i bought an aftermarket radio, and it will play data style DVD's (dual layers?)

and a data style DVD will hold ~1050 MP3 songs.

a data style CD will hold ~175.

my one car has a factory CD changer that will hold 6 CDs, and will play Data style MP3 cds' - that equals 1050 songs.

the real drawback to MP3 used to be getting something to convert CD audio to MP3, but now, you can set your Windows Media Player to extract (RIP) the cd Audio in MP3 format.

even if you have pulled the music off in CD format, you can re-rip it, and it will pull it in MP3 format, and they will both be on your hard drive.

then, you just drag & drop the MP3 files on a CD to make a "data style" CD, vice a music cd



i keep wanting to get XM, but i am so cheap i squeek

here's the XM traffic coverage chart:
http://www.xmradio.com/navtraffic/market_coverage.xmc

 

Thats all well and good if you have that many songs to begin with. I don't, and XM plays a lot of stuff I don't own anyway. I had an MP3 CD get me through 3 long weeks with no radio reception, but since I've gotten satelite, I won't ever go back. I despise local radio now.

 

I don't have one that will play dvd's but I have one that does mp3 cds and thats good enough for me. I have had xm and wasn't impressed with it.

 

Your highly unlikely to get 175 MP3's on a cd the most I've ever got was 115 or 120. My GF has an Acura TL that plays DVD audio disks but it's a pain to create them and because of the file size you can't get anymore on a 4gb DVD than you can a regular 700mb CD. Now you can get radios that will play DVD MP3's but a lot of radios don't have a "list" function so you can scroll through the songs titles on the disk without playing them. Pioneer offers some radios with "U-Bus" which allows you to plug those little flash drives in. Those can be bought up to around 64Gb holds the same amount of average MP3's as 91 CD's or 16 DVD's, all for less than $100.00 +the radio.

That being said, I love my mp3's but I'm not giving up my XM.

 

J,

i'm not sure on the number. i have made a few, never paid attention to the max number, the one i am playing now has 152 on it.

my buddy at work made the DVD with 1000 songs on it, i assume it was dual layer?

my Pioneer AVIC D3 plays either, and lists out all the titles, on the DVD, just like the CD.

more info on AVIC models:
http://www.avic411.com/forum/

YMMV

 

You could possibly get that many on a CD if the songs are small or the quality is lower, either way it's a huge improvement over a standard cd. I haven't seen or sold a CD changer in years due to MP3 cd's. (good riddance)

If he got over 1k songs on a DVD he made an MP3 DVD (only newer players will play those). You can also make a DVD audio disks. Which decompresses the MP3's into a different form. The quality is supposed to be awesome but you can only get about 15 on a dvd and it takes some weird software to get it to work (totally not worth it). I have a AVH-P7500DVD in my semi and it will play DVD movies and DVD-Audio but not DVD MP3 disks.

U like that AVIC? I've been waiting on the price of the AVIC-Z2 to come down but so far it's still pretty high. I just like the 2 disk drives and a built in HD.

 

these were in basic MP3 format on the DVD, i was able to copy them off on all the computers we had (we passed the disk around the office- was something for everyone)

the D3 seems to be some sort of interim model.

No, knowing what i know now, i would not buy a D3 again, unless it was at a screaming good price (say less $500 new?)

the D3 has too many GUI problems (the FM & audio are hard to work)
-the menus are just stupid hard to navigate
-the navigation algorithms are not up to speed (route longer distances)
-Navi DVD has to be in to do ANYTHING with the Navi.
-it doesn't have any Dolby 5.0 outputs (nothing but stereo)
-it doesn't have any decent Video outputs (only composite video)

its a neat toy, and my wife is comfortable using it, so it stays.

but it's not a $1000 unit.

most of the other pioneer units have 2 disk drives, and better Navi routing.

you can maybe score a Z2 off that AVIC forum, or ebay.