The ultimate mobile theater
It seems like a lot of what we've been talking about on the show lately has revolved around something Braden is doing. But if it matters to one of us, odds are it might matter to some of you, so here's another one. With the addition of boy number four to the Russell home, we've realized that our current car just doesn't quite fit our needs. We spent the whole weekend minivan shopping, and loved every minute of it. But the one thing in the van that mattered most to Braden was the rear entertainment system - the DVD player. After all the looking around and shopping and everything, it turns out they're all pretty much the same, a DVD player and an LCD screen. You can listen to the movie through the car speakers, or with wireless headphones. And that's it. No glitz, no glamor, just circa 2001 technology billed as the latest and greatest.
That is, until we stumbled across the yet to be releases Chrysler Town and Country slash Dodge Caravan. Now there's an entertainment system that has potential. The new vans will feature two screens in the back of the van, nothing big there, except that each of them can show a different movie and has its own auxiliary jacks for video games or anything else. That's cool. Top that off with the new Sirius Backseat TV technology, and things look pretty good. Sirius actually streams TV into your car. We're talking Disney channel, Nickelodeon, you name it. And different channels on each screen. All you need is two Sirius antennas on the roof, not an insanely large dish the size of a small coffee table. All that to say we wasted an entire weekend, knowing that there's no way we can buy anything at least until the new van Chrysler comes out.
But all of this new technology got us thinking, what would we put into the ultimate in car entertainment system? Here are some ideas:
- Make it server based.
- Allow me to store all my music on a hard drive so I don't have to lug my iPod in and out of the car.
- Since it's server based, let me put movies on there as well - make it able to play mpeg4, divx, wmv, etc.
- Then make it wireless.
- If it's server based, let me update my content using my existing wireless network. I just pull into the garage and my car (or minivan) shown up like a NAS device on the network.
- Then make it connected.
- If I can update it via WiFi, give me a card slot so I can connect it to a high speed cell network, like EVDO, and download new content. Maybe iTunes in the car, or Netflix in the Car, who knows.
- Then make it kick.
- Give me 7 speakers in the backseat in a typical 7 channel configuration, so I can actually watch movies in surround sound. If I want to use headphones, make them Dolby headphones.
