Monster® Introduces the iCruze™ for iPod®

Looks awesome! Hopefully Monster realizes the large number of Prius owners who are high tech geeks.

 

Sweet... I'd love an iPod adapter that showed titles on the Prius' screen. Sounds theoretically possible, since Toyota's external CD changer supposedly supports CD-TEXT, but nobody's done it yet.

 

Well, it's less than some iPod interfaces and more than others.

If it provides a decent iPod holder that works with a mini, I might get it later...

 

Ahh, crap. No compatibility with the Prius whatsoever and no plans to display text on ANY headunit display, just their "outboard" one. AND, because it turns off the iPod screen, you can only play the first 6-10 playlists in your iPod!!!

GRR$^()$^(_@#!!!

Why do companies keep making such crap-for-brains vehicle-implementations for such a great audio player?! WHY?????

 

I wrote to [email protected] --

Hey Monsterguys, I just got the latest iCruze e-mail, and I must say, I\'m very disappointed.

There\'s been quite a bit of discussion about "The Best" iPod vehicle interface on the \'net, and I\'ve been active on the boards that pertain to my vehicle, the Toyota Prius. We tend to be a rather bleeding-edge bunch, what with the whole Hybrid Technology and such, so there\'s been lots of experimentation with units from Dension, iPod2Car, etc.

So far, none of these solutions have been perfect-- even the BMW solution, when it finally arrived for those cars, failed to live up to the design simplicity-vs-function of the iPod. When we saw the Monstercable press release, there was much excitement-- finally a company worthy of the iPod\'s design was getting into the field. Unfortunately, your name and reputation aside, your product appears to be just another "us too", offering no substantial improvement over the earlier products.


So, some specific reasons why I will not be buying an iCruz for my 2005 Toyota Prius "Package #6":

1. You didn\'t find a way to co-exist with multi-disc head unit players. This seems to be the bane of all the other manufacturers who either claim "zero" compatibility outright, or have a looser definition of "might work". I wish your engineers had figured out a way to do this, as this is MY "deal killer"

2. Your outboard display device for song information is NOT ACCEPTABLE! My Prius has an LCD screen that displays all kinds of vehicle functions, including the song/track information on discs that use CD-TEXT. When connected to an XM receiver, the Multi-Function Display can display radio station and song names (it can do this in FM mode too, but my point is that the head unit is capable of getting text from an outside source). I like the idea of keeping my iPod out of sight, but I loathe the idea of having a "come steal me" piece of hardware sitting out in plain view, to say nothing of how it messes up the nice interior lines of the Prius.

3. Playlists only? There has GOT to be a better way. I know a lot of the other solutions out there are gravitating toward the Disc = Playlist mentality, but it seems that there\'s got to be a different approach to this. I like to listen to full albums in my iPod; I\'m not yet a playlist maven, though I know many people are. But the iPod has a fantastic and extremely flexible music database-- surely a better way of integrating it with existing vehicle audio controls can be developed!

Just off the top of my head, I can think of one novel approach-- Use the "Disc Number" as a mode selector for the Next and Previous track buttons:

In Disc One, the Next/Previous work as expected-- they move to the next or previous track in whatever playlist, album, etc you\'re currently listening to

Change to Disc Two to use Next/Previous to scroll through Artists

Change to Disc Three to use Next/Previous to scroll through Albums of whatever artist is currently selected

Change to Disc Four to use Next/Previous to scroll through ALL available Playlists

Now I\'m sure this isn\'t a perfect solution (I mean, hey, it\'s the product of about 4 minutes of thought), but my point is that it\'s *A* solution. Your guys are clever-- encourage them to come up with something that lets me use ALL of my iPod in my car, without extra displays or controls!


Ryan.

 

Re: Monster® Introduces the iCruze™ for iPod®

Monster updates info about iCruze for iPod

By Brad Cook [email protected]


High-end audio cable company Monster has released more information about iCruze includes a counter that indicates a Jan. 15 release date, if it's correct.

Monster also now says that iCruze will work with any factory-installed or Alpine M-Bus aftermarket car stereo, hooking up through the CD changer or satellite radio port. You can control the music through your steering wheel or CD player controls, with song title and artist listed on the stereo's head unit; an optional display will be available for users whose head unit doesn't display text. The company also notes that "most cars will require the Monster Factory Linx Interface Cable [and] some installs may also require a Monster Factory Linx Interface module." The iCruze Web page offers a pop-up window that answers questions concerning compatibility with specific car and stereo models. It works with all iPods that feature a dock connector, including the new iPod photo.

 

If you want to shell out $249, it is better to install cheapest iPod-compatible Alpine head unit (I think it is CDA-9821) for $200 and Alpine iPod adapter for $99. Crutchfield even offers $30 discount on the adapter. If you search eBay, you'll find out that you can get the set for around $250.

As far as I know, there is no M-bus to Prius adapter.

 

For those of you who own Pioneer headunits, Pioneer's ipod adaptor has a better UI than the Alpine, and is compatible with recent Pioneer headunits (vs. Alpine, who only supports 2004+ model headunits).

 

What kind of better UI does it have? Judging from its backward compatibility with old units it uses CD TEXT interface from the changer. I guess UI is limited to a song / strist title, right? Will, say, Pioneer show at least few titles on screen while scrolling? How many characters it is able to show? Alpine 9835 shows three lines with ~25 characters. Is Pioneer scroll speed sensitive? I doubt that...

BTW, Alpine 2005 units have special speed sensitive touch slider to navigate though iPod lists as well as dedicated iPod buttons. I haven't seen it personally, but it sounds better integrated.

 

Pioneer's interface will allow for song, artist, title, album, etc. (Scrolling on units with limited text display). Keep in mind that this is for legacy units supporting IP-Bus (over 3 million sold -- whereas Alpine's adaptor is only compatible with 2004+ headunits).

With the new headunits, the touchscreen display on the Pioneer is simply better executed and much faster to operate (I know this is subjective, but informal poll of CES attendees who stopped by made these comments).