TheGuv

So, 3 weeks ago my car had it's £1000 ($2000 usd approx) headunit ripped out by some *bleep*.

Luckly as I live in one of the most crime ridden areas of London I expected this to happen at some point and upped my insurance to cover any loss.

My car's in the garage getting repaired, the *beep* also key'd my car up so it's getting fresh paint.

My insurance company draw a blank when it comes to headunits that aren't factory so they've just given me the £1000 I originally spent and told me to go find a replacement.

I was going to get a Kenwood DNX-8220BT as the replacement but I am now more concerned about it being stolen again (these doubledin units are easy to spot where as a built in unit moulded into the dash is of no interest to a *beep* looking to make a quick buck).

JVC do a NX7000 or something rather which is near enough the same as the Kenwood although without built in BT and the screen isn't as good but the big plus is the screen can be removed which solves the security worry.

However I'm now considering Centrafuse 2.0 as my entertainment platform, not only is it better looking and more feature rich than associated with traditional double din entertainment systems but I think I could build it cheaper too...

I am looking for advice from you guys n girls;

What system spec should I consider for fast loading and smooth opperation?
What screen should I get for the best touchscreen response and image quality?
What PSU or MOD is best to allow start and shutdown controlled by ignition status?
How will this system compare to the power consumption of my old Kenwood? I used to be able to play a few movies off the battery without having to worry about running flat.

Thanks in advance!

MP3Car.com

 

DarquePervert

http://www.mp3car.com/vbulletin/advfaq.php

Remember that "best" is purely subjective. You're going to get lots of opinions about what is "best" that will not help you make any decisions.

Start reading the FAQs (the above link). It's a jumping off point.

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Bxsteez

I'm not sure what your schedule is but CF3.0 is coming out this summer and there will not be a free upgrade so i'd wait for that.

I'm a strong advocator of designing a robust system but the only draw back with this is if you design something powerful and compact you have to worry about heat and cold. I'd suggest u start where Darque suggested and start a worklog to get more suggestions from members.

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TheGuv

Well when I said best, I would consider screens that are known to be responsive to the touch, clear to read in both darkness and sunlight etc.

What sort of processor/mobo/memory should I start looking at? I don't need to go overkill with it, I just want it to be fluid through functions, boot in under 30secs pref. and play divx films and run satnav without any problems.

TheGuv

I can get a Mini-ITX 1Ghz Epia board/cpu/ram bundle with 512MB for £15 ($25), would this be any good? Obviously upping the memory to 1024MB to help satnav etc... Would the processor be enough for the majority of functions? Without 'stuttering'?

Bxsteez

I would suggest a atom if u wanna do that. As a matter of fact you can look at the fitpc2. Its tiny and supposedly plays HD video so it should be able to play anything you want to play on the smaller screens. On touchscreens i'm a fan of linitx screens. I HATE LILLIPUT EBY-701. Even in transflective it sucks (not sure about the optically bonded one). The touchscreen response is extremely poor and the image quality is crap too (that might just be my integrated Graphics GPU)

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TheGuv

I was thinking the Atom processors but I've heard some people mentioning that it cant prioritise processes? Would this cause problems with using Centrafuse mainly running nav and videos/mp3s? Or would it still handle it well?

A consideration I still have on the cards is a HP Compaq DC7800;

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/labs/188400/h...q-dc7800p.html

I can pick one of these up for around £130-150 ($215-$250).

The unit is approx 250mm x 250mm square, has a laptop DVD-RW, idles at 40w, has a powerful Core2Duo 2.3Ghz CPU, 2GB memory and a 160GB hdd running windows XP.

It also has 8 USB ports, VGA & DVI out and has very good cooling (27db when idle, not that it's a concern as it'll be in the boot which is insulated).

Only concern I have is that it uses a external 130w laptop PSU which means I would have troubles changing it to a DC-DC power source with autostart/shutdown?

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