EBU • UER - Technical Review

No. 294 (April 2003)

ICE cold in a Lexus

This year's was the 73rd International Motor Show to be held in Geneva. It was certainly the biggest in terms of the amount of floor space it occupied – in excess of 76,000 square metres – and the number of new models launched. However, I had the nagging feeling that it was putting on a brave face at a time when the industry is struggling. Yes, there were off-the-wall concept cars and prototypes – the automotive equivalent of designer fashion – and the obligatory gas-guzzling super-luxury behemoths from the likes of Maybach, Rolls Royce, Cadillac and Mercedes. But overall there was a feeling of conservatism and of incremental change – a nose change here, a tailgate change there and much more of the same. Perhaps I'm getting jaded!

Conservatism was certainly the order of the day in In-Car Entertainment (ICE). I arrived on the first press day armed with enthusiasm and a couple of kick-off questions loaded with acronyms such as DAB and DVB-T – fully expecting to be shown fascias filled with audio-visual goodies that had reaped the benefits of the EBU's technical patronage.

Call me an optimist, call me naïve, but the reality was almost a total disappointment. With the exception of RDS, there was no factory-fitted ICE I could find in the whole show that wasn't as middle-aged as me. Not an entertaining forward error corrected (FEC) digit in sight.
One of the nice gentlemen who were minding the apparently Panzer-inspired Rolls Royce Phantom did concede that everything was optional in this segment of the market. At a price, he added as an afterthought. The neighbouring Maybach 62 which, if you look beyond the emperor's clothes, is a Mercedes S-Class on steroids, had two chrome-plated dentists chairs in place of rear seats and weighed in at 2,780 kg and CHF 600,000. It nevertheless had to make do with an FM radio and TV system – presumably stereo – and a DVD to disguise the fact that the analogue reception would largely let the side down amid such sumptuousness.

Any colour you want, but no DAB

Aston Martin, part of the Ford empire, fits relatively high-end discrete FM radio / CD units in its vehicles. There are no immediate plans to migrate to DAB units, but it is recognized as a future inevitability.

Ford itself wouldn't give a clear answer as to its digital ICE intentions, but nothing other than RDS-equipped FM radios, CD and DVD players were to be found on its stand. Immediately after the Motor Show, I discovered that Ford UK had released a statement to the effect that Blaupunkt's Woodstock DAB52 radio would be available on all UK models as a dealer-fitted accessory from January 2003. Obviously Ford UK estimates there is business to be done now that the UK's national DAB coverage has topped 80%.

No one I spoke to from either Citroën or Peugeot had any idea about DAB in their vehicles.

Opel was the most upbeat about DAB. Opel ICE systems are sourced from a bewildering array of OEM manufacturers, and any given unit bearing an Opel model number could be from more than one manufacturer. The corporate ICE policy is nevertheless clear-cut and, importantly, is reviewed from time to time. In this case, Opel is planning to include DAB as part of its ICE offering in the 2004 model range. Opel's parent company, General Motors, has been delivering Canadian-built Chevrolet Impalas and Monte Carlos to the Canadian market with factory-fitted DAB radios since the end of 2002, making it the first car manufacturer to do this.

One common theme that emerged was that DAB will not be included as a factory-fitted option until the service offering matures and is available nationwide. This legislates against the concurrent widespread availability of ICE DAB systems throughout Europe.

Two distinct approaches to ICE can be observed. There are stand-alone DIN-sized radio / cassette / CD units in the vehicle fascia (more about this later) and there are systems that are integrated into the vehicle structure. In this latter case, the control and display elements are integrated in the vehicle fascia while the central electronic components of the ICE system – tuner, signal processors, amplifiers, disc players etc. – are secreted about the vehicle interior, away from sources of interference and the attentions of radio thieves.

Both Volvo and BMW integrate their entertainment systems. BMW has its electronic modules mounted in a rear wing and Volvo has its system in a roof space. Both manufacturers remarked that their digital radio and television modules are ready to respond to the market, as soon as there is a demand.

Volvo's integrated ICE

The after-market approach to ICE tends to be found in the lower and middle segments of the automotive market and perhaps in the sports car segment too. This type of installation is the upgraders' delight, and largely explains the presence of a whole host of after-market manufacturers and accessory vendors in halls 1 and 3 of the Motor Show.

Clarion, silencing the back seat driver

Hall 3 houses the hard-core vehicle modifiers who think nothing of replacing the whole back seat and load area of a vehicle with enormous speakers, active cross-overs, sub-woofers, bridged amplifiers and the like. In these circumstances, the original purpose of a car becomes totally incidental and the ensemble again becomes designer fashion to be seen in and, unfortunately, heard.

Hall 1 was the saving grace of the entire show as far as I was concerned. Here, grouped within 100 square metres or so, were Alpine, Blaupunkt, Clarion, Grundig, JVC and Panasonic. All of these manufacturers produce discrete non-vehicle dependent (also termed after-market or retrofit) radios, CDs, DVDs and GPS units in various combinations, but also systems designed for integration in specific vehicles and for specific customers, often with complete anonymity. I scoured the Panasonic and Alpine stands and glossy brochures but I was unable to find any DAB or DVB.

JVC has the KT-DB1000 DAB tuner, a remarkably small box designed to be mounted somewhere out of sight and controlled from a DIN-sized unit in the dashboard. There are four of these DAB-enabled radios in the JVC range – in the photo below the KD-SH9101 car radio is shown doing the business.

JVC's KT-DB1000 DAB box and KD-SH9101 car radio

Clarion's slightly larger DAH923 DAB tuner is also meant for out-of sight mounting and there are no less than ten radios in the Clarion range that can control it. Clarion was hiding out amongst the "body-modifiers" in Hall 1, by the way.

Clarion's 2003 DAB lineup

The overwhelming heavyweights in the DAB ICE stakes are Blaupunkt and Grundig. Grundig's Car InterMedia programme boasts two DIN-size models containing their minuscule DAB 300 module. One of these, the Challenge 530 DAB also contains an RDS radio and cassette deck, whilst the other – the Allixx DAB – has an RDS radio and CD deck.

The Grundig Allixx DAB

Get the picture?

Blaupunkt, the Robert Bosch subsidiary, has been successfully marketing its Woodstock DAB 52 model for some time now. This is the model that Ford is dealer-fitting to its cars in the UK. The big news at the Motor Show was that the DAB 52 is being replaced by the DAB 53. The 53 has all the features of the 52 – an AM / RDS FM radio, a DAB tuner, a CD deck capable of playing audio and MP2 / MP3 data from CD-R discs, and a powerful four-channel amplifier.

Cosmetics and a Flash card separate these two – the Blaupunkt Woodstock DAB52 and DAB53

The additional feature provided by the DAB 53 is in fact a card trick. It accepts a multimedia Flash memory card that it can use as a recording medium for DAB audio data. Thus if you hear a piece of programming that takes your fancy, you can push the record button and save it for posterity, or at least until you can park the car to make a note of the album name, telephone number, address or whatever that was important to you.

Audio autonomy on the road

MP3 is a most acceptable digital audio format for use in a moving vehicle. Its audible shortcomings are not really an issue in a noisy car, and the packing density achievable is a positive asset. One MP3-coded CD-ROM in a dashboard-mounted player can comfortably see off a six-CD or even a 10-CD audio jukebox unit. A one-Gigabyte disk would provide about twenty hours of audio autonomy using MP3 files coded at 128 kbit/s. The people at Blaupunkt have obviously been thinking along these lines.

Roger Miles
EBU Technical Department