The new Blaupunkt Seattle MP74 has been in for a week now and I can finally report on how well it works.
The Radio:
One of the first things I noticed was that the radio was top-notch. It sounds very clear and you can pick one of six labelled presets from dedicated buttons. No more remembering which station is “4” or “6”. The labels are named automatically from the RDS feature of the tuner. RDS is supported by a large number of radio stations and transmits the station id, song title, artist and whatever else they want. It’s really cool and I don’t understand why more receivers don’t support it. In fact, only one from the Crutchfield catalog had it.
The Display:
I guess this is where the pimpin’ part comes in. The stereo shows all kinds of silly animations when it starts up and shuts down. It has this vector-based road graphic that loks like it should move or something or at least react to the music, but it doesn’t. I’d turn all these off if there was an option to do so.
The amount of data they choose to display is a little odd. There’s a small area on the top and center that scrolls RDS and CD data, but it doesn’t need to. there’s a lot more space on either side.
The size of the display will probably make this even more of a target for theives. I’m almost surprised that it hasn’t been stolen yet. The detachable face comes witih a case, but it’s too big to fit in a pocket. They recommend you don’t detach it and put it in your glove box or under the seat, so where do you put it? I don’t want to have to carry it everwhere. Worse is I have the iPod to carry out as well.
Playing CDs:
It works! It can read CD Text (not that I have many that include it) and plays MP3 CDs just fine. It does the right thing and starts up where it left off when I turn on the car.
I was initially confused by the fact that hitting the door button opens the motorized door, but does not eject the disc. I wasn’t sure how to eject it at all really and the manual doesn’t say anything about this. Apparently you have to hold down the door buttom for a few seconds and when you release it it will open the door and eject it. I really don’t understand these Germans.
Using the iPod:
What I didn’t know before I started this process is that all these iPod adapters are simply devices that make an iPod look like a CD changer to a stereo. I guess they’re kinda the same thing, except one can hold a a couple hundred CDs instead of 6. With some experimentation, I discovered that the it wasn’t always reliable about waking up the iPod and connecting to it. It seemed to only check for a CD changer-type thing when it turned on. If it didn’t find it, I could turn it off and on again and it would find it.
This is not quite the seamless integration I was hoping for. There doesn’t seem to be a way to navigate playlists on the iPod. This isn’t a problem for me since I always just listen on shuffle. What is a problem is that the shuffle option (they call it MIX) doesn’t stay on when you turn the unit off and back on. Apparently the Alpine adapater for iPods is superior in that it can navigate all the playlists.
Some lessons learned:
- I still think Crutchfield’s service is great. They even refunded me the full price of the Syracuse, even though I bought it with some accessories that gave me a $20 discount on the order. The free shipping on the return was also nice. This nearly makes up for the complete pain in the ass it is to install these things. When this one gets stolen, I will have the next one professionally installed. They did fix the accessory listing page to not include the 2nd aux adapter which doesnt’t work for the Syracuse. I asked them to do so and placed a review on the accessory that warns people. They didn’t approve the review.
- It’s a shame that you can’t really test these things out with all the accessories in a store. What I need a site to make informed buying decisions and compare experience with other users. Hmmmm…
- Finally, people will read anything. You, for example. If you’ve read all four posts and all the way down to this point, please explain yourself in a comment below. I can’t imagine how this would be interesting to anyone but myself and only as a form of amusement on another cross-country flight.
Ok, I admit it. I read all of it.
Partly because you’re doing something similar to what I want to do with my car eventually. The major difference is that i want to route my mp3 player though my existing (and unused) CD port for my factory radio. I figure I should be able to do it, provided I also figure out how to include a USB power jack and reverse engineer the Creative Zen remote.
Plus, I wanted to see how someone with similar tastes in lack of disco aftermarket radios did with a general install.
Yeah, you caught me.
Way back in the day I installed a crutchfield stereo. Good times with a soldering iron and it convinced me too to get my next one professionally installed.
What I’d like is a site that reviewed Car Stereo installers. Where would you go if you wanted a stereo installed? Better yet, what’s the best resource to find out? I had my hopes set on West Coat Customs — just kidding — until I read this:
http://p097.ezboard.com/fwestcoastcustomsfrm7.showMessage?topicID=88.topic
There’s too few reviews on Y! Local to really to trust it. There are gurus out there that know; it be great if search could tap into them.
Oops. I’m hoping to be able to play my iPod in my Jeep someday, so I thought it was a good idea to hear about some “real world” experiences with the process.
I read it as well just to hear you say “I will get it professionally installed next time”
And I’m looking for a really nice car stereo that will play DVDR instead of the ipod hookup
I read it. I wanted to see how your experience compared to my Dell DJ w/aux input one. I also wanted to see if your self-installation turned out better than the one you flubbed on my car a few years ago. ; )
I read it to see how your geek cred is buidling. It looks like it is going strong. EJ’s too.
I read this one all the way through, but only because I came to 360 via an e-mail. I don’t hang out in 360 much. Got to much other stuff that I try to keep up on…
Ah! I read it because I was researching Google for the Blaupunkt iPod interface and your site came up. I just installed a lower-end Blaupunkt receiver and iPod interface, bought from Crutchfield, in my 1983 Mercedes — though the receiver works great, the interface turned out to be flakier than breakfast cereal. It’s noisy (a whine over the speakers) and the buttons have a 5- or 10-second delay before they do anything — *if* they do anything. Is that how yours works?
If Crutchfield can’t fix it, I might return the interface and get the standard RCA input, then get the Belkin adapter (below) to charge and play the iPod. I’d rather select songs on the iPod itself than deal with the flaky interface (even if it is geeky and entirely in-dash). It would also set my mind at ease, like yours, to not be locked into iPod-only connectivity.
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_ID=149006
Anyhow, thanks for the story. In this big wide world, at least *some* of us wanted to read it!
Yeah, mine is pretty flaky too. It hasn’t worked in a while, but I haven’t really spent any time recently trying to get it to work again.
Same problem with the Blaupunkt iPod interface as Luke and Jeff – high pitched whine, clicking, header unit buttons work about 80% of the time etc. Wouldn’t recommend it. The header unit doesn’t even display the track name (Monterrey).
Belkin charger a must, given my iPod mini battery is completely useless.
Just stumbled on this page after searching for reviews of the Blaupunkt iPod adaptor. Unfortunately, having already taken the plunge I too am seriously underwhelmed. My headunit (Casablanca MP56) can potentially display 6 full lines of text – but with the iPod adaptor only 7 characters can be displayed at a time. I can’t believe how crude it is – won’t even display names of playlists; only track names as they play. It’s a joke (just not a “Ha,Ha” joke!).