Drive-in movies are about to take on a whole new meaning as in-car entertainment gets under way. Ashley Norris reports
Forget I-Spy! If the kids in the back of your car are restless, you’ll soon be able to entertain them with Rugrats: The Movie on digital versatile disc (DVD) in cinema-style surround sound. In the next few months Panasonic and Sony are set to market advanced video-based in-car entertainment systems.
Due in June in the United Kingdom is the Panasonic system which uses the CX-DV 1500 DVD player with the CY-AC300 Dolby Digital/DTS surround sound processor. Pictures are relayed to a 17cm LCD widescreen monitor fitted to the back of the front seat headrest. It will also play standard audio CDs, and the high-end DVD audio discs which go on sale later in the year. The price hasn’t been fixed, though it is expected to retail for around 2 000.
The system has to be fitted into the car by a specialist dealer, a process that can take several days. However, the company is confident that in the near future many new cars will feature a built-in DVD cinema system.
Sony plans to offer a similar set-up based around its portable DVD player, the PBD- V30, in September. It also features a PlayStation games console and a TV tuner. Car owners can add a second video source, perhaps a VHS VCR, and have their monitors suspended from the car’s ceiling. Passengers can listen to their movies either via the car’s audio system or by using cordless headphones.
In-car entertainment specialists like Alpine and Clarion may also launch their own DVD-based car cinemas.
In-car DVD systems aren’t purely about entertaining the kids. Philips Car Systems plans to bring a DVD version of its Carin in-car navigation system to the UK in 2000, to replace its CD-ROM-based version.
Philips’s representative Carl Hynes points out that while you can get a detailed map of the UK on one CD-ROM, a DVD-ROM can archive the whole of Europe. Key car manufacturers are also championing in-car video. Rover offers a TV screen built into the dashboard as an option in its 75 Series models, and is keen to add a high quality video carrier such as DVD. It is also looking into DVD-ROMs of its service manuals.
Will passengers soon be able to surf the Internet? “Technically speaking this is already possible,” says Graham Baskerville of JVC. “The reason why no one has delivered a product is because of access costs. The PC would have to be connected to a GSM [global system mobile] phone network and the cost of air-time is, at the moment, prohibitively expensive.”
Other manufacturers, notably Philips and Sony, are more optimistic. Both are developing in-car Internet products which are likely to go on sale in the next couple of years.
In-car cinema isn’t a totally new concept. British specialist Prestige Audio has been fitting systems in the back of luxury cars since the mid-1980s. Originally, the firm used Sony Hi8 video players, although recently demand has grown for the JVC VHS- based system.
The company’s managing director Bob Hobson says: “In around five to six years I’m confident that most manufacturers will offer in-car video systems as an option, and they’ll be a standard in more expensive new models.
“We’ve been fitting TV tuners into cars for some while now, even though the pictures aren’t that great. More recently there has been a big growth in demand for adding PlayStations and N64s.”
Adam Rayner, in-car entertainment editor of Fast Car magazine, agrees. “One day we’ll remember cars without TVs as being as quaint as cars without radios are now.”
Special Election Supplement