AVIC-Z1 Car Navigation System Does Lots

By Digital Trends Staff November 2, 2005

Pioneer Electronics yesterday said they were planning to show off a new state of the art in-car navigation system at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January. Called the AVIC-Z1, this system will be available in early spring 2006.

The AVIC-Z1 is what Pioneer is calling the most advanced in-car navigation system ever. Its on board, 30GB hard drive is capable of holding a large amount of information and stores the entire TeleAtlas database, including around 11 million points of interest.

Other navigation and safety features of the AVIC-Z1 will include an ability to learn frequently traveled roads so it can calculate suggested routes, a routing algorithm which takes into account actual road data such as posted speed limits when suggesting routes, optional real time traffic information through XM, brand icons on screen for companies like Chili’s and Albertsons, voice recognition to tell the device to perform navigation, audio video and attachment functions, integration with Bluetooth so that when paired with compatible cell phones audio is muted when calls are made or received and a 7â€ color touch screen.

As for entertainment, the AVIC-Z1 can playback digital music files stores on its hard drive, displaying information on the music collected from the online Gracenote CDDB Music Recognition Service. Other features in this vein include DVD video playback when fed to a separate monitor, CD-MP3 playback capability, AM/FM/XM (optional)/Sirius (optional) and complete control of an attached iPod when an optional adapter is used.

“The AVIC-Z1 builds on Pioneer’s success and more than 10 years of experience in navigation from Japan,” said Michael Townsen, director of marketing for mobile entertainment at Pioneer Electronics (USA) Inc, in a statement. “It is clearly the most advanced navigation system we’ve ever developed for the U.S. market to make the driving experience easier, safer and less stressful.”

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