There’s always been something magical about the car. From the earliest days of automotive transportation…when that “wind in the hair” experience was due to vehicles not having roofs…to today’s sophisticated luxury rides. Getting behind the wheel still gets the blood racing for many of us. It may be as simple as the appreciation of being able to easily transport oneself from point A to point B. It may be the feeling of authority, of being in charge, of so many “horses.” Or it may be the sense of satisfaction as you pilot your vehicle deftly through your neighborhood universe.

Whatever makes your ride a thrill, one thing is certain…your position of authority in the captain’s seat has taken on a greater sense of importance. At least you’d think so, given the immense amount of technology and information now available at your fingertips.

Our driving experience is becoming revolutionized. Long gone are the days when your simple instrument panel included a mechanical cluster with a speedometer, odometer and gas gauge. Sitting in the captain’s throne is a lesson in amazement as high-tech automotive instrument panels are electronic marvels, providing a wealth of digital data, information and directions, all at the touch of a button or through voice-activated commands.

Automotive instrument panels are beginning to move away from mechanical instrument clusters to more robust LCD-based displays that offer simulated instrumentation and a variety of other driver-information applications (rearview and blind spot cameras, GPS navigation, and real-time traffic and weather information). Accordingly, automotive system designers are looking to electronics vendors to provide hardware/software solutions with the right combination of image processing horsepower and easy application development to get digital instrument panel solutions to market.

Behind the car instrument panel is the true brains of the system, an automotive instrument cluster control system powering all analog gauges, displays, LED warning lights and sound signals. Its primary functions are communicating with external data sources and controlling data output devices. With the number of data sources on the rise and the increasing use of in-vehicle connectivity, instrument cluster control systems are providing limited gateway functionality.

Long gone are the days when all you had to control was the AM radio.

Today’s vehicles have climate control, GPS navigation, wireless hands-free cell phone capability …and seemingly 75 to 100 different knobs on an instrument panel. Naturally, the concern is that you’re spending less time with your eyes on the road. Some suppliers are consolidating these dozens of controls into a single knob that controls eight functions, including climate, entertainment and navigation. Such technology can locate controls of the greatest importance around the steering wheel and set most other functions on the single controller mounted on the center console.

Having the best seat in the house, or in this case the car, should afford you with premium options – from music and entertainment to in-vehicle connectivity. The electronic ingenuity now available helps achieve the standard desired by today’s automotive industry. One thing that’s indisputable in our modern, mobile lifestyle is that we’re constantly seeking new ways to enjoy and take our digital content with us wherever we go. Unfortunately, this has not always been possible because severe road conditions, temperature extremes and constant vibrations have limited the amount and type of media you could use in your car.

Breakthrough advances in storage technology, however, are now producing hard drives rugged enough to stand up to the rigors of the road. This is revolutionizing the entertainment and navigation capabilities that you enjoy on the road.

Today’s storage solutions let you bring your living room entertainment experiences on the road. Imagine you are leaving on a road trip with your family to enjoy a few days up north. Before leaving the driveway, you wirelessly sync your car’s hard drive with your home network.

By the time everyone is buckled up, you’ve loaded the family’s newest music, photos, a few TV shows and some favorite movies right into your car’s instrument panel.

Taking your digital content with you in the car means you have instant access to all of your digital music, not just a portion of it, while you’re driving. The days of rifling through a cache of CDs tucked into your sun visor are a distant memory. You’ve got the music you’d like to hear right here, right now. At the same time, the crew sitting in the cheap seats can play movies and video games in the back.

And, as real-time wireless content becomes more widely available, you’ll be able to download music and movies straight into your car.

As maps grow more complex, map databases, especially 3-D maps, take up too much space to store on a CD or DVD. High-capacity hard drive storage solutions create a richer navigation experience, with features like 3-D maps, photos of your destination and animated directions.

Innovations in storage technology are changing the way we experience digital content both at home and in our cars.

With the advances in navigation and on-the-road entertainment empowered by digital storage, your driving experience will never be the same…except you still have the best seat in the house. It’s good to be the captain of this ship!
Mike Trudel, Freelance Writer. Delphi Corporation is poised to apply its expertise and know-how to provide vehicle manufacturers and consumers with in-vehicle entertainment and connectivity. To learn more about Delphi Corporation, please visit www.Delphi.com/4Connected.

How to get a car rental There’s more to renting the car than just reserving it and paying for it, to make sure that you get the best deal follow these steps and tips. STEPS: 1.Choose three to four car rental firms that fit your wants and needs, do this either through the phonebook, or through the internet, remember to scan every possible firm before you make a choice, you don’t want to overlook the best car rental because you got bored from looking 2.Contact the agency and ask about their special offers, location, availability, pickup sites, rates, special rates, hotel and airline partnerships, extra charges, insurance, everything you can think of that can help lower what you have to pay for your car rental, or what would make the car rental more convenient for you.

3.Choose a pickup point; find one that is near you so it won’t be a hassle, some car rental companies pay for the cab ride you have to take, some pick you up at your home or at the airport to take you to your rental. 4.Pick a car, depending on your needs, find a car that could fit all the people you’ll have in it, and if you’re alone just use a compact, some rentals charge higher for larger vehicles. 5.The next thing to do, after you’ve totally decided on which to take, remember to reserve it, some car rentals include the reservation fee on the overall rent, some make it out to be an extra fee, you should also look out for this when get a car rental.

TIPS For the best deals for your money here are some tips when looking, finding and taking out a car rental. 1.When getting a car rental check for available upgrades at no charge, you’d want the best deal so you’d want the best car, to do this, you should go pickup your car early in the morning, when the other cars haven’t been returned yet, this way there would be a shortage on economy cars and the firm might just give you an upgrade for a lower price. 2.Get an internet car rental.

These types of rentals offer internet only discounts, and sometimes even accepts find a car at your own price methods where you just give them your budget and they’ll find the best deal for you, plus you wont have to go anywhere to get a rental. 3.Fill the gas tank before you return your car, car rentals will charge you, at an inflated price, the cost of the gas needed to fill the tank. 4.Look for packages like fly-drive-stay or fly-drive, these will get you great discounts on rentals, and what’s more you won’t have to worry about other details like a hotel or an airline, everything’s there.

You can find these packages on must travel agencies. 5.If your frequent flyer discount or free flight is about to expire, there are some car rental companies that offer to exchange these discounts to discounts on your car rental, although its more cost effective to just fly with your frequent flyer discount, if its going to expire anyway, why wait? These are just a few of the things you’ll need to know, but always remember to be pesky, ask questions, ask for discounts, the only reason why people don’t get better value for the things they buy is because they’re too shy to ask.

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The improvements in automobile aftermarket accessories market in the last decade that have been nothing short of astounding.

Some of these players, for example, can do things literally unheard of just a few years ago. They can run a GPS navigation system, play music and display a television picture all at the same time.

They do this by splitting operating functions in order to display all three at once, which is why answering the question “What is a picture in picture car DVD player?” might be something worth exploring.

For those who are thinking of adding one of these versatile and highly entertaining players to a vehicle, it can be helpful to think of how a car DVD player displays all three functions as being similar to how a television makes use of PIP or “picture in picture” capabilities to show not only a currently-running television show but also, perhaps, a TV program over on another station, both at the same time.

Picture in picture in a car DVD is similar to this, though the intention is more to provide different screens at the same time to operate the player itself.

This isn’t to say that it can’t display a television program through its standard analog TV tuner, because it can do that.

What it (PIP) more has to do with is giving the operator of the player a way to set up the GPS navigation, get it running, select music that is going to be played or a radio station that will be listened to and then task the player to also run a movie or show a TV program.

It does this through use of embedded software and tuners contained within the player’s memory, operating system (usually Windows CE) and microprocessor chip.

The software that CE makes use of will task the picture-in-picture function without a user needing to know much about how it works. And once the picture-in-picture is pulled up, all of the different multitasking applications can take place.

Usually, picture in picture functionality is most often found in what are called “2 DIN” car DVD players, which are players that take up about 100 mm or 4.25 inches of height in a car’s dashboard. DIN is just a way of denoting whether the height of the player is 50 mm or 100 mm.

A 1 DIN player is usually half the height of a 2 DIN player.

Most 2 DIN players can accommodate picture in picture as well as a number of other functions that won’t be found in a single DIN player.

For people who may be more comfortable with operating a television set than a car DVD player, picture in picture can come in quite handy. It can help to eliminate any sort of button on the player other than a simple on-off and a few other basic functions, placing everything else, instead, on a touchscreen display that a user can simply touch and then task.

The operating system and the software in the player will take care of everything else.

For those considering going with an upgrade to a vehicle manufacturer’s sound system in a car, one of these new car DVD players can make for a great aftermarket accessory. They are relatively affordable and can add a great deal to most any vehicle, making long trips and short trips alike more pleasant and even fun.

To get the latest car DVD player models with picture in picture technology visit Chinavasion.com. Click on the link above or paste this URL into your browser: http://www.chinavasion.com/index.php/cName/car-dvd-players/