Kenwood will introduce at CES in January, one of the industry’s first in-dash navigation/radios with a WiFi connection to the Internet.
The device will give you a connection to a dedicated Kenwood server. And it will expand the capability of car entertainment in four ways, said SVP Consumer Electronics Keith Lehmann.
The deck will let you access Facebook, Twitter and other forms of communication through voice (text-to-speech, TTS, and speech-to-text, STT, hands-free operation).
The deck will let you listen to songs on demand from the Internet, giving you a choice of hundreds of thousands of songs and video by command. It will also give you on-demand access of songs and videos stored on devices attached to the unit, such as a smartphone.
In navigation, the WiFi connection provides access to real time traffic, data services and traffic camera locations. Plus it connects to other utilities that integrate with the Garmin navigation platform.
Another novel feature of the WiFi deck is it will have an optional second screen that may be used in the rear seat by kids to watch movies or other content served up wirelessly from the radio.
More details on the new WiFi navigation/radio will be announced by Kenwood at CES.
Source: CEoutlook
I agree with previous comment. CES is in January, and the new unit will likely not ship until Febtober or ?. In the meantime we have plenty of DNX9990 on the shelf we would love to get customers excited about, and it happens to be the best car stereo on the planet. Don’t get the big spenders to wait for futureware. A Wifi radio does sound good if you have a huge data plan on your phone and can feed it. Most don’t, but there will be some that can give up a gig a month for it.
Nice to hear, but people, PLEASE don’t talk about this stuff until it’s actually IN your WAREHOUSE, tested and ready to SHIP. (Yes, that means don’t even show it at CES, especially if you don’t have a FIXED ship date in the next 30 days!).
Think about CES 2012 – how many great to opportunities did we get shown that did not ship for MONTHS – heck some of them have not shipped yet this year and CES 2013 is less that 45 Days away!!
Telling consumers etc about this now, only helps screw up a fragmented retail market, a busy selling season and keeps dollars in pockets – and current inventory sitting on your shelves (and ours!).
Keep in your pants until it’s ready to ship, sell and benefit everyone!!