Car head unit integration

[pretzelb]

A while back I looked at upgrading my car stereo and wanted to include the ability to play my Zen Micro. I was frustated to learn that most after market manufacturers only supported iPod integration out of the box.

Today while shopping for an accessory for an iPod Nano gift I was shocked to see quite a few accessories for non iPods, namely the Zune, Sansa and Zen. I'm now wondering if iPod is still the standard for car stereo manufacturers like Alpine or Sony. Anyone read anything about a change in the trends or is iPod still the king? I'm probably going to upgrade my dap soon and was thinking iPod was the best way to go for my future stereo upgrade.

 

[soloz2]

while there are still more ipod products out there you can use your zen with almost any car headunit manufacture.

My Eclipse CD4000 has RCA aux inputs so I just use a mini-RCA cable with my zmp. You can't control the zmp from the headunit... but it's not really necessary

 

[LDMES]

There are some aftermarket aux. units that you can hook up to your car headunit and it will then give you the ability to add whatever aux source you want via stereo rca connections. You will then just need an rca to (insert your connection type here) and then you'ld be good to go. My Sirius Plug and Play unit is hardwired that way and I have my iMod iPod running through my system through the second aux port as my aux unit has three steroe aux ports.

This is the one I bought:

http://www.logjamelectronics.com/piex3auxconv.html

One small note: Due to alternator nose I did need to use some inline stereo noise filters on both aux lines I use, asides from that works great, love it!!!