Brian's Brain

Subsequent to my slide-and-roll accident debacle of two Sundays ago, AAA has thankfully provided me with a gratis Hertz rental car for use until the insurance company's adjusters determine whether or not the vehicle is totaled (and if so, how much to reimburse me). I recently decided to visit a Southern California-based friend, among other reasons because there's a much larger crop of replacement vehicle candidates available down there versus back home, so my dog and I struck out on a lengthy commute.

AAA's temporary rental policy provides for a vehicle of comparable class to the one which was involved in the accident, and as such I ended up with a Kia Sportage compact SUV:

Admittedly, its V4 engine is a bit wimpy compared to the one in the Jeep Liberty, but then again it delivers better gas mileage as a result. And curiously, I don't particularly miss the Jeep's six-speed manual transmission (the Sportage totes a more conventional automatic tranny); then again at the moment I'm not driving in heavy snow and other adverse conditions, either.

The Sportage offers integrated Sirius Satellite Radio capabilities, which I very much enjoyed re-auditioning. This comment may be a surprise to those of you who had misinterpreted my earlier critique of the service. Note that I never had an issue with Sirius's content; I always enjoyed (and continue to enjoy) such stations as Area (techno), Jam On (jam bands), Bluegrass, and Grateful Dead Radio. I just found that, because I was spending little time in the car over time, I couldn't justify the money I was spending on the service. And then there were the innumerable, ridiculous hassles I received when I tried to cancel Sirius...

Sirius was fun at first, particularly given that the system was factory-installed versus being an after-market add-on in my past experiences, but after a few hours in the car I realized how much of the material on each channel was recycled and otherwise stale. I experienced a few repeat songs, and I also noticed that most of the content I was listening to was exactly the same as what I'd heard more than six months ago. So I switched gears and auditioned more traditional audio sources; my array of Zune portable multimedia players, along with content streamed over cellular data links to my BlackBerry (Sprint) and iPhone 3G (carrier-unlocked T-Mobile) handsets.

My Jeep Liberty didn't have an auxiliary audio input jack, nor did it include audiotape playback support (for which I could have used a cassette adapter), so I'd been forced to rely on a FM transmitter to route the tunes through the vehicle's sound system. Granted, the iRiver AFT-100 is a pretty robust unit, but it still didn't tend to deliver static-free (or, for that matter, high fidelity) results. And both finding an acceptable broadcast channel at any particular location and periodically needing to switch from one channel to another as I moved between regions with different interference sources were a pain in the rump not to mention a distraction from my primary 'on the road' attention.

Therefore, I was delighted to discover that Kia included a 3.5 mm TSR audio input jack built into the console between the front seats. The company also thankfully provided a close-proximity USB port for device powering and recharging purposes. It worked well for the BlackBerry (which leverages a dedicated USB port for charging), although like the cigarette lighter power adapters I'd used before, its use injected undesirable noise into the playback experience coming from the iPhone and Zunes (which combine charging and audio input/output features on a common dock connector). Plus, with the iPhone, it flat-out refused to power the device, instead producing a never-ending cycle of charge activations-and-inactivations whenever I tried to use it.

I'm a bit baffled by the iPhone's refusal-to-charge behavior, given that the same USB cable works fine with several generic AC-to-USB adapters I own. It's not a reflection of the fact that Apple dropped Firewire-based charging on the iPhone 3G, since I'm using USB; I wonder if it has anything to do with the authentication chip built into the dock connector scheme of newer iPods and iPhones? In order to stream Pandora- and Slacker-sourced music through my BlackBerry, I needed to purchase additional hardware, specifically a 2.5mm to 3.5mm plug adapter. I initially bought a microphone-inclusive unit off Ebay so that I could also use the BlackBerry with headphones as a hands-free headset. More recently, I've also ordered a two-pack of inexpensive audio output-only adapters.

Music playback through the BlackBerry is further complicated by the fact that with both Pandora and Slacker, the handset's operating system repeatedly, annoyingly requests that I approve application requests for HTTP access to various servers. If anyone knows how I can give blanket approval to such queries on the 8830 running the latest firmware release, either in the general case or on an application-by-application basis, I'd appreciate your feedback. And as I traveled south on I5, particularly in the vicinity of Fresno-to-Bakersfield, I was surprised to encounter repeated dropouts in both Sprint and T-Mobile's cellular coverage for many miles at a time, along with archaic GPRS cellular data capabilities with the latter carrier. Given that I5 is the dominant north-to-south freeway artery for California, I would have expected more robust service throughout the route.