Recieved a DICE for XMAS, just installed, initial impressions and questions

[msammy]

Well, my wife was kind enough to give me a DICE HD Radio with iPod integration for XMAS this year and I just installed it. It was a very thoughtful gift (that I constantly hinted I wanted!) and I was happy to find it under the tree on Christmas morning. I was so excited to get it installed and I just did, however, I'm not impressed for two reasons:

• What's with the cheesy antenna? For a product that appears at first glance to be well engineered, what the heck were they thinking when it came to the poorly engineered antenna? I'm an amateur radio operator with 25+ years of designing, building and testing antenna systems covering from 1.8 MHz to 1GHz+. There's nothing more basic than designing an efficient antenna system for the DICE which only need to operate on commercial AM and FM bands. I'm working on this now and will post my design/findings (or maybe market a better product soon!). Anyone interested?

• What's up with the iPod integration? At first I was delighted, then I was disappointed when I found my iPod (with 2682 tunes) caught in an endless loop of about the first 80 or so songs. Did I reach some limitation?

Initial observations right now - the digital FM sound quality is excellent with my stock audio system and speakers. The iPod sound quality is also excellent. If I can get a better antenna system built and the iPod integration to work (i.e., stop displaying STOP messages, etc), this would be a rock-solid and viable product. In its current configuration, I'd avoid it for now.

My Wife asked me how I like my new radio and I was very evasive and could not give her a straight answer!

How many of you out there have purchased a DICE HD Radio with iPod integration, installed it and now feel as ripped-off as I do?

[rastaFarai]

i dont have the dice HD - but what limitation of ipod songs do you have? continuous play it stops after 80 songs? or when you go to songs, you can only scroll to 80? or stereo controls only go to CD1-80 ??

[msammy]

When in song or album mode, can't get more than about 80 or so songs, then scrolls back to the first.

[rastaFarai]

ok - i dont know if i'm ever in the car long enough to listen to 80 songs... :-(

will try it out tomorrow, interesting.

[zerochief]

I had the Dice HD for a while, but the HDFM portion of the unit only worked sometimes, so I swapped it out for the regular Dice. (I never really listened to HDFM considering I have XM and iPod going). With both units I could access all 8000+ of my songs, so I think you have an isolated problem. Contact Tom at EAS in the electronics forum here. He will help you regardless of where you purchased it. Right now I'm going to stick with the Dice. It works good enough and allows me to display videos if I want to on the nav screen via video interface device. More info: http://www.xoutpost.com/bsws-mobile-e...av-screen.html

Starting to hate Dice?... you could go with Intravee II:

http://www.intravention.co.uk/

http://www.xoutpost.com/search.php?searchid=1089662

You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...&search=Search

Thread: http://www.xoutpost.com/bsws-mobile-e...than-dice.html

[DaveNW]

I can't speak to the HD issue, but I have the DICE with iPod and XM radio in my X5. It works flawlessly. The only time it ever got stuck in iPod mode was when it hit a movie I'd downloaded to my video iPod, and it didn't know how to play it. I removed the movie file, and it was fine.

Also not certain what's up with your antenna. The one I got wasn't the most heavy-duty, but it seems to do the trick just fine.

???

Dave

[zerochief]

Originally Posted by jeepguynw

The only time it ever got stuck in iPod mode was when it hit a movie I'd downloaded to my video iPod, and it didn't know how to play it. I removed the movie file, and it was fine.

Interesting! My Dice plays movies just fine!

[DaveNW]

Originally Posted by zerochief

Interesting! My Dice plays movies just fine!

Does your Dice just play the audio, or does it play the video someplace, too? Mine just got stuck. Hmm. Maybe it was just that movie?

Dave

[zerochief]

Originally Posted by jeepguynw

Does your Dice just play the audio, or does it play the video someplace, too? Mine just got stuck. Hmm. Maybe it was just that movie?

Dave

Check this thread: http://www.xoutpost.com/bsws-mobile-e...av-screen.html

[bindas]

I just installed my Dice kit with the spek dock 2 weeks ago, and it works perfect with my iPhone..no issues..