :-(

[ark_v2 @ Sep 20th 2007 5:39PM]

Oh my, now that's nice!

[Chris @ Sep 20th 2007 5:46PM]

Wow, is the USA just getting this kind of stuff?

The UK has had SD card readers for a fair few years now, both at the high-end (JVC, Alpine, Kenwood, Sony) and low-end (Roadstar, Mutant and other such ebay-only brads) of the market. Recently I found an £80 head unit that played DIVX and MP3s from DVD, with the video either on the display on the front of the unit or piped out through composite video jacks to up to 4 displays. Wasn't a make I've heard of before though.

As for Blaupunkt, their stuff is OK but I certainly don't rate the quality as much as a Sony or Alpine. I had a straight CD-based MP3 player and within weeks the finish was wearing off the buttons. It was also clunky at navigating folder structures, and disappointingly the aux-input lead is an optional extra.

I'm currently looking at a Kenwood unit which ditches SD cards, and that nasty ol' 3.5mm jack plug (which is just asking to be snapped off whilst driving) and has a rear mounted USB port. A 200Gb 2.5" hard drive in the glovebox should hold enough music to keep me happy! Can drive up to 800ma so most hard drives will run fine.

[Twitchy @ Sep 20th 2007 5:53PM]

Great - another little thing to fiddle around with while driving, then drop and fumble around for instead of looking on the road. And people wonder why I don't like drivng on public roads.

[3rdsun @ Sep 20th 2007 6:38PM]

I have a Logic car unit that has a USB port, CD player and AUX input. I can control my Sansa from the unit and the quality is great. No complaints so far

[SephAlpha @ Sep 20th 2007 9:59PM]

whats the big deal? I have a VR3 that plays mp3 and wma off SD/MMC, USB mem stick, cd rw, aux line in and has costs 79 bucks !

[Rifter @ Sep 21st 2007 12:35PM]

Yea, I have one of those too. Their new one, even features Bluetooth. :-) I want one of those, now. :-) Mine is a bit poor at playing DVDs, though, I always have plenty of room on my SD card, and can toss in my USB thumb drive, for more songs. Finally, I found that my cell phone will charge from the USB input in the VR3. :-) Very cool device.

[jimeagle @ Sep 21st 2007 10:20AM]

Like alot of people have stated, this is nothing new.

The only good thing about an SD reader is that it fits into the player nicely, where with a USB slot, the USB stick sticks out a couple of inches.

Id still rather USB though, i made sure i got a head unit with USB on the back so i can have it all hidden away, i have a wire going round the back to my glove box where i have USB stick and mp3 player fr the AUX in. Looks great!

[JimInRadfordVA @ Nov 19th 2007 1:38PM]

I have a cheap Insignia deck from BestBuy. It has CD and SD and USB on the front and auxillary inputs at the rear. For the $50 I spent it does everything I could want. Put in a CD and it'll rip it to MP3 and load it to the SD card. I can plug my thumb drive in the front and play from that. I can even record radio to the SD card.

Next step will be using the rear inputs for my Zune so the passenger (Never the driver) can watch movies and listen through the car sound system.

I think Blaupunkt stumbled by not including the CD.