NaviGadget

alpine dock ‘n’ roll

Jul 28, 2008 gps navigation 3 Comments

Alpine is currently marketing their IVA-W205 as dock ‘n’ roll which is pretty much an in-dash system that lets you dock your PMD-B200 inside it. This way you’ll have access to the bigger 6.5″ touch screen and be able to hear turn by turn directions from your car’s stereo.

The PMD-B200 Alpine Blackbird II currently sells for $500 and the IVA-W205 for $600. So for this setup which lets you have integrated and portable navigation system in your car you’ll have to spend about $1100.

Alpine PND-K3

Jan 2, 2008 gps navigation 11 Comments

Alpine’s 2008 catalog is out in the wild and it looks like they’re releasing a couple of new GPS navigation systems in addition to their older Blackbird models.

The new models are PND-K3msn and PND-K3 and the difference between the two as you may have guessed is that one of them has support for MSN Direct and the other doesn’t. Here are the features:

• 4.3″ wide high resolution touch screen
• Pre-loaded maps of USA & Canada (including Hawaii, Alaska, Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands)
• Cradle with MSN Direct provides up-to-date traffic, weather, gas price information and movie showtimes
• Fast routing and map zooming
• 6 million POIs with selectable map icons
• Auto map zoom
• Multi-language menus and voice guide
• Customizable map and menu colors
• Animated menus
• Easy to use windshield and dashboard mount
• Built-in SD card slot and speaker for use with music player
• Announces street names during guidance
• Built-in Bluetooth for convenient hands-free calling

We do not yet know how much the new PND-K3 series will cost but we’ll be sure to visit their booth at CES 2008 to get some more information… Read More …

Alpine PMD-B200 Blackbird II now official

Oct 18, 2007 gps navigation 2 Comments

Alpine officially announced their new PMD-B200 Blackbird II with a press release but there was never mention of a 10GB HDD like we said it would last month (sorry). We’re blaming Crutchfield where we initially got the specs which also seems to have corrected their mistake.

Anyhow, let’s leave all this behind us and talk about the correct specs.

Built-in Bluetooth module, and a built-in traffic tuner still exist on Alpine Blackbird II as we previously stated. However the press release says the GPS navigation system will come with a built-in flash hard drive and run Microsoft Windows CE as the operating system. The number of POIs is listed at 6 million, and the maps -provided by Navteq- cover the United States and Canada including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

The live traffic information requires subscription priced at $60/year (first 3 months free) and is offered by NAVTEQ Traffic RDS. It is capable of informing the driver with changes in traffic flow and incidents such as construction, accidents and congestion levels.

Blackbird II has an SD card slot which accepts upto 4GB of media in MP3 or WMA format. And if you place your Alpine PMD-B200 in its windshield cradle, music and driving directions can be transferred to the car’s stereo through the built-in FM modulator. Of course for phone conversations you’ll be relying on the bluetooth module.

A unique feature of the PMD-B200 is its ability to be docked inside of Alpine’s IVA-W205 2-DIN in-dash head unit, creating a complete audio/video/navigation (AVN) system. The IVA-W205 is a robust DVD/CD/MP3/WMA AV head unit with a faceplate that slides down to a 90-degree angle, revealing the DVD/CD slot and a separate slot for the Blackbird. Once docked inside, the Blackbird becomes a dedicated navigation system that does not take processing power away from the IVA-W205, allowing the IVA-W205 to focus on the audio and video functions. All the user control functions on the Blackbird are automatically transferred to the IVA-W205’s 6.5-inch QVGA touch screen monitor.

MSRP for Blackbird II is $750 and $1000 for the IVA-W205 mentioned above.

Alpine PMD-B200 Blackbird II with 10GB of memory

Sep 30, 2007 gps navigation 13 Comments

Alpine quietly made a new GPS navigation system available at Crutchfield called PMD-B200 Blackbird II, without even announcing it on their own website first.

The new BlackBird II has a 4″ display with 480 x 272 pixels resolution, touch screen controls, and maps that cover the United States including Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands and Canada. PMD-B200 also has an extensive POI database that contains everything from a gas station to a small museum. Alpine Blackbird II also doubles as a media player handling file formats such as MP3 and WMA which can be brought on board using an SD card.

What’s different about PMD-B200 is that it has a 10GB hard disk drive but on the website there’s no mention of how much space is available for your media files. Maybe none? Good thing it supports SD cards upto 4GB – which is still a lot of music and videos.

Alpine Blackbird II is listed at $700 but is currently out of stock.

new navigation system from Alpine, the BlackBird

May 13, 2006 gps navigation Leave a comment

Already well-established as one of the big players in the U.S. market for embedded auto nav systems, Alpine is bowing to pressure from portable devices from the likes of TomTom and Garmin, announcing Thursday the launch of its own portable navigation device.

Dubbed the “Blackbird,” the versatile unit comes pre-loaded with map data for the U.S. and Canada, and will provide full turn-by-turn voice directions to an address, intersection or pre-loaded point of interest (including hotels, restaurants, airports, and gas stations). The Blackbird is also a Radio Data System traffic data receiver (requires a service subscription) and an MP3 player accepting music files on SD cards.

Alpine’s road trip buddy retails for about $750, with traffic data services starting this summer, for a $60 annual fee… via

Alpine PMD-100 GPS Navigation and MP3 Player

Apr 12, 2006 gps navigation Leave a comment

Alpine boasts a pedigree that is hard to match, and the Alpine PMD-B100 Blackbird is yet another exclusive product from the brand. The Blackbird boasts an amalgamation of GPS and musical functions. This portable handheld GPS system ships with preloaded maps of the U.S., and information is displayed on its brilliant 3.6″ touchscreen. Other features include a built-in antenna, and MP3 playback (via the SD card slot). This $700 beauty will complement any ageing vehicle that is equipped with a cassette player.

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