I can’t say much about the installation other than I imagine that the $50 Best Buy charged for it was well spent. My factory radio looks and performs exactly as it did prior to the installation – with the expected added functionality. I’m guessing that might not have been the case had I attempted to install the thing. ‘Nough said about installation.

Once plugged in you can control the volume and skip tracks using your factory radio. The gateway provides two alternate modes for browsing your media library:

• iPod Mode allows you to browse your library using the factory radio’s controls. The preset radio buttons (typically numbers 1-6) are used for this, which is anything but intuitive. You are also restricted to viewing the library through your radio’s “screen”. Overall not the best experience, but in iSimple’s defense, this is about as good as I’ve seen on the market.
• Aux Mode requires you to browse your media library from the iPod/iPhone. Not as safe while driving, but infinitely more usable. Once you’ve playing a track you can still skip forward/backward using the radio controls.

The sound is excellent. I cannot tell the difference between sound from a CD, XM Radio, or the iPhone. I’m happy as a clam now that I can listen to podcasts on my commute. Overall this device gets a B+ from me. I expect that better implementations will be available in future generations, but for now this seems to be state of the art when it comes to integration with factory radios.

Here are a quick list of features I’d like to see in the next generation:

• View video on navigation screen. Yes I realize there are safety concerns here, but I want the functionality.
• Browse media library using navigation screen. This would make iPod mode much more functional.
• Use navigation touch screen while browsing media. Need I say more? This would provide the iTouch interface from my car’s existing navigation screen. We’re a long way away, but this would be cool
• Wifi. As long as I’m dreaming, why not include wifi with the gateway. Add iTunes software and I could leave the iPod in the car, but still be able to update media. This really brings us into the realm of a new device altogether – call it the iCarStereo. You listening Steve Jobs? I want one.

So that’s about it for the iSimple. It definitely gets my recommendation. The device cost $150. Add $50 installation and the total package was $200. I will very likely be canceling the XM Radio subscription now that I can listen to podcasts and my own music on demand – which would pay for the gateway in about 15 months.

The PS3 can act as a media server client, allowing you to stream audio & video from a computer to your PS3 and thus into you home entertainment center. I’ve got a pretty big iTunes library (nearly 600 albums), and so streaming my iTunes library to the stereo in my family room is something I’ve wanted to do for sometime. Unfortunately, the proprietary format that Apple has chosen to use for iTunes has stymied most of my previous attempts. This is undoubtedly a critical part of Apple’s master plan and not a simple “if you want it done right, do it yourself” thing. One more thing to blog about when I get the chance. Anyway, back on point, I’ve finally found an app that’’s allowing me to stream my iTunes library to my PS3 – it’s called Dot.Tunes.

Unfortunately, Dot Tunes doesn’t really use the PS3’s media-server features, but instead relies on the PS3’s web browsing capabilities to deliver a music playing flash client. The client is functional, if somewhat annoying – you can”t browse your music, only search for artists, albums, and playlists. Once you find an artist, album, or playlist you can browse the songs in that list and play one or all. So why not just create a single playlist with all your songs in it you ask… Yea, problem is that Dot Tunes seems to not like very large playlists. It doesn’t crash or anything, it just won’t “publish” them, meaning that you can’t get to them with the client.

The Dot Tunes server is free. All the interesting plugins, including the PS3 plugin, cost a little – $10 I think. Getting the server up was time consuming and required me to open up a slew of ports in my firewall, but after a few hours of tinkering, it works with the exception of large playlists. The server has a small footprint when no one is using it, only taking up 3M of memory. But it’s a pig when users hit it – memory usage climbs with the size of the selected playlist. For instance, a 133 song list jacked the memory footprint to 206MB. Hmmm, maybe this is why large playlists won’t load. Another pain is that you have to reimport your library and then publish all the songs every time you restart the server. Even with all its warts, Dot Tunes is the only software I’ve found that”ll get the job done, so I’m happy to have it.

Dot Tunes has many other features, including the ability to stream music over the internet and to publish playlists as podcasts or RSS feeds. The web interface is much more usable than the PS3 flasah client, providing full search and browse features. It’s not half-bad for these uses. If Siteground allows it, maybe I’ll put a music server up here one day.