To quote the first part of the article:
"wants drivers to access their libraries of digital music via the internet."
So when there is no mobile signal or you're stuck on a 2G network, or heaven forbid, you don't have a data enabled phone/tariff.... you're stuffed.
I can see the merit in say replacing a CD player and saying use an SD card.
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And of course the player will cost less to make!
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and what happens if your muscial tastes aren't covered by iTunes or Spotify!
Mine certainly aren't!
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My eldest asked me for a particular album for her birthday a few months ago - I downloaded it, burned it onto a CD and presented it to her. She looked at me as though I'd handed her a reel-to-reel tape...
Me, I've only just got me first car without a tape player.
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>> and what happens if your muscial tastes aren't covered by iTunes or Spotify!
>>
>> Mine certainly aren't!
Are you sure? have you checked to see if its there?
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I don't like the idea of relying on a web connection, but doing away with CDs is a brilliant idea. When you can fit a thousand albums onto something that can comfortably be kept on your keyring, and access any song from any album in seconds via a simple menu, why would anyone choose to bother with those silly disc things?
I've been taking this approach myself at home with music and films over the past few years and would never go back. Most of my music and video collection originals haven't seen the light of day for two years, and won't again barring some sort of catastrophic multiple hard drive and backup system failure.
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I noticed the Mondeo I'm collecting this afternoon says 6CD Player on it. I've been trying to find time to Google it but failed so I'm still wondering if I can put 6 CD's in at once:)
Does it swallow one and then accept the next one? Where does it store them?
I can see some bed time reading tonight!
Pat
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...Does it swallow one and then accept the next one? Where does it store them?...
Some of the early ones had a box in the boot, but I think yours - like mine - stores them in the unit itself.
There's a single slot, and you put one in after the other.
Works fine when it's loaded, although the only display info you have is 'disc 1', 'disc 2' etc, and the track number which is playing.
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>> Some of the early ones had a box in the boot,
My Mk II Mondeo and sons early Focus both had a 6 pack autochanger under the passenger seat cos it had a tape unit in th dash.
>>but I think yours like mine - stores them in the unit itself.
>> There's a single slot, and you put one in after the other.
>>
I think this type was soon adopted.
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>> I noticed the Mondeo I'm collecting this afternoon says 6CD Player on it. I've been
>> trying to find time to Google it but failed so I'm still wondering if I
>> can put 6 CD's in at once:)
I'm wondering what else you thought 6CD Player might mean ?
I.e. it will only play the 6 CD titles listed on the Ford website for the Mondeo LOL.
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I've not used the CD player in the CC3 since I got my first iPod a couple of years ago.
Using an MP3 player, SD card or memory stick makes a lot of sense in the car.
But 'live' downloads from the internet wouldn't work in large parts of the country, unless there's an enormous leap in wireless transmission technology.
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Got the best of both worlds in my Vectra. It will play CDs and MP3's burnt to CDR. The same stereo (CD70) a year newer than mine also had an Aux socket for Mp3 players, iPhones, etc.
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The Passat I'll get has an SD card slot and will play MP3s off the CD player. I doubt I'll use CDs though. I didn't go for a USB/iPod MDI option because I didn't see the point of that when it can use SD cards.
I suppose charging an iPod/iPhone might be handy but the MDI option is in the top of the glove box. You're likely to forget your phone if you leave it there.
Another useful option on the satnav/stereo on my next car is playing music over Bluetooth from a mobile. But it's likely to kill battery life on the phone.
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I have a Kenwood radio I fitted, takes CD, MP3/WMA/AAC on CD, 3.5mm audio input and a USB socket for hard drives, iphone, ipod.
99quid.
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The X1 has an USB input, which meets all my needs. There is a mobile phone cradle which connects to the car's shark-fin thing, I need an adapter for the iPhone, these are now down to 20.00 on fleabay so I could go that way.
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I had a comprehensive vinyl collection which I laboriously transferred on to cassettes so I could play them in the car. The best of those eventually got transferred onto CDs. I'll be sugared if I'm going to bother getting them downloaded onto an I-Pop thing. I'll just listen to the radio. Why can't "they" leave things alone eh? Interfering illigitmates, haven't they got anything better to do?
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Thats rich, coming from a man in the fashion industry,
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You might have the tiniest of points there....mumbles reluctanly into mug of tea...
:-)
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>>>I'll be sugared if I'm going to bother getting them downloaded onto an I-Pop thing.
Google "cd to ipod copy service" and you will find people to do it for you!
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Yes maybe so, but that would mean having to learn how to work one and having to remember to charge it up and buying one and...
Too hard !
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OK fair enough removing CD functionality means no moving parts in the ICE which has got to be good, but talking about accessing internet content seems a tad optimistic, needs a BIG improvement in coverage and capacity, who is going to pay for that? Achievable data rate generally drops with increasing velocity which isn't going to help much either.
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Yes, but you're not a "global trends and futuring manager at Ford'' so wouldn't know about these things ;-0
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>> Yes, but you're not a "global trends and futuring manager at Ford'' so wouldn't know
>> about these things ;-0
>>
I've always wanted a job with 'futuring' or even better 'futurologist' in the title :-)
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I've still got a radio/cassette and I've never even used that.
I'm waiting for the day when they can implant a chip in your head and you're able to download tunes by thought.
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I tend to listen to the radio most of the time but my phone switches it off and the incoming call can be heard through the radio speakers. Damn thing always rings during Popmaster or just when the news is coming on.
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If I was still on the road during Popmaster I would be late!
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I'm ( sadly ) usually well on my way to my second meeting by then.
:-)
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Good Lord Humph, thats not good, you need to make two meetings by 10:30,
Any meeting after 11:00am does not have doughnuts or pastries!
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'pends...on where you schedule the meeting. I favour "Prets" in the mornings. Good smoothies and excellent danish pastries. Starstrucks in the afternoons. Need the coffee hit by then...
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I would imagine they would have 8GB flash memory built in so it will buffer any downloads. Actually 3g is still crap I suspect although you can download stuff from the car itself they want you to then store it in the cars player.
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>> I would imagine they would have 8GB flash memory built in so it will buffer
>> any downloads.
The average download speed will still need to be significantly higher than the audio bitrate though, OK buffering will help in short bridges/tunnels.
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>> Starstrucks in the afternoons. Need the coffee hit by then...
Pah! Wont get a caffeine hit there, as they say in your neck of the woods - Pish
Last edited by: Zero on Tue 26 Jul 11 at 22:34
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Good riddance since, unless there is an autochanger, these devices are dangerous in that they need too much attention on the move to operate. I regret the passing of cassette players, a handier format and allowing use of recordings to be made from my home hi-fi
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>> Good riddance since, unless there is an autochanger, these devices are dangerous in that they
>> need too much attention on the move to operate. I regret the passing of cassette
>> players, a handier format and allowing use of recordings to be made from my home
>> hi-fi
>>
Apart from the ease of recording, and possibly its handy size, I cannot think of a single redeeming feature of the compact cassette.
Poor audio quality, painfully slow and cumbersome access times, deterioration with use, prone to tangling up, and crud deposits on the playback heads, and a transport system reliant on too many moving parts working in close synchronisation.
I get nostalgic about many defunct technologies, but cassettes really do belong in the dustbin of history.
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Good grief man, talk about Luddite.
CC is a dead technology for very good reasons, they stretch, they hiss (yes even with dolby and metal tapes) they flutter, loose magnetism, get dirty, get wrapped round the drive mechanism, you cant find the music on them, and they were a stupid length time wise.
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Ever tried operating an iPod on the move? Tiny controls, very little tactile feedback - none at all from the touchscreen types - and a huge catalogue to navigate; far more distracting, in my experience, than selecting a CD at a safe moment from a wallet on the passenger seat.
Edit:That was meant as a defence of CD, not to endorse Draiber on cassettes, which I don't miss either. Although if my Volvo unit had a CD slot I could use it to attach an iPod in the absence of an Aux socket.
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Wed 27 Jul 11 at 08:18
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>> Ever tried operating an iPod on the move? Tiny controls, very little tactile feedback -
>> none at all from the touchscreen types
Operate mine from the radio, Just like a cd.
>>and a huge catalogue to navigate;
Set up playlists, just like your CD,
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Sorry, I'm writing some rubbish this morning. Should have written 'cassette slot' before.
Our Toyota audio unit has an iPod interface, a cable that cost £250 as an option. Still rubbish - my main objection is that there's no option to scan within a track, which is a real pain with long podcasts.
And playlists? I know that's the official answer but they're hopeless unless you know before you set off which ten albums you want to listen to. I have a couple of smart lists of recently added items but otherwise I just select an album by hand before I plug the pod in.
The way ahead is an SD slot (or similar onboard storage) and a proper driver-friendly navigation screen that lets you select by album. Do any of the iDrive things allow this?
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Wed 27 Jul 11 at 08:34
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If you have a sd card slot or USB port, you can set up directories on your media (usb stick or card) and swap between directories. Name your directories by album and Its just like having a cd changer.
I have done this on mine,
Last edited by: Zero on Wed 27 Jul 11 at 08:51
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The Audi Music Interface works the same way. I have an external hard drive plugged into mine. There are around 300 albums on it, and even then it has only used 20% of capacity.
Everything is controllable via the steering wheel or dashboard buttons, and information displayed on the MMI screen (album, song title, artist etc)
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...Everything is controllable via the steering wheel or dashboard buttons, and information displayed on the MMI screen (album, song title, artist etc)...
Sounds good.
My iPod is plugged in via an aux jack, but as has been said further up the thread, on-the-move control is too distracting to be safe.
It's something I'll be looking for in my next car, so I think Ford are right to be considering upgrading their sound systems.
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I just make my own compliations up and burn then to CD. You get a good 74 minutes or so without having to touch the CD player, so its very safe.
An SD slot would be nice, but on a £6000 brand new car I am lucky to even have a CD player.
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Has Nissan Navara on test recently, which had a monster of an internal drive, which actually recorded everything I put into it via USB and CD.
Unforunately other people had had it before, so the drive was quite full of absolute tat disco-ish and modern poppy music, which I had to wade through to find any half-decent stuff.
Left them my little gift of the Alman Brothers and CSNY, though... as well as some Rambling Sid Rumpo!
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In My Vectra, I have a 6 CD auto-changer that you feed the discs through the 1 slot in front of the unit.
It works really well, I burn my own discs because
• I put all the tracks that I like together
• If the car gets nicked I don’t want my original discs to go with it
If I burn the discs with “CD TEXT” enabled it displays the name of the album /disc, name of the song and artist on the central display screen.
I suppose I would have liked a slot to plug a memory stick /card in like the one I had on my Sony head unit on my old Astra that was handy made making compilations very easy.
But I think that a CD autochanger works well, and would not really like to consider anything else but what I have mentioned above.
I don’t really like the idea of streaming music into my car, A) it wont work mobile data is rubbish where I live , B) it will probably cost something to use c) once I have made my compilation CD’s they rarely come out of the autochanger anyway.
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It's not CD players that Ford are scrapping, it's the option of a MULTI-CD player - the ones that slot under the passenger seat or fill the glove box.
The head units will still have a single CD slot. For the time being.
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That makes sense. After all, if one hired a car one wouldn't want to download your own music into it before giving it back would one.
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Last VW Demonstrator had a CD that took MP3 cds, an SD card slot and blootooth.
Gave me 100+ tracks on the CD, I forget how many are on the SD Card which normally lives int he TOMtom, and even played tracks off my phone via bluetooth, as the phone takes micro SD together I would have storage for all my music collection several times over.
Why do I need to download more?
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Ford to scrap CD players - rtj70
