At last year’s MacWorld, Apple announced the iPod Radio Remote which provides a means for the iPod to display station and song information based on the Radio Data System or RDS standard. That new iPod feature will sure come in handy shortly when Best Buy releases their new RDS based in-car stereo that’s now in the works.
The news of this new Best Buy in-car stereo was discovered in one of today’s Best Buy Patents which specifically identifies the iPod as one of the key storage devices that will work with their new systems.
One of the unique aspects of this in-car radio/stereo is that it’ll allow a driver listening to their favorite music station to tag new tunes on the fly by simply pressing an Add button located on the receiver. This will then record the RDS profile of the new tune and store it on your iPod. Once at home, you’ll be able to review the RDS playlist created on your iPod and be able to check out the tunes at Apple’s iTunes Music Store.
The patent also notes that the Add button may alternatively be incorporated directly into the steering wheel, the iPod or be triggered by a simple voice command. The new in-car stereo features will also be compatible with XM Satellite/Sirius Satellite radio.
Best Buy’s documentation directly links their verbiage of a storage device 140, mentioned throughout the patent and noted here in Figure 3, as being an iPod, as follows:
For instance the storage device 140 could itself be a portable music player, such as the iPod player from Apple Computer. The music player would interface with the radio tuner through a standard interface, such as a USB, Firewire, or Bluetooth connection. The text data stored on the music player would be transferred to the computer system 200 through the same interface. At this point, an additional option could be presented that would store the songs identified through the present invention and obtained through the computer system directly onto the music player that served as the portable memory device 140. At that point, the identified songs could be directly playable on the music device.
While the system is noted as being able to work with Windows and Linux based software as well, the iPod is the only player specifically identified in the patent. And let’s face it; Best Buy is a premier iPod reseller – so count on this being aimed at the iPod owner big time to be sure.
I don’t know about you, but how many times have I heard a tune in my car that I was interested in buying but just missed out on hearing the artist rambled off too quickly by a DJ. All I’d have to do now is press that handy Add button and the tunes will be instantly added to my iPod – which is likely to be accompanied by a new iPod Radio reservation playlist system of sorts, as the patent murkily suggests. Once at home, all I’ll have to do is plug the iPod into my computer and the new iTunes reservation system will likely automatically open the iTunes Store allowing me to instantly purchase those tunes that I saved in the car.
It sounds rather simple – yet ingenious. Count me in Best Buy. Now just get it to market by this summer – please.
Written and researched by Neo.
