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Monday, January 7, 2008
Boy, oh boy are we glad Alpine is a premiere kind of company. It obviously listens to its customers and reviewers. After SvenOnTech reviewed it’s first fully integrated receiver for iPods, the iDA-X001, we only had two real complaints: no power search and the middle button wasn’t the enter key. Guess what? Fixed!
Alpine introduced today its full line of second-generation in-dash iPod integration, calling them Digital Media Receivers. Fixing what was broke and leaving what was right, Alpine sprung on to Vegas for the CES crowd to look at the iDA-X100, iDA-X200 and iDA-X300. Like the iDA-X001, this all built around Alpine’s Ai-NET BUS platform which allows for easy expandability with HD receivers, Bluetooth handsfree units, XM or Sirius radio, and other USB-based music players besides the iPod.
New to the iDA line is Alpine’s Alphabet Search or Percentage Search. Alphabet Search lets you quickly scroll through the artists or playlists alphabetically while Percentage Search divides your iPod library into six groups, allowing for quicker access to your music.
Also new to the three head units, and a first in the industry, is iTunes® Tagging. When used with the TUA-T550HD HD Radio, any HD station broadcasting metadata will enable the listener to save a songs information for later purchase. By saving it to the iPod, once the listener syncs their iPod, a new playlist of all the saved songs information appears and one can now easily purchase the music with a click.
“Many consumers view their iPod as an extension of themselves, so it’s important that they have a full iPod experience wherever they go. With Alpine’s new iPod integration Digital Media Receivers, users can have the best-sounding iPod experience available on the road,” said Stephen Witt, vice president, marketing and product planning, Alpine Electronics.
We agree with Witt and think you will to. Once we get our hands on one of these head units, ranging in price from $200 to $400, we’ll give you the full skinny on them come this spring.