.KEYWORD ces
.FLYINGHEAD AUTOPC POWER
.TITLE Next generation AutoPCs make a big debut at CES
.FEATURE
.SUMMARY This year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was huge, the biggest contributing editor Mark Moeller has seen, with many interesting new products displayed. Three new Auto PCs and one new peripheral were demonstrated at the show. All of the new systems feature faster processors, bigger screens, MP3 playback, and more advanced user interfaces. However, each of the companies has focused on different areas, giving the consumer a really nice choice in feature sets. Read this article to learn more about each of these new Auto PC marvels.
.AUTHOR Mark Moeller
This year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was huge, the biggest I’ve seen. It took up more floor space than COMDEX by a substantial amount. It’s clear that many companies are moving from showing at COMDEX to CES. This makes a great deal of sense, considering the consumer electronics market is seen as the new growth area for computer manufacturers. A significant fuel to the growth of the consumer electronics market is the convergence of a multitude of consumer electronic devices. Infotainment is driving computing features into everything from automobiles to washing machines. The new generation of Auto PCs shown at CES exemplified the leading edge of convergence in the Consumer Electronics field. Areas such as digital audio and video, wireless connectivity, Internet access, entertainment, communications, and security, are all bundled into these incredible new systems.
Three new Auto PCs and one new peripheral were demonstrated at the show. All of the new systems feature faster processors, bigger screens, MP3 playback, and more advanced user interfaces. However, each of the companies has focused on different areas, giving the consumer a really nice choice of feature sets. Read on to learn more about each of these new Auto PC marvels.
.H1 Clarion 320DV — home theater on wheels
Clarion has set a new reference standard for in-vehicle entertainment with their second generation Auto PC. They’ve focused on making the Auto PC a better tool for entertainment and navigation in the vehicle. The demonstration they had on the floor was quite impressive. The Clarion 320DV was nicely installed in the dashboard, along with three seven-inch screens with 16:9 aspect ratios. That’s right, Clarion’s new unit supports plugging in three screens beyond the standard faceplate display. One of the large screens was up front and had the main user interface running on it instead of the faceplate display. The screen had a great viewing angle and very good brightness.
A quick look at the Start menu revealed a new application, a DVD player. By pressing the Open button on the new motorized faceplate, shown in Figure A, the newly redesigned faceplate elegantly slides out of the way to reveal the new DVD drive where the CD ROM drive once was on the 310C.
.FIGPAIR A The screen on Clarion’s new Auto PC has a redesigned faceplate that is now has motorized opening and improved buttons.
As I watched the demonstration, a DVD was inserted and the DVD player application was started. The application was pretty simple, but allowed access to all the standard features any DVD player would offer. When Play was selected, I expected the screen I was looking at to start showing a video, but no, the video started playing on the two screens in the back seat (also seven inch 16:9 aspect ratio). The sound track for the movie came pouring over the new 5.1 Dolby AC-3 sound system. It was almost a religious experience.
The controlled environment in the cabin of a car is an excellent place for a surround sound audio system. Subtle sound effects that you might not otherwise experience in a theater or at home, with any quality of system, were pleasant surprises. The center channel speaker made it seem as if the actors were right in the car with you. I got in the back seat and watched, wondering if I shouldn’t just have a theater system in my car and forget having one in my home.
The new large screen allows for a really nice navigation system, too. The new AccuRoute navigation software takes full advantage of the big screen for turn-by-turn navigation, as shown in Figure B.
.FIGPAIR B The new AccuRoute navigation software takes full advantage of the big screen for turn-by-turn navigation.
While I was watching the movie in the back, the demonstration person switched to Odyssey and started showing how it uses the full screen to display a detailed moving map and inset graphic with text for the next maneuver. The navigation system on the new 320DV now has dead-reckoning support for determining the vehicle location during navigation in addition to GPS (Global Positioning System). This will really help in urban canyon areas where GPS might not work or in areas where you’re traveling through tunnels and must navigate, such as the New York City area.
The Clarion unit uses an Intel Pentium Processor with MMx technology for the automotive environment. This isn’t your father’s Pentium. It’s optimized electro-mechanically with the automobile to deal with the temperature extremes that exist in the car. Your standard desktop processor doesn’t stand a chance in the car through the various temperature extremes that exist outside in an ungaraged car. The Pentium Processor makes easy work of MP3 playback on the new Auto PC. The new machine has 32MB of memory for the Processor to party on so you can run more sophisticated applications.
One fascinating new issue that comes up with the introduction of DVD playback is the fact that the driver may very well not want to be listening to the movie while the passengers are watching. Clarion has addressed this by allowing the rear passengers to use wireless headphones for listening to the movie while the driver listens to CDs (in the CD changer), MP3s (on a CF card), or the radio through the car speakers. The Clarion 320DV will also support contact data exchange with the PalmOS. All of these great new features landed Clarion the CES Innovations 2000 award. Considering the enormous amount of interesting new products at CES, this is quite a significant achievement. Only a small fraction of the products at the show are awarded this honor.
.H1 Visteon ICES — wireless Web
CES was the launching pad for Visteon’s new ICES (Information, Communication, Entertainment, Safety, and Security). ICES is an Auto PC platform that sets new standards in speech user interface and wireless connectivity for the car. ICES uses an Intel Pentium Processor combined with Microsoft Windows CE for Automotive 2.0, Visteon’s own industry-leading continuous speech recognition, and a wireless packet data Internet link. The continuous speech recognition means not having to say "Auto PC, pause, radio, pause, seek" any more. Instead, you could simply say "radio seek up" or "radio tune 93.3". This is far more natural than the current recognition system. This makes ICES user interface head and shoulders above the competition in the realm of Auto PCs and Automotive Telematics units.
The other really sexy feature of ICES is its integrated wireless Internet connection. It uses the same Mobitex packet data network that’s used by the Palm VII. The sort of data you can get with this unit is along the lines of Web clippings rather than a Web browser. As the user, you specify what content you’re interested in and it gets delivered to you. That’s just fine, though, since something like 80% (or more) of all automobiles are occupied by only the driver. For obvious safety reasons, the driver is much better off if the information is retrieved and presented rather than having to wade through links. You also have access to wireless email, which is much better than the current solution that CUE networks offers, of just getting what amounts to short text messages.
ICES has a large screen on it, approximately five inches, and has a 4:3 aspect ratio. Instead of covering the faceplate with a bunch of buttons, Visteon instead opted for surrounding the right and bottom edge of the screen with softkey buttons, ATM-style. The button label gets drawn on the screen, but the user presses a physical button. This is much better than a touch screen, because the driver can know what button he’s pressing simply by the tactile feedback he gets from each button.
There’s a set of buttons for quickly getting to commonly used features, and a much-welcomed rotary volume control. ICES also has an AM/FM radio and CD playback features. It supports an optional six disc USB changer (Clarion’s unit with Visteon’s label), MP3 playback, and an optional cellular phone interface. You can see all these features in Figure C.
.FIGPAIR C The Visteon ICES screen has a bunch of great features that allow for easier driver manageability.
ICES uses Visteon’s own turn-by-turn navigation system, which uses ICES’s built-in GPS to get vehicle location. Visteon’s navigation system is the same one used by their NavMate Navigation System. It uses a moving map display with turn-by-turn voice prompts. It wasn’t clear if their system has dead reckoning features in it like the Clarion 320DV. One very welcomed feature in the navigation system is the detour function, which allows you to tell the navigation system that the current route isn’t navigable and to find another way. This feature is fundamental when you run into construction or congestion problems and want to get around them.
Because ICES uses continuous speech recognition, Visteon had to write all their own applications for controlling their system. You’ll see very little that looks familiar when you use their radio, CD player, address book, etc. This also allowed them to employ their Man-Machine interface expertise, developed over many years at Ford with regard to autosound, navigation, and other safety systems. The experience really shows and pays off handsomely for them. If ICES had DVD playback and multiple screen support, it would be the perfect unit.
.H1 Delphi Automotive Systems’ Communiport
Delphi Automotive Systems is a recent spin-off of General Motors. They supply the automotive industry with various forms of electronics for vehicles. Not to be left out of the emerging Auto PC industry, Delphi rolled out their first Auto PC product, targeted at automotive OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) rather than aftermarket, at the CES show. Their Auto PC product, called the Communiport, is a product of Delphi’s 18 month old Mobile Multimedia Business Group. This company has such credibility that it was able to win more than $2.5 billion in business for their new Communiport Auto PC. That’s a bunch of Auto PCs, and makes a very credible market for software developers to develop for.
Because the Communiport product is an OEM product, it’s integrated much more tightly into the vehicle than the Clarion Auto PC or Visteon ICES. The demonstration units Delphi had at CES were beautifully integrated into vehicle interiors with many of the key control buttons actually mounted on the steering wheel, where they could be easily pressed with the thumb. Their Auto PC UI was well done, and I found it easier to use than either Clarion’s or Visteon’s user interface when using buttons alone. The Delphi unit uses the same Lernout & Hauspie speech recognition system that’s a standard part of Microsoft’s Windows CE for Automotive and also used by Clarion. This leaves the speech UI feeling less refined than Visteon’s, but the integration of the buttons on the steering wheel and the careful use of ATM-style soft keys on the actual Auto PC unit, as shown in Figure D, make this much less of an issue. As with Visteon, Delphi’s years of automotive UI experience pay off big on their unit.
.FIGPAIR D The integration of the buttons on the steering wheel and the careful use of ATM-style soft keys on the actual Auto PC unit make this unit easy to use.
The Communiport has some unique features, such as true mobile Internet browsing using Wireless Application Protocol and Bluetooth universal connectivity, allowing for hands-free operation of portable cellular phones without actually connecting the phone to their unit. The Communiport also has a built-in connection to the vehicle’s diagnostic bus and integrated software for diagnosing car troubles.
What I saw was a very high-end version of GM’s On-Star system based on the Communiport. A new Mobile Multimeda Link fiber optic bus that has 100 megabit throughput is used to link various Communiport components together rather than having them all in a single unit. The Communiport also has all the standard Auto PC 2.0 features, including AM/FM/CD, GPS, navigation, address book, and MP3 playback.
The Communiport currently uses a higher speed Hitachi SH-3 processor, but I was told, by the people at the booth, that an SH-4 version is imminent. This is a good thing, since Visteon and Clarion are both using 166Mhz Pentium class processors. Also, while Delphi has announced no plans to make the Communiport an aftermarket product, some casual eavesdropping around the booth revealed that there’s something in the works.
.H1 Conclusion
So there you have the three new Auto PC products. None of these products are available for purchase yet, but are all slated to be delivered in the last half of 2000. Unfortunately, for those of us who have existing Auto PCs, there’s no upgrade path. Also, these new units will be far more expensive than the original Auto PCs from what I hear. The large screen alone adds a massive amount to the cost of the units, since the screens must be able to handle the temperature extremes of the vehicle and be visible in direct sunlight.
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.H1 WirelessRoad and beyond
There’s some good news for current Auto PC owners, though. The good people at Vetronix, the folks who make the Auto PC CarPort product that interfaces the Auto PC to your vehicles electrical system, announced a new product for the Auto PC called WirelessRoad. WirelessRoad brings full two-way email and clipped Web content to your Auto PC using the same wireless network as the Palm VII and the Visteon ICES from Mobitex. The email allows you to receive and send full length messages.
Some creative use of speech recognition system in the Auto PC allows you to reply with voice to email messages. You can select Web content with voice, too, and the Auto PC reads it back to you. The unit plugs into the Auto PC’s universal serial bus. It also provides a much more robust wireless connection for vehicles equipped with the Vetronix CarPort module. The CarPort supports remote unlocking of your doors if you have a wireless module such as the CUE network or the Vetronix WirelessRoad. While CUE has better nationwide coverage than the Mobitex network, the Mobitex network is two-way and has much better building penetration in my experience.
That sums up the key Auto PC developments at CES. Much more could be written, but I don’t have the space for it here. Watch for press releases from Clarion, Delphi, and Visteon. This Auto PC’s HOT, and the fire is just getting started!
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.H1 Product availability and resources
To read more on the Clarion 320DV, watch Clarion’s Auto PC site at http://www.autopc.com.
Read the latest press release about the Visteon ICES at http://www.theautochannel.com/news/press/date/19980805/press015463.html.
For more information on Delphi Automotive Systems’ Communiport Mobile MultiMedia Systems, go to http://www.delphiauto.com/index.cfm?location=538.
For more information about WirelessRoad, watch the Vetronix site at http://www.vetronix.com.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
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.BIO Mark Moeller is a 14 year veteran of Microsoft. After shipping the first version of the Auto PC, he left Microsoft to found AutoPCWare, a company focused on helping manufacturers and software vendors build Auto PCs or products for the Auto PC. Mark was the design architect of the first version of the Auto PC and has a number of patents pending or awarded on the Auto PC. You can visit his Web site at http://www.autopcware.com, or email him at markmo@autopcware.com.
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