In-car entertainment? Bring your own, industry says | Tech News on ZDNet

January 10, 2008 by Isaac

For years the auto industry has been adding more in the way of entertainment packages for cars. For example, MP3 players and DVD players have become standard in many cars. According to this ZDNet article automobile manufactures are shifting away from creating an all encompassing entertainment experience in cars. I actually think this is a good move. Many automobile owners keep their vehicles for many years. At the rate of technology movement this means that in five years their once state of the art in-dash MP3 player will now be in some museum for ancient technology.

One thing past experience has taught is that while technology itself advances the networking or interface protocols tend to remain for some time. Consider ethernet and how long it has been around. USB, bluetooth, and firewire have all become standard ways for devices to communicate with each other. So, while these connection technologies may eventually face the same obsolescence as the devices they interconnect, they are likely to remain standards for a long time.

Automobile manufactures could capitalize on this and instead of pre-installing all the bells and whistles they could simply provide, for example, a car-wide USB hub where all devices could interconnect. One could envision a vehicle with a built-in computer having a touch panel screen. As "auto ready" devices are plugged in the computer would download the appropriate drivers, buttons, and screens from the device. So, plug in an auto ready MP3 player and a new button representing that device would automatically show up. Put a DVD player in your trunk and LCD screens on the back of each seat and the computer would link them together and stream video over USB (or bluetooth or cartooth or whatever protocol).

Having an in-car USB network would be the ultimate car hackers delight. What if the engine computer provided read-only data on the USB bus. A car could be customized the way personal computers are now. You don't like your dash board? Swap out the dash for a new one.

I, of course, am dreaming here, but the technology already exists to do this sort of thing.

Link Summary