iPod New Chrysler Sebring, no AAC... WTF!?

Rantipole said:

I heard about the new Chrysler Sebring that is coming out this fall. One stereo includes a 20 gig hard drive that can store... MP3s and WMAs!!! WTF?!?!?!

When are "digital music player" builders going to start adding AAC functionality? I really don't guess this. This is not just a knock on only Chrysler, but pretty much all providers of digital music storage, with a VERY few exceptions. None of them have a problem forking over dough to MS for their proprietary format, but they can't put the non-proprietary AAC on there? I just don't understand.

Click to expand...

It would be completely logical for them not to include protected AAC compatability. But for traditional AAC... i don't get it. Maybe they'll release a firmware upgrade?

Sony phones work with AAC now. Not sure if their fully-fledged music players support AAC properly, but at least SonicStage (the most hideous piece of software) will now support them (link) somehow.

Can you at least appreciate their built in iPod plug-in capabilities?

pdpfilms said:

It would be completely logical for them not to include protected AAC compatability. But for traditional AAC... i don't get it. Maybe they'll release a firmware upgrade?

Click to expand...

Well part of the reason AAC support on stuff is just starting to really show up much at all is it is a relatively new formate and has not been around as long as well estaiblised ones.

Mp3 is among the oldest been around for over 10years. WMA is also close to that age. And by the time AAC came out WMA already had it formate out for a while.

So AAC is only really at best only 3-4 years old in a well estiblised form at best (I say at least 6 months after iTunes hit windows before you can start really counting it age and it being a good standard for that).

Now lets see how long it took for players to just start coming out fthat could play mp3. They start what trickling in around 5 years ago when they started becoming big. WMA started coming out about the same time. When Mp3 players started appearing mp3 was already 5 years old at that point in time. So giving in those factors it understabilbe why AAC is not nearly as widelly supported is WMA is as the non mp3 format.

In a game of raw numbers WMA is much more common and more widely used than AAC. I would love to see mp3 players for cars support at least non DRM verson of AAC mp3 and WMA. That covers the 3 largest formats out there.

And dont get your hopes up on a firm ware update for it. To much work to do for something 95-99% of the people will never bother updating on that part.

but it does have heated/cooled cup holders...sweet

Rantipole said:

Yeah, I saw those cup holders! How decadent are we?!


I hear what your saying. Except for one thing: the "computer" is the same, no matter what format it is playing. So, why not plug in the few lines of code required to be able to decode AAC files? See what I'm saying? And, for that matter, OGG, which almost no one uses. My point is, it is not hard at all to just add those couple extra decoders. (Of course, I wouldn't expect the iTunes store purchased tracks.)

Marlon, I did not see the fully-integrated iPod option, only the auxiliary jack option. (But, I didn't look too carefully. I couldn't after freaking about about the music file formats supported. )

Click to expand...

It one thing is coding for the player is a lot harder than coding for lets say OSX or windows. It has to be done in a much simplure and weaker laungage than Like C++. It be closer to assiblily launge than anything else.

No OS Codex to tie into or use that data base off of. Plus the stuff has to be done on a very very limited space. We are talking kilobybes of space. It has to be stored on a type of memory that is very expenisive to make and hard to write to. Everything for that CD player is programed hard code into the chip so it is a lot harder to do that you make it seem.

It is not your normal desktop per say. Heck my TI 89 has more memory and more power than the one running the mp3 player there. The hard drive can not be used for this stuff the mememory is not stable enough to that. It has to be stored on the chip and the space is very limited and it cost money to do it. Chance are they are paying a fee for each type of codex on there that some else figure out how to do.

It all boys down to time and money and the simple truth is AAC is not very widely used for music when compare to WMA and MP3. MP3 right now is king and in distance 2nd is WMA and even much farther behind is AAC. And making stuff like this all work is hard to do and cost a lot of money to do it. So drop the smallest of the big 3 AAC. You are write it is a computer but it hard to make the software for it and add in all this stuff. There is no general lines of code to pull from or anything like that. It has to be done idvivelly for the product.


I personally want an indash reciever that plays mp3 and AAC files. I dont care about WMA because I dont use it but all the music on my computer is AAC and mp3 and I dotn know what is AAC and what is mp3 and I dont want to have to convert the AAC to mp3 to make it work in my car. (also I rip everythign in MP3 because mp3 works in everything.)

So how does it work... does the car have 802.11 or an ethernet or USB port somewhere, or does it rip CDs? I'm soooo not ripping all of my CD's into my car (of course, I'm soooo not ever owning a Chrysler, but.... ). And what's up with a car having a 20GB drive? I mean... there should be room for a 3.5" SATA drive in a car. And cars last a long time... if you're going to put a drive in, make it more than 100GB to future proof it....