Media Integration

The consumer electronics industry has exploded over the past 10 years, especially in the area of small, personal multimedia devices, creating a large need to focus on media integration in vehicles. The days of consumers being content with a combination of broadcast via AM or FM and one recorded media source (8-track, cassette, CD) are gone. The pace at which media devices change is happening at an ever-increasing rate, both in capacity and functionality.

The media integration team at the ERL focuses on both of these aspects. The primary goal is to keep an eye on the industry and keep up with its pace to make sure our interfaces keep up with the technology and the features they provide in their devices.

The second challenge presented by consumer electronics is their increasing capacities. It is pretty easy to find the song you want to hear on a 12-track CD. The challenge is finding the same song on a portable media player that can hold 40,000 songs. This number has probably already increased since the day this was written and now as you are reading it today. It is essential to provide the driver the same ease in selecting songs from devices as it was with the CD.