I'm disappointed seeing the Empeg (RioCar) unit die. I really think they are on to
something here, that no other in car people I've ran across understand. My car
has an Alpine in dash CD player/monitor, a 12 disk changer, and a DVD nav unit.
I'm about to add a RioCar to it this weekend. While this is cool, its all wrong.
The problem is, we have guys making our car stereos who make our home stereos.
I don't want a Sony car deck. I want a car deck by Compaq or Dell. How come every
time I want a new feature, I need to buy another additional box, and find some way to
integrate it with my system? This is ridiculous. Could you imagine that if you wanted
to make a CD on your computer that you needed to get another seperate machine?
While this model works for the home audio world, it doesn't for the car audio.
If I want to add GPS to my car, or be able to watch a DVD, why can't I just add it to
my system with an add-on, rather than buying some seperate unit. For my Alpine
NAV unit, why do I have to get yearly add-on DVD"s for the maps, rather than
getting them downloaded via the internet onto a hard drive once a week. This way,
if there is construction, they can route me around it.
Of course, my real "killer app"... integrate in a Radar detector with my Nav unit. Remember
where I hit "cancel" to mark a false positive. When I get my download of my new maps on
my hard drive, upload my "false positives", and download other peoples "false positives" to my
drive, so if I know I'm in a new area, that there might be a chance the radar signal is bad. Hell,
keep track of where the more likely "real" traps are, and warn me as well.
Some day, when wireless car internet access becomes available, I should only be
one add-in card and a software buy away from being able to get real-time traffic data.
Everyone who has this unit uploads their speed every now and then, so when my
NAV unit figures the route, it can account for slowdowns and give me a better route
if I request.
But in general, what I want is a powerful, expandable, open computing platform
for my car... similar to what exists today in the PC world.
Its sad to say this, but the car-audio world might do some good if someone
like Microsoft tried to enter it with a CE-based plaform. (Of course, would
much prefer a linux-based platform, but even a CE-based platform similar
to an IPAQ or something like that, would be better than the road we are going
down today)
-=Jeff
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