Nowadays anyone can install a state of the art video system in his or her car without spending exorbitant amounts of money, and mobile audio and video equipment has become such a common place in cars that we no longer get too surprised at the sight of such systems. However it wasn't that long ago, let's say just over ten years, that being able to spot a video screen displaying images inside a vehicle was something out of this world.
When looking at the evolution of the car audio-video industry since 1995, we can't help but marble how far these systems have evolved in just over 10 years, and it makes you wonder where the technology will be headed in the next decade. In 1995 for instance, car makers were barely on the brink of discarding the old tape deck players and beginning to standardize on CD players. Today it is becoming rarer and rarer to spot a car on the street with one of those old CD players, which just 13 years ago were still considered the latest and greatest in technology.
And soon after the CD player evolution, came the MP3 players, which were closely followed by video screens with few capabilities like the ability to display a limited amount of theme graphics to accompany the music. Even these systems were at the time considered state of the art technologies worth competing against.
By contrast today's car audio systems, come integrated with an array of capabilities both visible and hidden, which make the old systems look ancient. Today's video display resolutions are far clearer and produce less glare, DVD and game playing capabilities are built right in, IPOD and MP3 storage capability are more and more common place. Cell phone receiver support is also becoming more standard. Not to mention the advent of digital systems like XM and Sirius as well as the terrestrial digitization of the airwaves.
Predicting where the evolution of the car audio and video technology is headed in the next 3 years should not be too hard considering that there is so many standalone technologies around as mentioned in the previous paragraph, that scream at the need to be integrated into one single system and I believe that is where we will see the Alpine, JBL, and Pioneer systems headed in the next 3 years. The harder part in my opinion is predicting where the evolution of car audio and video systems will be in 10 years from now. Stay Tuned.