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Doug Newcomb
Freelance writer, former editor of Car Audio and Electronics, Car Stereo Review, Mobile Entertainment, Road & Track Road Gear, Installation News and author of Car Audio for Dummies.
The last decade has been an unprecedented era of innovation in mobile electronics. In 1999, mobile video was just starting to gain momentum, propelled by the extraordinary popularity of DVD. Satellite radio, hard-disc head units and even the iPod were still a couple of years away, and the first portable navigation systems wouldn't appear for almost five years.
The last year of the 20th Century also marked the beginning of another important period in mobile electronics - the start of the ECLIPSE AVN era. And the car audio industry has never been the same since.
From the very first AVN product introduced in Japan in 1997 and the breakthrough AVN2454 at the 2004 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, ECLIPSE set a benchmark for the rest of the industry, and with subsequent AVN introductions the company has consistently raised the bar with regard to what both dealers and consumers expect in full-featured, high-performance aftermarket car audio and electronics.
Here are just a few of the advances that are part of the AVN heritage:
Double-DIN functionality and fit.
While many other car audio companies largely abandoned the double-DIN head unit, ECLIPSE was for a time the sole supplier of such solutions to dealers and consumers alike. By taking advantage of the extra real estate in the dash provided by a double-DIN opening, the company realized that larger screens could be used to more easily display DVD movies and navigation mapping, as well as control info for the head unit. Nowadays, almost every major car audio company has added double-DIN head units to its product line.
Touch-screen control:
Few people realized that ECLIPSE pioneered touch-screen controls on car audio head units-not only on AVN products, but on head units the company introduced 10 years before in 1989. But the ease of using a touch-screen was further advanced on AVN head units.
Hard-disc drive (HDD) navigation.
While most competitors were just switching from CD- to DVD-based navigation for quicker access to mapping software and route calculations, ECLIPSE leapfrogged ahead to HDD-based navigation, which allows the fastest routing possible - and drivers to get on their way in less time.
Online Audio Customization.
Because ECLIPSE was one of the first car audio companies to supply an SD card slot for access to digital music files, the company also recognized the potential for what it termed E-iSERVE. Using this feature, car owners could quickly and easily take a sonic "snapshot" of their vehicle's unique acoustic properties and store it on an SD card. Then the information could be uploaded to ECLIPSE's E-iSERVE website and signal processing that's ideally suited to the car's acoustics could be created and subsequently loaded into the head unit.
Hybrid navigation system.
With the AVN2210p, ECLIPSE created an entirely new car navigation solution by combining the convenience of a portable with the full functionality of an in-dash system. By partnering with portable navigation leader TomTom for the AVN2210p, ECLIPSE combined a trusted name in portable navs with the company's own reputation for high performance and high value.
In fact, even before the first AVN head units were introduced a decade ago, the ultimate in sound quality relative to cost was always a hallmark of ECLIPSE products. And that tradition was refined with each subsequent generation of AVN products - as it surely will be for the next 10 years and beyond.
While no one can predict what we'll see in the next decade, we can be sure that ECLIPSE AVN head units will be pointing the way to the future.
Paul Taylor
Personal technology columnist, Financial Times.
For the past few months the Taylor family's ageing 1999 Subaru Outlook has played host to a stunning piece of new technology the Eclipse AVN7000 HDD Navigation System from Fujitsu Ten. The AVN7000 and its European version, the AVN8826, is a powerful dashboard-mounted car navigation and entertainment system with a 20Gb hard drive and a 7in-wide high-resolution touch sensitive LCD display that emerges from the unit and tilts up at the push of a button. Fujitsu Ten (www.eclipse-web.com) pioneered the concept of integrating audio, visual and navigation (AVN) capabilities into a single in-dash unit.
Aside from its sleek design, the AVN7000 is also unusual for packing an advanced DVD video player, multi-source audio and radio receiver and touch-controlled GPS system into a standard-sized package.
It is sophisticated but easy to use. For example, you can search for a destination in several ways, such as by address, map co-ordinates, points of interest or telephone number. Like most GPSs, the AVN7000 offers options such as setting preferences for certain kinds of road, a choice of recommended routes and route previews, and allows requests for detours.
Intelligent auto-rerouting activates as soon as you stray off the route to guide you back on track.
The AVN7000 also tells you which lane you should be in for turns and provides auditory notice of upcoming turns while the map display automatically zooms in to show the intersection. All extremely helpful and very accurate.
The AVN7000 also shows driving distance and arrival times and the clock is automatically adjusted when crossing time zones.
The entertainment capabilities are also impressive. The unit can play just about any format of DVD or CD.
Such performance does not come cheap. The AVN7000 costs about $2,400 (the AVN8826 is €2,600) but it sets the benchmark for high-performance entertainment and GPS navigation systems.
