Prius Valor iLink L2 Install & Review Part 2

Prius Valor iLink L2 Install & Review Part 2

Review of the much-awaited product for your Prius purporting to allow ANY iPod to play video!

Part 2 - Review and Operation of iLink

The iLink L2 as advertised states:

Turn your iPod into a multimedia entertainment center. The world's first multimedia interface for iPod- enables any iPod with dock connector to play video on any multimedia system, home or car!

Both CoastalETech.com and DiscountCarStereo.com advertise this product with these capabilities.

Let me just say, in a nutshell, it falls short. WAY short.

First of all, It is a great idea! Access all of your iPod material on your Prius MFD? Fantastic! Wait...you must use OUR remote control? Okay, I guess i can deal with that. Although, when Ultimate Lockpick has found out a way to intercept touching the MFD I don't know why this company can't ..but, hey.. they don't advertise this as a Prius-only solution. The remote control gives them the ability to advertise it as a system for ANY auto or home that has access to a monitor and line-in.

Okay. So, lets get down to the nitty gritty. Does it work. Sadly the answer is partially -- but mostly no.

Are you a Mac User, a PC User? This is not a generic unimportant question insofar as the iLink L2 is concerned. If you are a Mac User it probably will not work at all. The iLink L2 does NOT READ ANY FILESYSTEM on the iPod except MS DOS FAT 32! (explain that one to me, Valor Multimedia!)

That means all of us Mac Users who formatted our iPods (or updated them with an Apple Mac iPod Updater) are out of luck. The iLink will continually say "No Media Detected" ... then "Media Detected" then lock up. It will never show the "Home Screen".

However...IF you have access to a PC to format your iPod on using the Windows version of the iPod updater (or a Intel Mac running Windows to do the same thing). You only need the PC/Windows platform long enough to run the Windows iPod Updater to any version of the iPod firmware. Remember though, if you EVER update the iPod firmware again using a Mac version of the iPod Firmware Updater then you are out of luck again.

Having said that, Mac versions of iTunes WILL happily write to an MS DOS formatted version of the iPod. Most iPods these days come formatted for MS DOS FAT 32 out of the box...they have to. Their largest market by far (ducking) is the Windows User market!

So, simply take that same iPod you just formatted, move to your Mac and your Mac's iTunes will happy take 'ownership' of this iPod and copy the songs to the MSDOS FAT 32 partition that the Windows iPod Updater created.

So, we have a system that works on the Mac. BUT will it work on iLink.

Plug this iPod into the iLink and IMMEDIATELY it recognizes it!

Uh OH! or does it!? If you have ANYTHING before the 4th Gen of iPod, Mini or Nano it will NOT work!

That is right folks. Got a 3rd gen iPod laying around since you recently bought an iPod video? Thinking of using that 3rd gen in the car!? WRONG! You cannot do it! Well, kind of -- you CAN do it under DISK MODE, but you cannot play anything using the iPod menus that the iLink normally provides. That means, no Artist, no Genre, no Playlists, no anything that can normally be done in an iPod.

You CAN use it as a dumb usb disk drive. Just dump all of your MP3 files in the home directory and the iLink WILL play them. Just no titles (even though the MP3's may have embedded tags), no remembering where you were, no albums, no anything. BUT the minute you hit the iLink's iPod button, the iLink will display "Connecting..." for about 30 seconds and then reboot.

So, what does this break down to? Maybe it is easier to say what it cannot do rather than what it can. According to Valor Multimedia Tech Support, after Apple Computers recent (read 6 months ago) changes to iTunes_DB (the file the iPod uses to store all song-related data), the iLink cannot do much of anything! They ALSO state that until Apple fixes the bugs that make it "not work" with the iLink, the iLink will stay broken. (They *have*, they say, contacted Apple to alert them to "fix" the problem.)

So, what can't it do?

#1: It can't play all your iTunes Catalog all the time: That means Valor is not accepting the changes to the iTunes_DB database as a natural progression of Apple Computer's file-storage, they think it is a bug that makes this file different...if indeed it *is* different. The funny thing though, a GNU CPAN project "Mac::iPod" has no problem whatsoever reading this file. Funny! Perl can do it, why not a 'released product'? Sometimes it will read the catalog and play a song, most of the time, the minute you hit PLAYLIST it locks up at "SEARCHING". Other times, you can hit ARTIST, it presents all the artists AND STARTS PLAYING whatever song is the first one in the first artists listing on that screen. Other times it simply does not display anything beyond the main menu at all. This is with 4 different NEW iPods.

#2: It does not remember where it was the last time you were in the car. On the VERY few times it CAN read the database enough to play a song/audiobook, etc, turn the car off and it forgets! It does not even stop the iPod from playing when you turn the car off. The iPod must run out of power before it stops! To solve this, you must remember to use the remote control (not the on-off button on the iLink) to turn the iLink off, then turn off the car! That will make it remember where it stopped. It will NOT, however, restart there when you turn it back on. You have to navigate the menus back to your selection, then hit PLAY and it will THEN remember where it left off in that song/audiobook (this is only because this time the 'memory' feature is an iPod feature, not a iLink feature). This irritated me to no end because i was listening to "The DaVinci Code" and got 94 minutes 23 seconds into first 'file' of the audiobook when i turned the car off. Turning the car back on later, I had to fast forward for 10 minutes until i got around the area of the audio book i was at and hit play again. This got old quickly. Also, there is only 1 FF speed.

#3: Video: Something really cool that it advertises. Put mpeg videos or DIVX/XVID in the home directory of the iPod using Disk Mode and it will see and play them! No one at tech support can tell you the codecs it supports. I ripped a (DVD for personal use) using handbrake (ffmpeg) and iTunes played it (when i switched to .m4v) ...unless I switched it to .mpg the iLink would not see it at all! When i changed it to .mpg, iLink saw the file but presented a '?' in the icon. When i selected the file to play, it did nothing. Calls to tech support cannot tell me what codecs the video portion supports. They advertise 'MPG1,2,3,4 DIVX/XVID' In the tech support guys words: "You seem to know more about what it won't do than I do." ...and ..."The guys who developed this are over in Asia and it is hard to contact them with the time zone differences and all. I will try to find out the codecs for you but i doubt i can!"

#4: AWFUL web site and total lack of ANYTHING in the support section. The entire support section of the web site does not list this product at all except for a diagram of how to hook it up. No firmware updates (of which they make a BIG deal in the manual), no online manual, no anything. They talk (in the manual) of optional components like a USB cable, car adapter cable, etc...but they items cannot be ordered at all.

#5: Not enough RAM to display your entire song list. There is only (according to the preferences screen 8 MB of RAM in this unit) It seems to choke around 200 songs into a song list. You have to turn the unit off using the on/off switch and reboot.

#6: When issues DO occur, you must reboot the system by the power supply..the remote does not respond.

#7: HEAT. THIS UNIT IS HOT! I kind of worry sometimes about how hot it actually is. No measurements yet, but will have some soon.


So, do I like it? Well, let's just say: 'I still have it'. I have it ONLY because it is the ONLY thing I can find that displays the song info and SOME KIND OF INTERFACE without losing my 6 CD changer. People say "You have an iPod .. why do you need your changer?" My answer is that we have the Volkswagen iPod solution which takes the place of a CD Changer. It requires you (as most do) to organize EVERYTHING you listen to into 6 playlists. The first 5 are playlists. The 6th is EVERYTHING on the iPod and NONE OF THE UNITS I looked at (including the VW unit we own) displays WHAT you are listening to.

The only thing that is making me keep this unit is the AV/SEL button on the remote! It simply turns off the entire iLink interface and lets me select songs from the iPod interface on the iPod itself. This way at least i know what I am listening to. No on-screen display, however, I get the benefit of knowing that I an listen to any song in my library. A year ago, I would've been happy selecting song I wish to listen to from the iPod interface. Now it is a disappointment.

Conclusion?

Wait for a better firmware release before buying. The company cannot guarantee that this hardware unit will work with future firmware revisions because this unit only has 8MB of ram and sometimes you have an iTunes_DB file that is larger than 8MB. I have 12432 songs. An iTunes_DB file larger than 8MB? Not hard to do!