Entertainment

Volvo has chosen the Chicago auto show and the Volvo XC70 to debut its next generation of rear-seat entertainment. This isn’t just a fancy DVD player for the kiddies: it’s a full-fledged, factory touch-screen computer for rear-seat passengers. The system, dubbed RSEi-500, is an industry first, according to Volvo.The RSEi-500 system is Windows XP–based—no crashing jokes, please—and has a 500-GB hard drive; Wi-Fi and Sprint 3G/4G cellular connectivity; an auxiliary A/V input for iPods, gaming systems, and other media players; a USB port for flash drives; and, of course, the requisite DVD player. The system doesn’t have torrenting capabilities as far as we can tell, but you will be able to connect to your home network to download music and videos from your computer. So you’ll be able to transfer over all your favorite illegally downloaded movies, TV shows, and music. Not that we’d condone that sort of thing.Volvo says users will be able to … [Read more...] about Volvo Debuts Touch-Screen Rear-Seat Entertainment with Wi-Fi, 500-GB Hard Drive

Today’s active cruise-control systems can read the road, spot impending collisions, and automatically apply the car’s brakes.  A few even steer to some degree. Seemingly every new luxury car boasts an incremental upgrade—now with gopher detection!—but by decade’s end, Porsche will debut an active cruise with one feature that no one else has mentioned: excitement. Its InnoDrive system will allow for cornering at up to 0.70 g. That’s more sustained lateral acceleration than most casual drivers have ever experienced and the kind of g-force that has even seasoned lappers reaching for the oh-crap handles.Currently under development by Porsche on winding two-lane roads outside Weissach, Germany, InnoDrive enlists all the usual suspects of semi-autonomous driving plus two extra pieces of data: the grade of  the pavement and the radius of  the turn, both of which are stored in the navigation system’s database. This helps the car paint … [Read more...] about Porsche Is Working on the Most Entertaining Cruise Control Ever—It Can Corner up to 0.70 g

The advent of eight-track tape in the 1960s, followed by cassettes and later compact discs and even hard drives, brought the era of locally stored media to the car. But even as each new medium replaced the previous generation, radio frequency transmission has remained a constant and is likely to for many decades to come. Through the 20th and now into the 21st century, AM has been augmented by FM and, more recently, satellite radio.The common thread among all those radio technologies was that they only went in one direction: from a tower or satellite to your car. Now, thanks to wireless broadband technologies, our mobility platforms can send as well as receive radio signals. Outside the car, we increasingly get audio and video content streamed through our smartphones wherever we happen to be. We can use those mobile devices to select our content, set up playlists, or just consume content curated by someone else.“The digital revolution and content will change the car more in the … [Read more...] about The Internet Will Propel In-Car Entertainment FAR into the Future

Call it jumping the gun or simply thinking long-term about the realities of living with self-driving cars, but automakers are exploring the topic of entertaining vehicle occupants in autonomous cars. This, before a single wholly autonomous car has been sold to a customer, a milestone not expected to pass for years—if not decades—to come. A Ford patent, recently published by the U.S. Patent Office, offers a clue to the automaker’s thinking when it comes to occupying future car occupants: a giant drop-down projection screen.Based on the illustrations in Ford’s patent for an “Autonomous Vehicle Entertainment System,” the concept is not at all unlike that of a drive-in movie theater, only zoomed in somewhat for in-car viewers. It’s more of a drive-ing theater, with a roll-down screen that deploys from the top of the windshield and displays images from a ceiling-mounted projector. Ford acknowledges that the entertainment system could take the … [Read more...] about Ford Patents Windshield Entertainment System, Brings New Meaning to “Drive-In Movie”

Three years have passed since Subaru broke its own all-wheel-drive mold and gave us the visceral, rear-drive delight that is the BRZ sports car. For 2016, the sport coupe is getting an interior technology upgrade, but zero styling and powertrain updates. Sorry but this year’s entertainment enhancement is really just infotainment enhancement.Front and center (literally) on the interior upgrade list for the BRZ is the availability of Subaru’s Starlink infotainment system with a 6.2-inch display, HD radio, satellite radio, a single-disc CD player (yes, they still make those), and the usual Bluetooth/iPod/USB/aux input action. Also new for 2016 is a standard rear-view camera.Subaru also announced that it will once again introduce a blue-themed limited edition (as it did with the 2015 BRZ). It’s building 500 2016 BRZs Series.Hyperblue models, featuring black 17-inch wheels, gloss black on the badges and exterior mirrors, and a coat of retina-scorching Hyper Blue paint. The … [Read more...] about Subaru Makes BRZ More Entertaining, More Blue