My new car on order comes with HD radio as part of the package. I live in the Chicago area. I understand the concept well enough, digital signals that can be used to either transmit better quality sound or additional content, the question is whether or not the increased sound quality and/or content is going to be something of any value and/or if it gets in the way of my using things the same analog way I always have. It also come with Sirius and a nav system that I will likely never use but that uses a SD slot? Why it needs an SD slot I can’t figure out.
it shouldn’t get in the way of anything. HD radio overlays the digital signal onto the same FM carrier frequencies, so tuning to e.g. 101.7 FM gets you the same thing whether you have HD radio on or off. If you have it on, then once it locks to the digital signal, you may also have access to the multicast streams if the broadcaster is using them. The thing which might catch you off guard is those multicast streams. If you tune to e.g. 101.7, when it locks on to the digital stream the display will change to 101.7-1 which is the main program stream (and AFAIK is always the same as the analog broadcast.) if you tune or seek up, it’ll first go to 101.7-2, 101.7-3, and up through any more multicast streams (if present) before seeking to 101.9 and up.
Since IIRC you’re buying a C-Max, you can turn off HD Radio on the MyFord Touch display with one button.
need to store the map data somewhere. DVDs are old and busted, and hard drives are expensive and problematic in a car. If you don’t have navigation you can use the SD card for media files.
Thanks.
But why not just build in flash memory like a smart phone? Do you swap them out at any point for some reason? And it connects to the cloud so one asumes it can download what it needs along the way.
because it would take no time for someone out there to figure out how to enable it w/o paying for the option.
only if 1) it can tether to your phone, or 2) you plug in one of a small selection of USB 3G modems into a port. you can get turn-by-turn nav this way through SYNC Services.
No, I think it has constant 3G built in. That’s how the MyFord app can tell me from where ever what my battery state is and allow me to set charging times from afar. I can also start remotely and schedule, from afar, having it heated and defrosted before unplugging time.
ah, forgot they’re building that in with the plug-ins and EVs.
Probably though it is built and designed for cars without such built in … Ford’s concept is to share as much across platforms as possible, not to design new for each model.
Given that I have no desire or need for the Nav function, how do I go about using the slot for music? Mind you I have no iPod of my own and only a wee bit on my phone that I use when I am running. But my kids have very extensive iTune collections much of which is music I appreciate (they have very eclectic tastes). Can I just copy some of their collections onto an SD card and plug it in not as part of a media player and access it? How big can I go?
I feel so tech ignorant.
well, I’m going a little bit on assumption here, but I’m guessing they’re plugging a cell data module into one of the SYNC module’s non-accessible USB ports, where other (non-plug-in) cars don’t get it. The SYNC module itself is no different between car lines.
yes. pull the nav SD card out, put your own SD card in the slot with music files, and go to town. Note that SYNC likes your music files to be properly tagged because it builds its own index of media on attached devices. So your files should have the artist, album, track title, track #, and genre tags present. Though I think SYNC Gen. 2 (MyFord Touch) is more tolerant of mis- or un-tagged files than SYNC Gen. 1 was.
No idea. I think 32 GB SD cards work, but I’ve never plugged in a card bigger than 2 GB.
Those things take only a few bytes to send, and so Ford can probably afford to set up an unlimited contract with a cell company (it’s only a few dollars worth of data over the life of the car).
Maps require a lot more data. Since current wireless prices are something like $5/GB, and the map data itself is likely several if not tens of GB, that becomes a significant ongoing cost if it had to retrieve the data that way.