We'll be honest: apart from the
ridiculous custom cars and the
Viliv S7, we pretty much avoided the car audio-oriented North Hall at CES this year -- which means we sadly didn't get any facetime with Blaupunkt's miRoamer-powered TravelPilot New Jersey 600i internet car stereo. (Apparently double-DIN is big in the Jerz.) The prototype head unit connects to a cellphone over Bluetooth to access the internet, and uses the miRoamer service to stream "tens of thousands" of stations on the service -- which the company estimates will consume about 2GB of data a month, so you'd better hope your data plan doesn't cap you off or charge you for overages. The radio is expected to arrive in the second half of the year for $399, which isn't bad, but doesn't do much good for the squares like us who never swap out their car stereos -- which is probably why miRoamer is targeting 2010 for placement in OEM head units. One more pic of the single-DIN sized "Hamburg" model after the break.
posted Jan 13th 2009 4:32PM
MAN, if Apple came out with one of these - using iPhone OS with:
1 accelerometers - to prevent use during driving
2 updates over the wireless internet
3 bluetooth synch with iphone/ipod touch
and a few other things...
THIS THING OULD MAKE A KILLING.
@ Flashpoint. You can't be serious, what are you? A 12 year old apple junkie?
first off A.) "accelerometers - to prevent use during driving" umm, it's in the dashboard.....dugh {fahl}
secondly B.) "2 updates over the wireless internet" didn't read the article hungh? just looked at the pretty pictures. and last but not least C.) "3 bluetooth synch with iphone/ipod touch
and a few other things..." *see B.)
Sheesh another mac "airhead"
anybody else thinking of 'Bankrupt' when looking at the company name 'Blaupunkt'?
also now a days I can hardly remember any phone number since I just use the contact entry or speed dial from my cell, I dont think I can use that dialpad interface on my car
Does anyone else think the blue orb-thing in the directional pad looks reminiscent of HAL 9000's eye? I can't wait until all of these start playing "Daisy Bell."
Probably gonna be a skin addon....... Id love to have a raging computer in my car..... Would make my morning commute alot more interesting.....
man if apple came out with one of those things
1st. Perhaps Engadget, would be able to visit the CES car audio-oriented section
2nd. All the Apple fanboys would immediately suggest that this was a first Apple creation and no other company had thought that, and also all other well respected car audio brands are just inferior to Apple.
3rd. An infinity number of posts about that product from various sites that claim that aren't Apple fans.
...and the list goes on..
And to be honest, THANK GOD (of what ever religion u believe) that Apple comes out with a car audio product. Although i believe that next time it would be perfect if Engagdet in CES could send one of the 20 or so people to make 4-5 posts about the car audio section of CES !
That was a reply to @ Flashpoint
I'm surprised that no one has come out with a head unit that uses the iPod Touch or iPhone as the interface. Like a dock basically. The iPhone interface is much better than the interfaces that every head unit out there uses IMO.
I like the concept, but I don't see this as ready for production yet.
Do the math: $10/month for Sirius or XM, vs. several THOUSAND a month in data roaming charges from my cell carrier.
or just zero dollars for the data plan i already have.
i didn't click the read link, can you stream audio through the usb port?
This is yet another reason why satalite radio will never get off the ground. This sounds awesome. However I will wait til the chinese knock offs are available on ebay for under $200.
For all those that want an ipod/zune/whatever interface for your car stereo:
The reason car stereos have preset buttons is because you have favorite stations that you know are at '1' or '5'. You don't have to look at it.
If you have to look at the screen to find a station, you just failed. Other than programming it (which you'd do prior to driving anyway), you don't want to have to stare at a screen while you roam through various stations.
An mp3 interface would be a horrible car stereo interface. I do think there are parts of the interface that might be usable, but as a whole (other than preset stations like the Zune), they demand too much attention.
well you can look at the http://www.miroamer.com/ website, i went to CES, and i DID took the time to look at this babys, they really are awesome, about the preset thing, you can do it online if you want, or in the unit, you can get your favorites pre stored while you are at your office, plus they told me that the units will have some type of interaction with the station, that they were in talks with internet radio broadcasters to maybe be able to request songs or interact with the jocks while on the road
i think they also mentioned they where in plans to make a unit with a color screen for the album covers and maybe video in the future
the bluetooth thing is not a bad idea, Microsoft is planing on doing the same for their units
Will Blaupunkt finally join the 21st century and support playback of AAC files?
I would have been pretty thrilled about this in high school
do you ever ride with a passenger?
wait, wait, wait. somebody named a product "New Jersey"? I know that's better than Texas or Kansas, but New Jersey? (and I grew up there). Maybe they could have narrowed it down to Newark or Lodi.
Are those CG mockups or do these units have touchscreen interfaces with soft buttons that look like real buttons? I'm so confused right now.
Anyway, I'm not a fan of touchscreen stereos in the car. No haptic feedback requires to much "looking" at the unit.
I just couldn't help but laugh at an article which talked about an item named the "New Jersey" and then talked about getting capped... bandwidth, mind you, but the connection was already made.
What's the point of making a double-din unit that doesn't have a full-screen display? It's just wasted space. Of course, most units with a full-screen display (AFAIK, all DVD units) have pretty crappy interfaces. It isn't that hard to provide a changeable, heck, even skinable full-screen display with a limited number of "real" buttons for important functions. As usual, car audio designers are still a decade or so behind the tech...
Why not use double DIN? More interface/screen realestate, and most cars are double DIN in the first place; unless you're really into that additional plastic storage compartment that fills out the remaining DIN space in you single DIN install.
Why is the USB port of the mini variety? I expressly bought my current JVC deck because it has a standard USB port in the face. I just keep a couple 4-16 gb flash drives around for all my tunes, you can even plug your player of choice into it; but with a mini USB, more often than not, you're gonna be looking for an adapter.
Oh yeah, booo engadget for not checking out the automotive section, it's not like many people have cars these days (sarc.)
i don't know about you guys but all I get around here is edge connectivity and you can't stream music well on it for long. I tried it in my car recently with my phone and my tilt could only play for about 3 minutes and then it had to buffer for 20 seconds or so... so I don't think this will work well for me.
This phone does look pretty good though.
You can stream just fine over EDGE as long as you pick low bitrate HE-AAC stations. :)
About time someone came up with IRadio in car, their are so many great stations out their and now i can listen to all the good ones or at least the ones that intrest me?, think about it when do you listen to the radio apart from the car or at work? If u have a life "not much". Also think about genre search i checked out Miroamer and sorry to say but bye bye "satelite and Ipod" why do u need a car dock in 4 ipod when you have such variety???????
Blaupunkt you have done it again, Miroamer great start!!!!!