I bought a Dension DMP3 hard-drive based MP3 player at a ham radio show in Ohio (I never heard of it either). I got it installed under my seat this weekend, and have the satellite display mounted right under my head unit, in front of the gear shift. It's very cool, I put a 40 GB hard drive in it and I'm loving having 3,300 songs at my fingertips. I also like the display, and you can customize the layout. The DMP3 is actually made in Hungary, and they're apparently just getting started in the US. It has a European feel to it, and comes with start-up logos from various European car manufacturers, including Ford. Their website is
http://www.densionusa.com Now for a couple pics:
I got the silver satellite display only because I thought it stood out better with the blue LCD. You can also get black.
The DMP3 has RCA outputs and I think you can also buy a FM unit to transmit an FM frequency. The only thing that bugs me with my install is the aux-in cord that gets the audio into the Aiwa (it doesn't have inputs on the back.) I think what I'll eventually do is open up the Aiwa and splice the audio signal inside through the bottom.
Closeup of the satellite display, there's an identical display on the front of the unit itself, they're connected with a phone-type cord. I designed the display format, with the artist, album & track #, song name, total & elapsed time, etc.
The install took about 4 hours, it would have been about 2.5 if my we could have figured out how to get the head unit out of the metal chassis easier...
We used the unused power seat plug under the driver's seat to get constant 12V power and ground. Anyway, I think it's a very cool addition to my kickin' Contour audio system. Now I don't even have to swap CDRWs with 175 songs on them any more, I've got all my music available at once. I calculated that if I fill up the 40GB hard drive, that's 28 straight days of music...
