Sony’s Latest Cd Receiver Transfers Music Directly From a PC To a Car Stereo

By Michael Santo
Contributing Writer, RealTechNews

A busy day for in-car digital music. Sony has announced a receiver which, when connected to a PC, appears as an external drive. This just as Visteon announces their solution which detects the USB port as a CD changer.

LAS VEGAS (SEMA Booth #11066), Nov 1, 2005 - Advancing the market for in-car digital music, Sony Electronics today announced an AM/FM CD/MP3 receiver capable of storing up to 500 of your favorite tracks and receiving music directly from your computer to your car stereo.

The new receiver has 1GB of flash memory and a USB port engineered into the faceplate. When the faceplate is removed from the receiver and connected to a Windows® enabled PC, it is recognized as an external drive. With the provided USB cable, users can quickly transfer and save MP3 and WMA files to the faceplate. Source: Sony Press Release

We Say: The Visteon looks to be more flexible … you can attach a flash drive as opposed to having to connect a PC directly. I would think you could attach an external HD as well. And you can connect an iPod to the Visteon directly. What I’d really like is to have some internal storage in the Visteon system so I wouldn’t have a chance to forget an external drive. It’s also possibly Sony might write some programs to extend the capabilities of their system. Otherwise, I’d vote for the Visteon.