Car Forums / Acura / Acura TL
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Comments
On Nav, I think all Honda/Acura's allow you to play with all NAV stuff while moving. Many others only allows limited features when moving for safety reasons.
When you reset Ave MPG you still won't see any instant MPG as it will wait for 15 sec. and 'ave' out. I agree ave. is more useful but instant one does tell you how good or bad the MPG is in certain driving pattern or considtion. It's just SW?
I dont know much about heated seats but I think TL only has front driver/passenger heated seats. Since I bought this TL I have never brought anybody to sit in the rear seats eventhough the rear seats are more spacious than 330i. TL is not a sport car nor is 330i, they are just sporty car with different rear passenger feature. One is more spacious while the other tight but heated (back and but.t). It is an industry standard for non sporty car I guess.
TL audio system is excellent with CDs, at least as good as Lexus and Mercedes systems.
DVD-A of course is a unique feature so far. You're wrong about what drives adoption of DVD-A and SACD formats. It's not home players, it's the car players. Personally, I don't believe DVD-A will survive as a format, unless they start releasing a lot of hybrid (DVD-A/CD) disks very soon.
The DVD-Audio people are planning to roll out a format to support reasonable cost hybrid disks.
I too have worried whether the DVD-Audio format would win over SACD (the TL does *not* play SACDs), since the space in Best Buy is about 2:1 for SACD. Maybe this play will help to move this format to the forefront...
Or maybe both will die, as sometimes happens in format wars.
On DVD-A for those who have it can you tell us if regular DVD players play DVD-A or SACD disks? Also, how much more $$ is a DVD-A or SACD than a CD in general?
DVD-Audio is a new format, and is not directly played by standard DVD-Video players. The typical audio connector between a DVD-V player and your amplifier is a S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) coax or optical connector - and the data content of DVD-A is at a higher bit rate that this interface can support.
That said, most DVD-A disks contain both the DVD-A track as well as a track encoded as a 5.1 digital surround (DD5.1 or DTS5.1) which can be played in a standard DVD-V player. Not as high bit rate, but still a full surround sound digital encoding, as good as you get with your DVD movies.
DVD-A's cannot be played on a CD player -- there is nothing encoded there that a CD player can read. That is, until the new hybrid "flipper" that I posted about a couple of messages ago. With that, one side plays on a CD player, the other in a DVD-A or DVD-V player.
SACD (Super Audio CD) is a competing format which encodes a 5.1 surround signal in a different format. The difference with these is that most SACDs contain a standard two-channel 44.1KHz CD track that *can* be read by a normal CD player -- so you can use these in your CD as well as in a SACD-enabled player.
If you want to play these formats in their native form in your home theater, you need a player - they come as DVD-A, SACD and combined format players -- the combined ones have come down to the about $400 range. Single format ones are in the $200, if I am not mistaken.
Disks themselves run around $18-20 - a slight premium over the outrageous CD prices of $13-17.
I bought three DVD-As recently and, while I thought the sound was better than on CDs (I have the same albums on CDs), it's not THAT much better. I'd be selling these on E-bay and not buying any more DVD-As until the prices come down to reasonable territory.
TL has heated front seats. It does not have heated rear seats.
The seat back and bottom cushion of the driver's seat are both heated.
Only the bottom cushion of the passenger's seat is heated because the back contains sensors for side airbag.
Dark Side of the Moon hybrid SCD is also a very good sound in the TL. I would buy more but I already have most of them on CD.
KPH.... thanks for the link to the article. I live in Seattle and that is one of the two test markets so I will get them as soon as they Are available. I'll let you know what I think.
ago. I am having problems with the back window
and "trails" of lights when any headlights hit
it even during the day. It makes it impossible
to see. I am fighting with the dealer over this
because they keep telling me it is normal
because of the slant of the back window. I am
having a hard time believing that this is how it
is supposed to be. Does anyone else have this
problem? Or is it actually normal (as the
dealer is trying to make me believe). Thanks
for you input.
Thanks
It appears that so far, the phone makers have only put Bluetooth on GSM phones. I expect that is because Bluetooth has taken off in Europe far faster than in the US, and GSM is the European cell phone standard.
I have only seen reference to one BT phone (a Siemens) that has dual modes -- GSM and TDMA. Otherwise, all the BT phones are GSM-only.
In our area, Cingular isn't a player. I have found that T-mobile is a GSM-only network, so their investments in expansion are all in this arena. They offer a couple of BT phones (Sony Ericson T610 and a Nokia 3650).
AT&T (my current carrier) is TDMA, with a small growing GSM alternative. The sales person from their store commented about not being able to connect with an AT&T GSM phone on a drive from Minneapolis to Chicago -- so I am nervous that GSM is not a priority for them - and they are now up for sale.
I am thinking about trying out T-mobile when my TL arrives.
* There are TDMA/GSM BT-compatible phones (Sony Ericsson T62u, for example), but they don't pair with the TL. Siemens does not make any TDMA/GSM phones that are BT compatible.
* AT&T is concentrating ONLY on GSM these days. They are not increasing their TDMA infrastructure at all. In fact, according to some rumors, they are converting some of TDMA towers into GSM (although I don't believe this). Their GSM coverage still sucks compared to TDMA. Give them another year or two...
* T-Mobile is all-GSM, as you mentioned, but they have THE worst coverage in the nation. They also don't own their own towers in a lot of places and use towers of other carriers. T-Mobile is among the very worst cell carriers, and so is Cingular.
* Verizon's delay of releasing a BT phone has nothing to do with revenues and everything to do with being a huge bureaucracy Ma-Bell. They simply don't move at the same pace as other carriers. There are plenty of rumors indicating Verizon will have a BT phone by the end of this year.
* There is a BT-compatible Verizon phone (Motorola 270c), but it requires an optional attachment and firmware upgrade to work. Even with those, it will work with other BT devices, but not the TL.
* As you're finding out, we're sh*t-out-of-luck, if we want a TL-compatible Bluetooth phone, but don't want crappy GSM coverage. I have researched and tried various things and in the end decided it was not worth it giving up the great AT&T TDMA coverage in favor of hands-free capability. No matter how cool and convenient it is, I've learned that coverage is EVERYTHING!
Greg
I installed them myself in less than an hour. There's about 20 pieces and they come on a 2 large cardboard sheets. The surface needs to be dusted and wiped with alcohol, then the pieces are placed on. The final step is to use a hair dryer so that the adhesive sticks properly/permanently.
Voila, a deep, richer interior is yours for $196. The color is an exact match.