Pimp your car stereo with USB and SD

While most of the action on the car audio front seems to involve either iPod adapters or dedicated MP3 players (or, if you're PhatNoise and Volvo, both). So, it's good to see at least one audio player that does things a little differently. The £149.99 USB Car Radio has an SD card slot, which could come in handy if you've got a pile of those lying around (like us). But what really sets this apart is its USB slot. Dust off that old 80GB USB drive, add a power inverter and you've got a system that will cover you for the longest of road trips. One downside: it's MP3 only, so forget about bringing those WMA and AAC files.

[Via TRFJ]

[matt2 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Wonder if this would work with my buffalo
Terabyte Network Attached Storage - 1.0 TB
that woudl be so kick as to have one terabye of music in my car

[Buttwidget @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Get an new Audi A4, it has two SD Card ports for MP3s. Evidently Audi is the first manufacturer to offer this from the factory. What an awesome feature, especially when paired with the Bose sound system...

[dctanner @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Head units like this have been available for quite some time on eBay.
Very cool having a USB socket though!

[Jon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

This is a brilliant idea BUT I think they should have gone the route that most newer computers have gone and added a 4-in-1 media card slot , or,at least a slot for a Sony Memory Stick, Pro Duo and XD card.

Memory Sticks are a widely used format now that PSP's, Sony Laptops and Sony Digital Cameras are so prevalent. The only benefit I see with SD cards is that when they go on sale, a Gigabyte costs less than $60.

Also, this thing dropped the ball by not having a LINE IN JACK or an IPOD adapter built in. I hate Ipods but I can definately see the benefit of this thing being a full blown MP3 and AAC player.

Again, I wish a company would hire me to their design team because I could help them turn out some absolutely brilliant products.

[gdeepinc @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Finaly
something I have been waiting for.
I'm getting tired of iPod.

[010111 @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

this sounds like a line in, no?

"RCA Line-In x2"

clearly not front panel inputs. but inputs nonetheless and you could presumably wire a jack up front on your dash wherever convenient.

anyone know a US source for this unit?

[TZK @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Not bad :) so all it needs is, say.. a flash drive or something. I have a 2GB one, which holds enough music for me.. which is good enough. I like this! Now it needs a serious satelite tuner! :-P

[gary @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I wonder if it could handle a hard drive it looks like it is just for thumb drives. It does say you can hook a pc up to it, but what it says and what it does might be two different things.

[Jesse @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Yes! This is what I've been waiting for... I've long said that car stereos (well, all stereos) should/may eventually move to some sort of flash memory card format for a variety of reasons. This is an awesome thing!

[Jamaicanbwoydre @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Here's a head unit i've been researching for a while now, it has a usb input in the face so you can plug in a thumb drive not too sure bout a HDD Player, but this would be banging if it could play music from my iRiver (yes i'm one of those) player.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=7045388&type=product&productCategoryId=cat03066&id=1099396976753

[Tim Q @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

My ipod just got rained on and is no longer working. I wish for the time being I had a stereo like this. But as far as upgrading to this stereo, I might as well buy myself a new ipod with which I can use in any car I go in using an FM transmitter.

[MrTeacherMan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I'm taking a flashdrive and an Ipod Shuffle to bestbuy today to see how the Insignia model handles both. I want to see how it handles nested folders and if it displays tag information on the display. What I really want is to be able to listen to podcasts on my commute. If the shuffle doesnt work (which I suspect it won't). I'm going to use the flash drive with briefcase to keep the podcasts folder in sync. The only dealbreaker will be if it doesn't display tag information.

[hobgoblin @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

only thing i can say is that those falsh cards realy need to come down in price, like say on par with classical casettes or something as right now its to much for something so small...

[Chris @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Insignia doesn't fit in my car. Any other models out there that are available in the US that accept USB?

[Michael @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I wish Alpine would hurry up and make a headunit with a regular harddisk in it, I'm tired of sifting through my MP3 CDs.

[fleshandbones @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

ive been using one of these units for around a month now and can honestly report that they are great. i use a 1gb flash pen, a 20gb USB HDD, and my ipod through the line-in jacks on the rear of the unit.

i purchased in the UK for �80. manufacturers are H&B and the model is CA-5555. more info on http://www.hb-direct.com/EN/P_73.html and http://www.hb-usa.com/EN/

[ladyfox @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Jamaicanbwoydre,

*jaw drops* Goddess! That has got to be the most impressive car stereo I've seen in awhile. I did a google search on it real quick to see if anyone else had any experience with it and came up with nothing. Would you be kind enough to share the results of your research?

[colbert @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

saw this type of player at www.brothers.com.my and its only around 48 pounds. (RM 328)

[OddManOut @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I wonder if the usb slot will power a 2.5" drive so you won't need the power inverter. Hit ebay for a used 20 gig drive and a usb enclosure and BAM! 20gigs of mp3's in your car for about $75 (plus whatever this unit costs).

Nice...

Just do what I did and pick up a used archos for about $120 and use a tape/fm adapter

Whatever works...

[Josh @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I checked the Insignia USB-equipped head unit out over lunch at Best Buy. I brought my mp3 player with me. My stupid Zen Micro doesn't let you access the songs as a mass storage device. :rolleyes: But I knew this ahead of time and set aside 128MB of space on the player to be a mass storage device. I included some pretty complex folder structures.

When I plugged it in, the head unit just started playing the music. The folder navigation, as expected, sucked. They just number all the folders instead of showing the real names. And you can just scroll up and down through the folders, so nested folders don't do anything.

The coolest feature, however, was the fact that the USB port powered the mp3 player and was charging it! This means that one of these cheap USB hard drives would work just fine with the unit, no power cable would be necessary! I do have some questions about whether or not the head unit could handle a 40GB device, though. The massive number of mp3s would probably slow it to a crawl.

The fact that this option is popping up on head units as cheap as $107 is GREAT! I just want a unit in the $250 range with decent features, good sound, and a good interface.

[I.E @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I've had a sony mex 1hd for over 2 yrs. 10gig hdd + memory stick. Only crappy thing about it is sonys magicgate protection.

[MrTeacherMan @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I also checked out the Insignia during lunch. I couldn't get the folder structure to work at all. Everything was a big lump of mp3s that you had to scroll through. Which is ok, but not what I had hoped for. The only real problem was the 2 podcasts that I had stuck on the drive. They didn't play at all. I had checked the format, to be absolutely sure they were mp3s, and they were. I can only guess that this is a republican head unit and refused to play my AirAmerica podcasts.

[Dull @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

'Bout Time!

[Michael Moncur @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

JVC has several models with SD card slots, mine works great.

[ric @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

�70 from Aria - see http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=18420 for details.
Note these WILL NOT WORK WITH A USB HARD DISK OR SIMILAR: it's flash only.

[Brian P @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I bought the Insignia model from Best Buy yesterday fro $99 plus tax - I posted about it here:
http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/?p=88

I'll post a full review of it once I get it installed and have had time to play with it.

Brian
http://myvogonpoetry.com

[Ben Denmeade @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Hi, just like to say i've got a H&B CA-5555 (the one in the photo at the top and it's minted as) the best thing about it (except for the audio line ins, USB and SD input) is that coupled with a �5 USB car charger you can get a dynamode hard drive caddy to work in the car, which is v.slim, v.light and small enough that i've currently got mine stashed in the glove box, easy then to unplug and whip into the computer to add more MP3's.

Total Cost = �155

http://www.boxwave.com/products/carcharger/

http://www.pixmania.co.uk/uk/uk/114326/art/h-b/ca-5555-cd-mp3-usb-car-ra.html

[Brian P @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I just posted my review of the Insignia IN-MP101 (it has a USB port on the front). You can read it here:
http://myvogonpoetry.com/wp/?p=96

Brian
http://myvogonpoetry.com

[Blake Michaels @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I just bought the Insignia Model IN-MP101 from Best Buy. It has a flash drive located exactly where the memory card slot is pictured in this posting. I have two one-gig flash sticks each with hundreds of songs in different categories and I LOVE THIS CAR STEREO!!! I can play randomly from the flash stick or choose a folder containing different genres of music. I installed the player myself in my Lincoln Mark VIII and it was easy. I highly recommend it. I have it running through my stock Lincoln JBL premium amp and six speaker system, so I'm not sure that the sound quality will be as good without the amp and high end speakers. But, the flash drive, and the LCD screen the shows, title, artist, album info and file name is just too damn hot for words!! I'll never take a CD in my car again!

[Matthew Stokes @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Message for Ben Denmeade. I like the sound of your set up. Could you tell me a little more? What hard drive are you using? Have you just plugged in the front USB slot? and does it also need the Lighter/USB power supply? Are you able to browse the MP3's in the usual way, with their folders showing? Sorry for all the questions! Thanks!

[Matthew Stokes @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

test

[J B H @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Got a CA-5555. tried to connect a 3.5 Hard Drive via a EASY IDE 2.0 USB adapter but the unit would not play the MP3s properly. It read the ID3 tags and played a second or two of a track but then nothing!

So it CAN work but HOW DO I SET IT UP TO WORK RIGHT???

could it be the 3.5 HD? would a 2.5 laptop HD work? or maybe is it the easy ide adapter i'm using? (The H&B Mobile Multimedia AV-512 is supposed to work according to H&B)

Ben Denmeade please reply to this as you seem to have had success.
cheers.

[J B H @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Got a CA-5555. tried to connect a 3.5 Hard Drive via a EASY IDE 2.0 USB adapter but the unit would not play the MP3s properly. It read the ID3 tags and played a second or two of a track but then nothing!

So it CAN work but HOW DO I SET IT UP TO WORK RIGHT???

could it be the 3.5 HD? would a 2.5 laptop HD work? or maybe is it the easy ide adapter i'm using? (The H&B Mobile Multimedia AV-512 is supposed to work according to H&B)

Ben Denmeade please reply to this as you seem to have had success.
cheers.

[Tobi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Yes it works easily with an IDE-USB adapter for a hard-drive. But HOW do you overcome the 500 track limit (i could concatenate several tracks to one, but that is quite inconvenient don't you think?). It plays the first 500 tracks then it jumps back to track 1. It wont display the folder containing the 501th track in full either. So what's this talk about 20gig hard disk support? 500 tracks is usually around 3 gigs.

[Graham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

So, anyone got this working with more than 500 tracks? What's the use of hooking up a hard disk otherwise??

[M @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Has anyone managed to successfully hook up an ipod shuffle to this yet via the usb slot? Have given it a try but the ipod starts to go crazy with lights flickering all over the place. The ipod doesn't seem to plug in very well as there's not alot of clearance aorund the USB slot on the stereo so it might be that I'm not getting a good connection...

[Graham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

M - unless the IPod shuffle acts as a removable disk in Windows (ie you didn't need drivers to copy files onto it) then I doubt it will work with this head unit..

I have tried with my o2 XDA IIs and as expected it didn't work - but did charge the unit :)

Again, anyone out there who has hooked a hard disk up care to comment on the number of files (500) restriction?

[Andy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

This looks like a good buy� just asking� is there a USB port at the back? I it would be good to have a lead out the back� down behind the dash and then out into the glove compartment so I can keep a USB device in there. Just so there are no cables at the front.

Any ideas? Other products?

[Graham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

No, there isn't a USB on the back but yes it would have been a good idea. I don't know why more manufacturers don't put connections on the back - I mean you have to strip the old car stereo out anyway!

[Babyg @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Hi My friend got a car audio from Pyle audio(PLCD65WXMU www.pyleaudio.com) and it has USB port and everything but wouldn't play any of his songs on the memory stick. The manual says it can play both WMA and MP3 but it keeps on saying that there is no file. Can anyone help us out??

[Babyg @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

Hi My friend got a car audio from Pyle audio(PLCD65WXMU www.pyleaudio.com) and it has USB port and everything but wouldn't play any of his songs on the memory stick. The manual says it can play both WMA and MP3 but it keeps on saying that there is no file. Can anyone help us out??

[Andy @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

To Babyg

Could be that the memory stick is not formatted in the correct way...

If he is using Windows XP the default might be NTFS. Most of these players seem to only like a FAT file system.

Plug the stick into a computer, go to my computer and then right click on the memory stick...

There should be Format, click on that and then under File System select what is needed. If you have the manual, it will tell you the needed file system (check the car stereo manual!)

When you formatt the drive YOU WILL DELETE ALL the data on the memroy stick!! So back it up before hand!

Hope that works

[Graham @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

I have just seen over on the french H&B site that they are releasing a CA-5555i with IPod support. It looks to me like a CA-5555 with upgraded firmware...

Ben Denmeade: If you are still around :D please reply about the 500 track limit. I am wondering if this new unit/fw gets around this limitation.

Regards, Graham

[Pat @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

JVC has some head units with SD card support. This one seems good and all the reviews I've seen about it are positive but I would like somtehing with a nicer display. Try to google the entry model JVC KD-LH910. Blaupunkt has some units that can record and play mp3's on a SD card but it's too expensive and it doesn't look so good specially with the hefty price tag.

[shibbs @ Dec 19th 2005 1:36AM]

There are three of these units on ebay, two are in the U.S.

Bought one the other day, totally rips! Especially like the front/rear pre-outs and the dedicated sub-out. Hooks right up to my current system.

Tried the mp3 system with a fully loaded CD, SD card and a loaded USB Flash drive. It easily toggled between all three. Must of had close to 600 songs at my finger tips. And the mp3 search function makes finding songs a dream. Being able to read my folders was nice to. Most of the songs are laid in Rock, Dance, 80's folders so I didn't have to restructure anything when I copied my playlists over from my hard drive.

Nice Unit!!!!