[Dork.]

OK, now that my wife has a spiffy new Nano, we're looking into some car connectivity solutions. I've come to the conclusion that there's no easy way to rig a connection to the stock head unit in our 2005 Subaru, so I'm looking into replacing the head unit.

(You can't replace the head unit in the Subarus with automatic climate control, luckily we have the manual control. And I recently found a replacement faceplate kit that lets you easily fit a replacement radio in the dash. And if you don't believe me about not being able to use the stock radio, you should go look through the Subaru fanboy forums. Some of the people who post there are quite upset about the whole situation...)

So, as long as I'm bothering to replace the head unit, I figured I'd look into getting an iPod integration cable to permit controlling the iPod from the head unit itself. Or, at least, getting a head unit that we could integrate with the iPod at some point down the road. Cost is a concern, too. I'd like to find a head unit in the $100-150 range, or a combination head unit/iPod kit in the $200-$250 range. (This doesn't count the $60 for the faceplate...) No LCD screens for me! I've found some that meet this criteria on cardomain.com and crutchfield.com.

There are a handful of companies that have iPod kits right now, including Alpine, Kenwood, and Pioneer. Our main decision criteria will be how easy it would be to control the iPod from the head unit, and I get the impression that many people are generally not happy with that. I only found this thread here on the 'NN, and it confirms some of what I've read elsewhere that the Alpine units have problems when you have lots of songs on your iPod. Although my wife only has a Nano, she'd probably fill it past this limit.

Does anyone have one of these setups, and more importantly, do you like it? Are there really any setups that make the iPod as easy to control through the head unit as it is on the iPod itself? Right now I'm looking at a Kenwood, but I've read that it can be slow to scroll through playlists, and I think I'll see if I can find it in a local car audio store and try it out in person....

[icruise]

When my car stereo died, I considered getting one of these integrated units, but after reading some reviews it seemed like it wasn't worth it. From what I can tell, controlling the iPod is much harder than it really should be (and much harder than actually using the iPod itself to select songs or playlists). People said that, for example, the scrolling of song titles doesn't accelerate like it does on the iPod, so it takes forever to scroll down a long list of songs.

I eventually just got a stereo with a line-in jack and I use it with my Belkin car connector thing (that charges the iPod and provides a line-out through the dock. It works well, and if you have some kind of car holder you can control the iPod to some extent while driving. I wouldn't try to select a particular song or playlist while the car was in motion, but you can pause or skip songs easily enough.

Just food for thought.

[Dork.]

Originally Posted by Icruise

When my car stereo died, I considered getting one of these integrated units, but after reading some reviews it seemed like it wasn't worth it. From what I can tell, controlling the iPod is much harder than it really should be (and much harder than actually using the iPod itself to select songs or playlists).

This is the impression that I get as well. Perhaps in a few years, the iPod interface will have caught up to our expectations. In the meantime, as long as I'm going to have to take the dash apart to install the thing, I might still try and find a dock-style connector that will power the iPod while it's being used, but only provides line-out to a rear AUX input instead of the full iPod integration. The Belkin you're using looks neat, but I'd rather not take up a cigarette lighter output if I can help it.

Most integration kits I've read about seem to take control of the iPod interface, so that while it is docked you couldn't use the iPod controls even if you wanted to. If I could find a kit that let you pick tracks via the iPod, but listened to the head unit controls to pause and stop playing, that might be worthwhile.

[ghporter]

All the true integration units I've seen a) cost as much as a new Nano, and b) took full control of the iPod. I've seen one (sorry-can't remember the name right now) that has a variety of logic boxes that interface with the car stereo's head unit and then plug into a standard iPod interface unit that features a dock connector. This allows you to use the CD controls (for example) to play, pause, skip, etc., but doesn't address selecting songs individually. But as I said, these things are very expensive for my tastes.

I think the idea of a standardized auto interface for iPods is a good one-something way beyond a line-in port for the stereo. It would be very nice to simply buy one device that lets you plug your iPod directly into any new car audio system and properly integrates the whole thing.

[zwiebel_]

As much as I would like to have an universal connection feature between my car and iPod, the solutions on the market, right now, are less than desirable.
In related news, the 'iPod wanna-be" camp is gearing up to intro something akin to Apples iPod dock connector, since that is apparently what is behind the large ecosystem of 'Pod peripherals. This move to 'standardize' the connection options of the other mp3 players could spell trouble for Apple down the road. Let's hope that by the time these knuckle-heads come up with something, Apple will have the majority of car manufacturers supporting the dock connector under their belt.

See report at PC Advisor and Macworld UK

[raymond]

Originally Posted by zwiebel_

As much as I would like to have an universal connection feature between my car and iPod, the solutions on the market, right now, are less than desirable.
In related news, the 'iPod wanna-be" camp is gearing up to intro something akin to Apples iPod dock connector, since that is apparently what is behind the large ecosystem of 'Pod peripherals. This move to 'standardize' the connection options of the other mp3 players could spell trouble for Apple down the road. Let's hope that by the time these knuckle-heads come up with something, Apple will have the majority of car manufacturers supporting the dock connector under their belt.

See report at PC Advisor and Macworld UK

Are you saying that Apple could not compete on a level playing field of a universal connector ?

[zwiebel_]

Originally Posted by raymond

Are you saying that Apple could not compete on a level playing field of a universal connector ?

Originally Posted by zwiebel_

Let's hope that by the time these knuckle-heads come up with something, Apple will have the majority of car manufacturers supporting the dock connector under their belt.

Furthermore, having the majority of car manufacturers "pocketed" in with the dock connector, would give Apple a huge leverage in that market and in the future integration of A/V equipment in cars. From that point on, the possibilities are endless.

[raymond]

I can not imagine any car manufacturer kitting out a vehicle with a dock for anything that they cannot get oem and make a fortune out of it. I also doubt wether Apple will ever oem the Ipod for the car manufacturers.

[Dork.]

Well, I went to a bunch of car audio places in the area, and was suprised to find that none of them had a working display with an iPod integration unit! It was as if they knew they all sucked, and didn't want to show the customer that.

But when I looked around for my second option: a cable that provided power to and line-out audio from the iPod to the head unit, I found that they are very hard to find. installer.com had a bunch on sale, but they might have been custom jobs for all I know.

Luckily, cardomain.com had the Kenwood iPod adaptor available as an open-box item for $25! I figured that if it we didn't like it, I could always take it out and sell it on eBay for a profit! So I ordered that and a Kenwood MP-228 head unit (taking advantage of their 105% price guarantee since they weren't discounting the head unit) and got both, plus all the necessary cables, for $180 w/ tax and shipping.

Put it in last night, and it seems to work like a charm! I haven't had much time to experiment with it yet, but I did notice that if the iPod is paused in the middle of a playlist, the head unit will pick up where it left off. It won't read the song info into the head unit for that song, but that's a minor annoyance. That feature alone can make up for other sins, since if all else fails we can always disconnect the iPod, select the song we want, and reconnect.

I've got a 700-mile round-trip drive to NYC ahead of me this weekend (which turns into an 8-hr trip each way with a toddler in the car!), so I'll give you all the full review afterwards....

[Dork.]

Well, I promised you all a review, so here's a short one. If you have any questions about the Kenwood iPod unit, reply in this thread or PM me and I'll try and answer them.

Overall, I'll give it a 7/10. While the interface is a little clunky, it certainly works in the context of being in a car. The unit automatically pauses the iPod if you turn the car off, and restarts it again when you turn it back on. I think it does the same thing if you change the source (i.e. to CD or radio), but can't remember exactly. It certainly beats having to have access to the iPod to pause it every time you want to stop the music. It is definitely worth the $30 I paid for the open-box iPod integration unit.

The Metra dash kit has a tiny storage compartment near the top (where the CD player is in the OEM unit), but it's so thin that you could only fit one or two CD's in it. Before installing the dash kit, I cut a small hole for the iPod cable and threaded it through the compartment. When it's connected, I can push the iPod back in the compartment and control everything through the head unit, and still yank it out when taking it out of the car.

One key thing, though: changing playlists on this unit is not slow at all, it's the loading of the title data that's slow. If you know what order your playlists come in, you can change playlists very quickly if you don't wait for the data to load in. In fact, I don't have any title data display at all, and just set it to display the track number (from the playlist) and time elapsed. You can also sort by artist, album, or genre, if you prefer, but I imagine most people would sort by playlists.

I have other issues with how the data is displayed, but I think those really concern the head unit interface. A more expensive head unit with better controls might work much better.

[dfbennett]

While this doesn't help the original poster, I just put the Alpine adapter into my car yesterday. My brother has a Kenwood unit with the Kenwood adapter and to me the alpine one is much easier to use and more feature packed. Being able to scroll through artists/playlists/albums without changing the current song is a huge benefit.