So how did you end up getting $250 in gift certificates?! Do you have an extra $250?

I actually might get paid with an ipod for a little freelance job I am doing right now. There is no gadget I want as badly, the thing is just so well designed I am shocked.

I just wish I had the auxiliary input in my car. I will have to get an adapter.

-Posted by josh on October 12, 2003 10:16 PM

Hehehehe, I don't have an extra $250 for you Josh, but maybe I'll tell everyone I know to get you Apple gift certs for your birthday and Xmas. That's what I did, and it took about a year to scrape the certs together to get the iPod.

-Posted by Dan on October 13, 2003 09:49 AM

Getting an adapter for the car can be a pain unless you have a very common vehicle.

I have an 03 Hyundai Sonata LX... no dice there. So after blowing almost 400 on an ipod I turned around and spent another $150 or so on an Aiwa head unit from Crutchfield... all the Aiwa stereos come with front-panel aux in.

With that groovy new belkin charger with a built-in miniature amplifier (so your ipod can stay at normal level and still be heard on the car), the world is good. All I need now is for someone to make a wireless ipod remote that mounts on the steering wheel....

-Posted by JC on October 13, 2003 02:52 PM

oh. To clarify. An aux-in adapter can be a pain. You can buy a tape adapter or an FM thing anywhere, but they don't sound very good.

-Posted by JC on October 13, 2003 02:53 PM

Yep, the tape adapters work, but are less than acceptable in terms of sound quality (imho).

My car has an amp in it for the aux input, making the whole ipod in the car thing workable. But I wish I had that cradle thing like they have for the iPod Beetle.

-Posted by Dan on October 13, 2003 03:23 PM

you can buy that seperately, though... it's just a thing that sticks in the cupholder IIRC, it doesn't have any special functionality.

Actually, it's two things. The thing that fits in the cupholder and the charger/line-in/amp thing I bought.

You can see it in the Learn More link
http://www.apple.com/ipod/vw/

Belkin TuneDok

Belkin Auto Kit

And then it has an aux-in splitter thing, which you already have.

The nice thing about the auto kit is it uses the line-out dock function... so instead of plugging the line into your headphones jack, it plugs into the charger. The sound seems cleaner coming out of there than from the headphone jack, but that could just be me trying to justify the $ I spent for it. :-)

But anyway, the cupholder thing's only about 30 bucks. And there are lots of other ones out there that might fit the color scheme of your bimmer better.

The auto kit thing cost me about 35 bucks from amazon.

I edited this comment to move long urls into links because those long urls were stretching the page. No other edits were made to the content. -Dan

-Posted by JC on October 13, 2003 08:16 PM

Whoops... sorry. :-)

-Posted by JC on October 14, 2003 06:35 PM

Hey Dan... after using my belkin charger thingie for a couple of weeks now, I have to note that it occasionally seems to cause an extremely annoying whine.. ground loop problems I guess. Still looking for a solution to that one....

JC

-Posted by JC on October 20, 2003 07:59 PM

Well, that sounds pretty weird. Does the iPod make that noise, or the Belkin?

-Posted by Dan on October 20, 2003 10:01 PM

it's something to do with the ipod being charged and playing at the same time... and the charger and head unit having different grounding points.

From what I read, if I were to go in and rewire the cigarette lighter so it grounded to the same place the stereo head unit is, it'd be fine. I dunno. I've only noticed it a couple of times, but when you do, it's annoying as hell. Fortunately, you can always plug into the headphone jack and unplug the charger and it goes away instantly.

It probably wouldn't be too bad on a highway, it's loudest when accellerating.

-Posted by JC on October 21, 2003 02:13 AM

wait dan,

you're telling me that you can get free gift certificates at the apple store on your b-day

how?

-Posted by on November 29, 2003 11:53 AM

No need to rewire.... just go to Radio Shack and buy a Ground Loop Isolator for $15. It's kind of a mess of wires but it gets rid of the whine!!

http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog%5Fname=CTLG&product%5Fid=270-054

-Posted by jg on December 19, 2003 02:39 PM

how do you get the free certificates from apple store?

-Posted by loop on January 13, 2004 02:48 PM

ya, how??? :)
also, if you use a tape adapter, can you still use the GLI? maybe just get multiple rca - 3.5mm adapters?

-Posted by Leo on March 31, 2004 02:38 PM

Anyone experience static when plugging the stereo cable from the IPod into the Aux input on an Aiwa car stereo? I'm having this probkem, and I wonder if that Beklin charger with amplifier in it would help? I have a Belkin charger, just the regular one, that also charges the fm transmitter if you have it. SO I'm wondering now if I should return that one to Apple (if possible) and swap it with the other Belkin, if this will improve the quality. If not that, are there good 3.5mm stereo cables I can find that reduce static?? Thanks.

-Posted by Chris on June 12, 2004 04:31 PM