iPod Help Required

Right, I want to be able to play my iPod in the car all the way down through France soon and I hear there is a way you can do this via a transmitter to your car's stereo.

Anyone have experience of this? I also need to power it through the car so presumably I need a cigarette lighter adapter too? Or does the transmitter already do that? (if indeed it exists).

Are they cheap? as I reckon I only need it for the one trip.

Any help appreciated.

Thanks.

I've had 2 and both have been pretty crap, 1 from griffin called itrip and the other from aldi's. We had try to use the griffin through italy/austria and slovenia and what we noticed was that the euro's love their radio and almost every channel was taken tuning and stuff was a real pain. I take it the car stereo doesn't have a jack plug thing?

They are cheap and in my experience they are crap.

They rely on you being able to find a clear frequency on the FM spectrum, the better frequencys are in the middle of the band.

My problem with it was I was driving a 50 mile commute from leeds to near pickering every morning, and on this trip it was nigh on impossible to get a clear signal for more than a minute or two, even at the less popular extremes of the frequency band.

It seemed as though even the slightest of external signal (can occaisionally pick up radio from france/belgium on the descent down to helmsley from sutton bank) would knock the itrip out.

The Itrip i think was the first such device approved by apple, theres loads of random clones around these days.

I have also used a clone one whilst driving from barcelona to valencia along the coast, accross vast expanses of nothingness, where the FM band is relatively empty, and even there the device failed to live up to expectations.

In the end I plumped for a wired kit that connected up to the cd changer port of my VW's head unit. Cost £100 (about 5 years ago) so was probbably 5x the price of the itrip, but it just worked! even allowing you to control the ipod via the normal car stereo controls.

I did a self fitting option, of sorts. I basicly had the cable hanging out of the dash, my intention was to fit the unit into the base of the ashtray so it was concealed and hidden from view, but I never got around to it. I just disconnected the unit from the cable and shoved it in the glove box when parked.

I cant remember the make of it, but have a google, its certainly worth the additional expense.

I have a USB cigarette lighter charger you can borrow to power mr Ipod. Is this for the Clio? It is possible to use a Phono to jack lead on some older stereo's and trick the stereo into thinking the Ipod is just a CD changer.

Also had one a while ago and it was crap in the car - can't remember the name reliably, though. I have used one in a hotel, to play music from my laptop / internet on the hotel's (Bose) radio and it worked well. I think the weakness of the transmitter coupled with the use of the frequencies were the let down in the car.

If there's an input jack on the stereo, that's a much better bet.

There is too much emf interference in a car for any weak radio transmitter to function sucessfully.

I have a transmitter you can have, as I no longer have a car !

what car radio do you have? adaptors can be bought so you can control/ power your ipod via the stereo


Sounds better

safer as the ipod can be locked away somewhere.

I've been doing this for about 3 years since the batterys in my 4th gen iPod died.

Pioneer are just about the best. They do a box of tricks that works with head units as old as 1995 - I use one of the first 'OEL' headunits with lots of sub woofer control.

thanks all.

Steve...that's your next project then...

GR - thanks, can i try it?

No input jack. it's a boggo cd player part of the dash type.

Wu-Tangled":2mbs7er2 said:

No input jack. it's a boggo cd player part of the dash type.

Click to expand...

you may still find it has a CD changer port on the back, in which case there may be hope for a wired kit as the big cheese and I mentioned.

Its just more of a pain in the rear to get at the port in a part of the dash unit.