Survey Question on Infotainment System

[gromaudio]

Hi everyone,

We have a quick survey question for those who own or have used infotainment systems!!

What is the one thing you like about your infotainment system?
• Music
• Navigation
• Phone
• Other (specify)

Happy Thursday!!

[lne937s]

I don't think an "infotainment" topic belongs in the NISMO section. I think the most appropriate would be an "infotainment delete" option to cut out the associated weight and electricity draw.

[Rogue One]

Topic moved to General Chat for input from more members.

[centralcoaster33]

For me it's music. As long as I can get music to play relatively easy, I'm happy. The simpler the controls, the better. I'm not the proper demographic for infotainment though. I mean, I just use the stereo and I don't want to have to 'figure that out'. I imagine our newer car owners are more into it. For some reason, SUV people come to mind.

[MinisterofDOOM]

I've never liked any infotainment system. I have a Kenwood CD player with bluetooth in my car. I pair my phone and play my music. I use my phone for navigation, which plays through the car speakers via bluetooth. In the rare event that I answer a call while driving, I handle hands-free by pressing the "answer" button. Since I've never seen an infotainment system that lets me see all the info I want at once on-screen, I don't really have a use for a screen. I have gauges. I run Torque on my phone with a custom dash layout paired to an OBDII adapter over bluetooth.

Infotainment systems suck at everything, usually even including the ancillary functions of music playback. Oftentimes volume changes will bring up a volume overlay that obscures other info, or skipping tracks through the car media controls will perform less well than expected (my bluetooth headphones never have issues with this; why do car infotainment systems????) or only minimal track info will display, or I won't be able to view audio playback info while also viewing other useful info (like navigation or vehicle information).

[Bubba1]

At some point, I'm sure infotainment systems will improve but right now, their unreliability and complexity takes away some the focus that should be on the road, which I see as bad. I remember getting a gift cert offer for test driving a new Lincoln, and the sales rep focused most of his pitch on the infamous Myford(bad)touch infotainment system. when he hit the part about bragging it being "Microsoft" based, I asked him "ah, so whenever it takes a dump, does that mean I have to turn it off and turn it on? He changed the subject after that. I think many manufacturers seem more pre-occupied with technocrappy conveniences at the expense of the fun part of driving itself. But perhaps that's just me.

[Dattebayo]

Nobody really likes proprietary systems, I think this is the majority opinion you will find here.

I would think a place on the dash to dock an iPad or android tablet and have it sync with the sound system would be cool enough, but the legal state in this country is enough to make all manufacturers chicken s*** when it comes to making anything really cool anymore.

[gromaudio]

That is great input, thank you for your time to share the experiences that you have. One thing comes in mind, how many of you use Google Maps for navigation, and if it is a value to have Google maps on the car stereo display and not on the phone?

[MinisterofDOOM]

I don't have default navigation in my car, and I find that when I'm driving a car with built-in navigation, the interface is always so clunky that I just fall back on Google Maps anyway. I used Waze for a while, but its route finding algorithm is beyond broken. It tends to seek out low-speed residential roads with fanatical zeal, bypassing much quicker and less congested arteries. The good news is: since google owns both, you get congestion and accident updates on either app.

As far as having it on the car screen rather than the phone: yes, I think there's value. However, there are sort of two degrees of this.

1: Things like Apple Car Play and Android Auto are a great way to relay your phone's navigation to the center screen in your car, with basic interface support. But it's very limited for liability reasons, which is a pain. Still, it's better than holding a phone up or needing a windshield mount to eliminate the need to take your eyes off the road. It also means you can have your phone safely stowed and charging (since ongoing GPS can eat away at battery).

2: What Apple Car Play and Android Auto DO NOT do is link with the secondary screen in the instrument cluster. Most in-car nav systems can at the very least relay the next turn on a route through the screen in the cluster. Many can show a normal overhead nav view (though usually condensed). Right now, you can't get this by linking your phone for Google Maps or Apple Maps.

Really, in car navigation is going to be terrible until there is some standardization. We need common modularity support across all platforms, and we need reasonably standardized capabilities between vehicles. Do what you want with the GUI (although if it's anything less than flawless, people like me will never forgive you). But the core needs to be a very lightweight universal backbone that supports externally relayed app information (without a need to download a companion piece car-side) with standardized multi-screen support and interface scalability. Then anyone can develop their own navigation, media, or whatever app and simply use the infotainment system as a remote client to display info and sent interface commands back to the host phone.
This is what made the smart phone work. This is what let Palm dominate PDA sales before smart phones. This is what allowed the home computer market to really flourish. When everyone is building their own wholely disparate system (sometimes many of them, each for a different model of car) with no concern for any kind of standards or future-proofing (updates, security [these things are usually open to public networks with NO security!!!!], you're just going to have a whole bucketload of bad products. But as soon as the industry grows a brain and starts to come together to at least establish some interoperability standards and a general scope-of-features for a certain degree of consistency, the in-car infotainment system is going to flounder in subparity.

The real problem right now is that it's automotive engineers that are designing these systems, not software engineers. Correcting that is the first step toward improvement. Then we can start standardizing. Then we can start including these systems as what they really are: a network-connected OS for a basic RISC hardware architecture. In any other industry, this would be the most basic of steps, but for some reason putting these things in cars caused their design to be tipped upside-down, and what we're left with is really extremely terrible.

[gromaudio]

2: What Apple Car Play and Android Auto DO NOT do is link with the secondary screen in the instrument cluster. Most in-car nav systems can at the very least relay the next turn on a route through the screen in the cluster. Many can show a normal overhead nav view (though usually condensed). Right now, you can't get this by linking your phone for Google Maps or Apple Maps.

Really, in car navigation is going to be terrible until there is some standardization. We need common modularity support across all platforms, and we need reasonably standardized capabilities between vehicles. Do what you want with the GUI (although if it's anything less than flawless, people like me will never forgive you). But the core needs to be a very lightweight universal backbone that supports externally relayed app information (without a need to download a companion piece car-side) with standardized multi-screen support and interface scalability.

Great point of view, thank you for taking your time sharing it here. We also agree that there should be a standard for the navigation and infotainment across the vehicles, that is easy to support and update. Car manufacturers now use the infotainment system as the way to differentiate their brands, which leads to the frustration on the user's side. Plus the manufacturing cycle is quite long that makes it difficult to keep up with the mobile technology advances.

Good news that we are working on the solution for this problem, so more info will follow. Thanks a lot for your input!