Is car-pc ready for the public

houdini · 02-22-2007, 01:17 PM

hello Im new to this carpc thing and have some questions.
I am a longtime car audio tech and computer tech, I ran across the Lilliput piece and have been looking into the carpc world.

I wanted to approach my shop owner on diving into carpc's sales and install
or I also have talked to the local largest PC/laptop shop into diving in.

i know you have to have people from both worlds to make this work.

Is the hardware and software where it needs to be for the merging of pc and car audio/multimedia to be readily available to the consumer, or is this still in the beginning stages and have a lot of hickups in the install and or software
compatibility and user friendlyness.

Im not familiar with incar VGA screens and dont do a lot with standard video out at home with my PC, when I hook up say s-video out from my video card to my 1080i TV i have to down scale my computer screen resolution to fit, on my TV. will this also need to be done in car?

Are the Audio output options available good enough for consumers?, If so I saw some threads referring to highend audio output, and there doesnt seem to be one yet, correct? What is the highest end solutions for Audio output, stereo and 5.1?

Im sure ill have tons more questions but this will get the ball rolling.

RedGTiVR6 · 02-22-2007, 01:27 PM

The great thing about CarPCs is that they can be as complicated or as simple as you want them to be.

Once you get the hardware installed, the software side of things is super simple. Or, once you're into it a bit more, you can get more detailed with the tweaking. All of this information can be had on this forum. To boot, there's a ton of folks on here that are more than willing to answer any questions and to help you along in the process.

There are two routes that you as an installer can take:

The custom, one off install (built the PC, mold in the screen, etc).
The all-in-one solution like the G4 or the T3.

There are a number of options for VGA touch screens in the car. If you're going to run a PC in the car, I'd highly recomend running a VGA monitor. Because of the fonts and what nots in Windows, lower resolution monitors will make things look rather blurry.

Regarding audio....just check my signiture...I think that will answer your question about the quality. There's a few of us out there that are competing with CarPCs and are successful.

Currently, the best solution is the 701 from Alpine.

There's a group of us working on a solution, that might have been the thread you were reading.

BTW - check the title under my screen name. My job is to help you (as a dealer) understand CarPCs and how to implement them.

PM me if you have any specific questions.

v8 scimitar · 02-22-2007, 06:48 PM

Personally I don't think its really ready for the general public. Getting it installed properly is a big help but working them and the maintenance is usually a bit more than the general public want to put up with. Most of the software (front ends) are constantly being updated with features/fixes and generally people can't and wont put up with that as they just want to switch it on and it works. Most of them wouldn't want to do all the setting up that's required either so it would leave it in your hands which is a fair bit time which means extra cost and less people with the cash to afford it. The other major problem is an almost complete lack of manuals for the software that is around. The developers on here are gods when it comes to coding but they absolutely suck at writing manuals/instructions for their software. Until good reliable instructions exist most of the software is unusable to all but the people who are interested and competent enough to figure it out for themselves.

ant_king · 02-23-2007, 07:39 PM

As with most new technologies, it will take some time before adaption wouldn't be much of a pain. Right now though... sigh..