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Yep. Posted by Justin VanAbrahams [Email]  (#32) [Profile/Gallery]
(more from Justin VanAbrahams) on Fri, 9 Aug 2002 15:51:56
In Reply to: Can you play mp3's off a hard disk?, Todd 83-900T, Fri, 9 Aug 2002 10:29:20 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
Sony and Pioneer both make hard-drive based units, but they get the music transferred via CD, so you still need to burn a CD. Check out their websites for details. These things are PRICEY - upwards of $1000.00.
Kenwood makes a hard-drive based unit that plugs directly into your PC for music transfer, and is accessed by the head unit as a CD changer. This thing is actually made by another company and will work with MANY different manufacturers. Check it out at http://www.phatnoise.com They're available for anywhere from $600 to $900. Ouch!
There are a few units that work independantly of the head unit, but are hard drive based. One of the more popular ones is made by Neo. It plugs into your head unit via RCA (Aux input) and is controlled with its own dedicated remote. You can install it in a DIN slot, or install it remotely and use the a remote "eye" for the IR receiver. There's also a remote display, which is nice. It's pricey ($500), but you can upgrade the hard drive, and they sell the car-mount kits separately from the main unit, so you can outfit all your cars with the kit, then move the "brain" around. Bloody convenient! The unit plugs into your computer via USB to copy music around. Check it out at http://www.ssiamerica.com
Getting away from "true" hard drive based units, there are a couple that use IBM Microdrives (340m or 1g) for storage. Blaupunkt makes a unit that's compatible with their head units that uses up to six (IIRC) Microdrives and treats it as a changer. You plug the drives into your computer (just a standard Compact Flash reader is required) to copy music. I think this may be the worst of the solutions due to cost, but the upshot is that the microdrives are quite durable and produce very little heat compared to standard hard drives - even laptop drives. You can drop an easy $600 getting this system running. A similar option is made by Supertek, but it only supports one drive, and needs to be plugged in via an RCA cable. It's a lot less expensive, but has no real display. Check it out at http://www.mp3playerstore.com
Finally, there are a number of units that use regular flash memory to store. This is limiting, because flash is only available in <512m size, which isn't a lot of room for MP3s. Might as well go CD-based here and store 640-800m instead. But, flash is solid state so it won't skip and probably won't get hurt if you drop it. A couple mfgs (all no-names) make generic players that plug into your head unit with RCA cables, but Rockford Fosgate makes a "changer" that accepts up to 6 compact flash chips. I believe they're limited to 64m each, and it will only work with RF head units. Seems like a bad deal all around.
Oh, you could do what I've done from time to time: A cheap laptop (Pentium 233MMX or better), an AC/DC inverter, and an RF transmitter or tape adapter. Plug the inverter into your cigarette lighter to power the laptop, then have the laptop play MP3s either via the RF transmitter or the tape adapter. Doesn't sound as good and is hard to use. But, you can score all this stuff on Ebay for a few hundred dollars... :)
-Justin
posted by 64.166.4...
, Thu, 8 Aug 2002 16:05:12
, Sun, 11 Aug 2002 12:45:42, Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:35:50, Fri, 9 Aug 2002 15:51:56 <-- Viewing This Message, Thu, 8 Aug 2002 20:23:48
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