Well all I can say is thank goodness I have such a great relationship with my service tech. The $300 kit, plus $200 in labor for the install amounts to a useless heap of .. @#$@$.
I bought the iPOD video last month, and have been rather satisfied with it from several fronts. It even plays video straight out of the headphone port with the $19 iPod AV Cable from Apple. So it really is handy for watching movies on the road.
So. I try to use it in my car. I have a Volvo V70XC Cross Country 2001. It has been an OK car, when it is NOT in the shop. That is another story for another blog entry.
I tried every single FM transmitter in the Atlanta Lenox Apple store. I bought one, walk out to the garage, tried it out, return.. 6 iterations later, nothing would work. I also tried the cassette adapter, but my stereo wants to reverse the tape, so it incessantly clicks. Other than the clicking, this is the ticket, as it costs $20. I can't stand the clicking, so I trucked over to Nally Volvo on Windy Hill in Atlanta GA having heard that Volvo has some kit for the car.
They had apparently just received this kit. Grant, my service rep there, had not actually gone through an install. We all, including his manager, thought it would simply allow me to play my songs from the iPOD.
Wrong. Observe the image to the right. That screenshot on the iPOD is all you get. Also, you have to have your CD Changer removed just to install it. I wondered why until I tried it out.
What it does is require the user to formulate 9 new Playlists within iTunes. Then the 10th Playlist is not actually a playlist. The 10th allows you to play all your songs, sorted by Artist. I have 7000 songs. So the stereo is not capable of addressing that many songs. Moreover, neither the stereo nor the iPOD allow the user to view what is actually playing. No text is displayed anywhere just numbers like a CD player.
In short, this is a POOR design and reflects very poorly on the judgement of Lars-Erik Roos, Managing Director, Accessory Business Unit at Volvo Cars.
All they needed was a RCA stereo lead to 8mm cable and the user could play using all the built-in features of the iPOD. Yet, there is no AUX RCA inputs to plug into in Volvo stereos prior to 2004 (?). With the Volvo iPod kit, all of those features are disable or obfuscated.
Thankfully, Nally is making a full refund of the $500 and replacing my CD Changer back into the car to restore my status to the previous setup.
I just can't figure how Volvo would ever have allowed this to come to pass to begin with?
Mystifying.
