Its been a long time coming, but I think I can give you some definitive answers on the progress of MediaEngine. We have been working long and hard and doing lots of testing, and have found that some of the solutions we first started out telling you about were not the best ones available.
For starters, MediaEngine was going to implement an embedded version of Microsoft's Mappoint. This was great at first, since mappoint uses an advanced ActiveX / API control system. But, upon using the said control, and experimenting with features that would be useful in a car, we found that mappoint is better suited to planning you vacation on your home computer, not finding destinations on the fly in a car. So we looked for an alternative.
We checked out CoPilot 2003, which is a truly awesome piece of software, but again, no API so we couldn't integrate anything into MediaEngine with it. (imagine an external application, and you get the point). So we decided to check out destinator. Bingo! Destinator has a lot of the features we loved about copilot (reverse geocoding, map to street address, lock to road etc) AND it has a somewhat versatile API (nowhere near what mappoint can do, but some of that stuff is just ridiculous).
(A little tidbit of info about destinator for everyone thats confused-
There are a lot of different ways to install destinator. You can get the SDK (version 2.0.6) and install the "APP" part of it and then get some of the 3.0 PDA maps. You can get the Destinator EU version (2.0.6) and use US 2.0.6 maps. Theres a lot of combinations, but i've found that if you get the full install of the APP (EU or US) V2.0, then copy the US maps (2.0 or 3.0) to the PowerLoc dir, you will be fine. Don't argue with me about this, I am just telling you what I have tried. If it doesn't work for you, find a different way
So back to MediaEngine.. If you decide to use destinator, it will be a great experience... It loads ONE time upon launch, and then can be brough onscreen at any time (less vids and visualizations) and can be as quickly hidden. You have ALL of the destinator TS features at your disposal, as well as some integrated ones such as "Save current location to MediaEngine Database, Clear the current route, load saved destination etc". We show on the screen Current Speed, GPS Status, and Current Heading (NESW) Destinator will show on approx 7/8 of the screen, with 1/8 being touchscreen buttons, unless you have entered GPS from the music player, which then will show the current song in place of the Current Speed, GPS Status, and Current Heading indicators. Also, entering from music player will put TS buttons on the left allowing next / prev song, pause, and volume control. A volume percentage indicator is also shown on the screen. This setup also uses "mediacar style skins", but we *may* switch the entire skin system over to XML based setup (but we will find a way to support current skins as well). EVERYTHING BUT THE XML SKINS IS CURRENTLY FINISHED, AND BEING TESTED.
More news on the XM front! My codeveloper phat_b has created a great interface for the XM-PCR radio. I don't know a whole lot about it at this point, and I can't tell you exactly how it will be implemented into MediaEngine (seeing as how that part isn't done yet) but I do know it will be another part of the play music screen, and allow you to save favorites, and many other things. We will be including a complete set of the XM channel logos as well and display them in the album art area.
This is all I can tell you at this point. Don't ask when its going to be done, because I don't know. We are just plodding along as we can, coding and testing. Don't rush us. When it comes out, it will be everything you expect.
-CarComp
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