The compact disc player has been a staple of automotive interiors for years, but when was the last time you actually listened to a CD in your car? The growing popularity of MP3 players and satellite radio certainly threatened the presence of CD players, but we’re still a little surprised by Blaupunkt’s latest stereo.
The Melbourne SD27 radio completely eliminates the traditional CD slot and offers an SD/MMC slot instead. iPod lovers need not worry, there’s still a standard 3.5mm input for your favorite personal audio device. AM/FM radio functionality lives on inside this new unit, so you won’t have to give up local traffic reports to enjoy digital audio in your car.
This new stereo looks like a decent choice and should retail for $159.95. Are you ready to ditch the in-dash CD player for more options in digital media playback? Have your say in ‘comments.’
(Click through to read Blaupunkt’s full release.)
Blaupunkt Car Radio Leaves CDs in the Dust
Blaupunkt is now shipping the Melbourne SD27, an attractively-priced car radio that skips the CD player altogether in favor an SD/MMC card slot to accommodate the digital-savvy customer who wants to eliminate discs from their music diet. In addition to the SD/MMC card-slot, the radio’s sleek front-panel features a convenient plug and play input for portable audio players as well as controls for the built-in 25-preset AM/FM radio. Finally, the Melbourne is designed for use with Blaupunkt’s optional iPod and Bluetooth/USB interface modules to integrate with cell phones, portable players and MP3 storage devices.
“For more and more people, compact discs have become obsolete,” comments Blaupunkt USA General Manager Lutz Marschall. “They buy their music from the internet, download it to their hard-drive music server, and take it with them on their iPod. The last holdout for many of these consumers is their car radio, which still requires them to burn CD-R’s with either audio or MP3 files. The Melbourne is a far better solution for these consumers – no CD required: they just plug in a memory card or portable MP3 player and they’re on their way.”
The Melbourne SD27 radio supports both MP3 and WMA audio files at bitrates of 8 to 320 kilobits. The front panel display accommodated up to 127 directories of music, and displays ID3 tag information up to 30 characters in length. The 3.5 mm front-panel auxiliary input is compatible with the headphone or aux outputs of nearly any portable device, and an optional interface can be added to enable control of an iPods from the radio front panel.
The Melbourne is a full-fledged car audio centerpiece, including multiple options for expansion and integration into sophisticated car audio systems. It delivers 4 x 45 Watts of power, and includes four channel pre-outs to accommodate external power amplifiers. There is a TEL/NAVI input for integration of cell phone and navigation systems, and an optional Bluetooth/USB module enables the addition of Bluetooth or USB compatible devices including phones, MP3 players, and USB-based hard-drives for an entire library of MP3 files.
The Blaupunkt Melbourne SD27 includes adjustable bass, treble, and X-Bass EQ functions that let listeners dial-in sound for ideal performance. Additionally, there are selectable EQ presets designed to optimize playback of different program types, such as rock, pop, or classical music.
The Blaupunkt Melbourne SD27 car radio is currently available at a suggested retail price of $159.95.
I remember the announcement of the first iMac, without floppy disk drive!!!! How could we transfer information without a floppy disk drive?????
Some years later, do you remember how a floppy disk looks like? Innovation is always like this…
Clarion has had one that also sports integrated bluetooth along with the memory slot. It’s been out almost a year now
The nice thing about a having CD player in the car is that I can pick up any CDs I want to listen to on the drive and take them with me without having to think about whether or not I’ve imported them to the IPOD player yet, even in a lossless format, or in the case of this radio, transferred them to a music server’s hard drive, then onto a memory card that I can then take to the car. The critical issue I suppose is how one purchases music and as I someone who has loved going to record stores since I was in my teens, I love shopping in brick and mortar stores too much to give it up unless I have to.
Kudos to Blaupunkt for trying to innovate, but there is no reason that the form factor needs to maintain the DIN standard look - the UI could be different, the screen could be OLED or color or something better than what is presented currently.
It also looks like only 1 line of text. This is pretty mediocre considering all the playable content is expected to have some sort of metadata/ID3 tag.
$160 is a good price point though.
I think this is a step in the right direction. The power the unit puts out for the price point is nice. Blaupunkt thank you for getting rid of my stacks of MP3 cd’s in my car. I imagine that with only 4 cards I could put my entire library in my car without installing some sort of HDD or a car-puter.
I can’t possibly see why an SD card would be better than a CD. CDs are big and shiny, and you’re less likely to lose them. And even when you do, they cost less than a buck each. They’re easy to transfer files onto, since nearly everyone’s computer has a CD-R drive. Meanwhile, not everyone has an SD card reader.
But ultimately, all you need is an iPod and some connectivity. That is the ultimate convenience.
SD is definitely a step in the right direction. I’d like to see all stereos have built in 200BG hard drive (perhaps removable!) and a flip down face (or door if DIN+1/2 or double DIN) that reveals the standard array of card slots and USB and firewire connectors. And the drivers to tap into the typical stuff you’d likely plug in.
That also would give you the option of charging up your WMPlayer, iPod, cell phone, blue tooth head phones, etc.
And you’d want some handy navigation that would allow you to choose between playing music from the device, copying it all over or selectivly copying over to the in dash drive.
Of course, some of this could surely be done with blue tooth if you wanted to do away with the wires and cards.
And, with all the satellite and HD radio bandwidth out there, seems like broadcasters — both terrestrial and satellite — should be able to give you the option of purchasing for download any song or story or podcast you just heard on their service by pushing the buy button. It would then use your onStar or blue tooth connected cell phone to complete the transaction and register the new media asset to an account tied to the mac address of your vehicle or stereo head unit.
Jonathan, that’s a dead argument. People complained about CDs because they were easy to scratch and crack compared to tape cassettes. It didn’t hold up. The music world is geared towards smaller and simpler audio files. I don’t have an MP3 player in my Ford, and I still listen to CDs and terrestrial radio. I’m behind the times, but oh well.
This is something that needed to come earlier. For me, it’s a burden to have CDs on my car. Even the most advanced units are prone to bump-induced halts during playback, and in these third-world roads are a lot of them!
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