Alpine’s iPod Control Interface

[Ioman]

Alpine has announced that it will ship the Alpine Interface Adapter for iPod (model KCA-420i) in late September. The KCA-420i will enable control and playback of the iPod music library from any of Alpine’s 2004 Ai-Net in-dash head units. The solution allows you to control iPod playback using the head unit’s front panel buttons or remote, you can view song information (artist, album and/or song name) on the display and easily find tracks through the receiver’s Quick Search interface. If you are worried about unsightly wires in your Geo Metro, rest assured that the Alpine Interface Adapter was designed to be hidden so it can be installed anywhere in the vehicle like under a seat, in the glove box or behind the dash. A single cable connects the adapter to the Alpine head unit, while a second cable connects the adapter to the iPod through the iPod dock connector. When the vehicle is on, the Interface Adapter also charges the iPod’s internal battery. The KCA-420i will be available from Authorized Alpine dealers for $100.

[theguy]

Yep, that's the entire reason why I've been waiting to upgrade my car stereo. They announced this back in January, however very vaguely. That's so awesome that it's finally coming out......

[dang]

It looks great

[llbbl]

damn that thing rules!

[Wendy]

O. .Bang Bang ..
:cheers

[theguy]

That'd be so cool to have the iPod's user interface emulated on one of those huge Alpine motorized flip-out screens....

[IronSerif]

That is definitely hot!

[Budfrog821]

well i dont know if anyone has heard the latest but the interface is disgustingly useless...half the options work...it has more bugs than my bathroom...its terrible...if anyone has questions i have the iva-d300 alpine monitor with the kca 420i....lemme know

[LarryH]

I have to more than agree with Budfrog. I just had the 420i connected to my D300. It's BEYOND USELESS!

You can see your songs. Press the play button beside any one of them. You can't play tunes "by song." Nope. If you're up to half a dozen key entries just to get to a playlist -- you *might* be able to play the playlist -- but it'll play in the order that iTunes (if you use it) has them sorted. So if you have a "favorite artists" playlist with 10 albums in it -- you'll be listening to each album straight through before the next.

"What about shuffle?," you ask. Nope, doesn't do that.

So unless you're willing to manually organize playlists on your iPod you're stuck. But remember -- once you're in a playlist, though you can see the songs within it, you can't play them by choosing them. You play the whole playlist in sequence or not.

On top of these severe limitations, the interface is preposterous. Far too many gyrations to go through to get to a siriously crippled interface.

As an added bonus -- having nothing to do with the iPod -- if you install the Sirius Satellite radio tuner to the D300, it will truncate the available text that's transmitted by Satellite radio. So, phone numbers for talk shows and song info get chopped off.

But hey, this unit's only close to 2Gs.