Idea!!

[mmmdonuts]

I've probably been hiding under a rock for the last couple of years but...

Is there such a thing as a car stereo head unit with just a inbuilt hard drive?.. Well i mean they can put over 10000 songs on an i pod why can't they make a head unit that you just shove ya collection on. Would it really be so hard and none of this sd card slot memory stick, FM transmitter stuff either. Just a decent little harddrive with say 20 gb to play all your tunes with. If anyone has seen something like this can they post a link perhaps or just fill me in. I imagine if they did they would retail for some ecessively stupid price when an ave ipod costs far less.

Cheers

[Res0n8]

Dude,

That would mean you would have to Take a PC to the Car every time you wanted to transfer music, or rip all your CDs to the Hadunit (I'm not sure this capabability exists on that many stereos even) If the HDD were Removable then it wouldnt be such a hassle... But then I-Pods (Excluding Nano and Shuffle) are just removable HDDs with a display. You can Pick up a laptop HDD for next to nothing (for a 20gig 1 anyway) and an external drive case (IDE - USB) is relativly cheap (20-30 bucks on ebay). Then if your Unit has a USB connector, away U go! No flat Ipod battery or expensive connectors needed.

That said you can get 4gig Mem sticks now and they are coming down in price and getting larger all the time, I wouldnt be surprised If Movies eventually come on them to play in your Home, But by the time that happens, I'd hope streaming Media would be happily entrenched and you could download all your shows, as you watch from Foxtel or Austar and store on your Units mem until you get bored...

I'd Like to see more Head units with a USB connection at the back so I can run the lead invisibly to the glovebox or centre console so I can Hide the mini HDD out of outside view.

R8

[Bax]

I'm fairly sure you can get a headunit with a hard drive, I'm sure I've heard about it before.

I'd still use the iPod, batteries wouldn't be going flat because its not hard to get a charger for it, and I'm pretty sure these new headunits that are out- alpine etc that read would charge at the same time.

But ripping straight from cd, wouldn't be hard, would be a good thing though, except for not knowing what the songs were.

One word though.
Wireless.

[StoneX]

Pioneer had a DEH-P900HDD a few years back which had a 10GB hard drive and a Sony memory stick slot in the front. You'd put CD into the head unit and it'd rip it to the HDD. They did retail for a ridiculous price

iPod is portable and does the same thing, there's no benefit having a hard drive permanently in the head unit.

[Patrio7]

alpine did it first i think.

[253@7k]

alpine did it first i think.

Yep. Discontinued now though.

[StoneX]

What was the model?

[253@7k]

Alpine HDA-5460

[MBS206]

There's one around with 9 compact hard drives in it.
All 9 hard drives come out of it, so you can take them inside and use a portable connection to rip to them on your computer.

Don't know brand etc, but have seen it.
Double din unit

[garfa]

OR better yet get a dvd-rw DL and have a giga mp3 h/u. 8 gig of music.....?