As I watched the demonstration, a DVD was inserted and the DVD player application was started. The application was pretty simple, but allowed access to all the standard features any DVD player would offer. When Play was selected, I expected the screen I was looking at to start showing a video, but no, the video started playing on the two screens in the back seat (also seven inch 16:9 aspect ratio). The sound track for the movie came pouring over the new 5.1 Dolby AC-3 sound system. It was almost a religious experience.

The controlled environment in the cabin of a car is an excellent place for a surround sound audio system. Subtle sound effects that you might not otherwise experience in a theater or at home, with any quality of system, were pleasant surprises. The center channel speaker made it seem as if the actors were right in the car with you. I got in the back seat and watched, wondering if I shouldn't just have a theater system in my car and forget having one in my home.

The new large screen allows for a really nice navigation system, too. The new AccuRoute navigation software takes full advantage of the big screen for turn-by-turn navigation, as shown in Figure B.

FIGURE B

The new AccuRoute navigation software takes full advantage of the big screen for turn-by-turn navigation. Click picture for a larger image.

While I was watching the movie in the back, the demonstration person switched to Odyssey and started showing how it uses the full screen to display a detailed moving map and inset graphic with text for the next maneuver. The navigation system on the new 320DV now has dead-reckoning support for determining the vehicle location during navigation in addition to GPS (Global Positioning System). This will really help in urban canyon areas where GPS might not work or in areas where you're traveling through tunnels and must navigate, such as the New York City area.

The Clarion unit uses an Intel Pentium Processor with MMx technology for the automotive environment. This isn't your father's Pentium. It's optimized electro-mechanically with the automobile to deal with the temperature extremes that exist in the car. Your standard desktop processor doesn't stand a chance in the car through the various temperature extremes that exist outside in an ungaraged car. The Pentium Processor makes easy work of MP3 playback on the new Auto PC. The new machine has 32MB of memory for the Processor to party on so you can run more sophisticated applications.

One fascinating new issue that comes up with the introduction of DVD playback is the fact that the driver may very well not want to be listening to the movie while the passengers are watching. Clarion has addressed this by allowing the rear passengers to use wireless headphones for listening to the movie while the driver listens to CDs (in the CD changer), MP3s (on a CF card), or the radio through the car speakers. The Clarion 320DV will also support contact data exchange with the PalmOS. All of these great new features landed Clarion the CES Innovations 2000 award. Considering the enormous amount of interesting new products at CES, this is quite a significant achievement. Only a small fraction of the products at the show are awarded this honor.