GM Eye’s Netflix in the Car

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Thought Pioneer and JVC are the only companies interested in streaming Netflix to a car monitor? Nope. General Motors has its eye on apps like Netflix, it said during the Consumer Electronics Show.

GM said apps like Netflix will be the next big thing in carsGeneral Motors’ Micky Bly who oversees 2,000 engineers at GM said at the “Connect2Car panel” at CES, “Apps such as Netflix in the car in rear seat entertainment; I see that as next.”

He noted that rear seat entertainment is even bigger overseas than in the U.S. In China, back seat TV systems sell at a rate 2 or 3 times that of the U.S.

Netflix has more than 16 million subscribers. Naturally, the on-demand video company wouldn’t comment when we called to ask if it is negotiating with any of the car companies to add an app to a rear seat system. A spokesman did say, “Netflix has a broad aspirational goal of being on any screen you want to watch a movie on.”

Also on the “Connect2Car” panel, OnStar president Chris Preuss said traffic camera apps (which show you live camera views of the traffic ahead) will be popular in the car. We’ll also see augmented reality in a heads up display, he said. An example of a heads up, augmented reality display was shown at CES in Audi’s keynote address. A holographic arrow appears on the windshield indicating exactly where to turn. Almost magically, the arrow continues to hover in the windshield, ever pointing directly to the turn-off road, as you drive.

Other panelists in the Connect2Car panel included Jessica Steel of Pandora, Chris Cook of DICE Electronics and MERA, Brian Droessler of Continental, Andrew Poliak of QNX Software and moderator John Waraniak of SEMA.

Here are some of the other facts mentioned during the panel:

It would take to the year 2030 to get all vehicles connected (via wireless), but with the aftermarket, it could be achieved in 9 or 10 years.

Pandora is now available on over 200 connected devices. On any given day, half of Pandora listening is occurring on a mobile device.

By 2014, 70 percent of CE devices will be connected to the Internet.

OnStar gets 3 million button pushes a month and has 6 million subscribers.

The QNX operating system is used in BMWs, OnStar, Toyota’s new Entune system, the Audi MMI system and it over 30 million vehicles or 200 vehicle models including Harley Davidson motorcycles. As you know, QNX, recently purchased by Research in Motion, will also be the OS for the new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet PC.

Source: CEoutlook

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2 Comments

  1. Good day Guys

    Are there any Blu-Ray/dvd

    combo players?
    I know there are dvd/vcr players. Are there any players which will perform each of them dvds and blu-rays that I can buy rather then paying for couple of independent players?

    With thanks !

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