It’s press day at CES 2008 and already we’re excited about the new products for this year. At their press conference Sunday morning, Pioneer showed off a new hybrid nav system – a cradle lets you install it on your dash, but you can also undock it and take it with you.
Called the AVIC-F500BT or AVIC-LINC (Lifestyle Integration Console), this nav features conversational voice commands to not only input address but also to access your music library and make hands-free calls via Bluetooth. AVIC-LINC also offers MSN Direct, 12 million Points of Interest and text-to-speech for more precise audio cues. For mainstream consumers or lazy folks who want to avoid installation, you have the option to plug the unit into the factory radios Aux-in. Of course, I advocate installing the hideaway box
Other products at the briefing include speakers with basalt technology, the TS-D series. Pioneer’s grinding up basalt rocks and turning them into fabric for speaker cones (which lead to their cheeky slogan “Rock beats Paper”). Also, three new CD players feature ASR (Advance Sound Retriever). This takes your crappy digitally compressed music and adds data that was lost during the compression process. Can’t wait to hear how well it works!