Unique Car Accessories

DIN: A connector that was origi­nally standardised by Deutsches Institute fur Normung (DIN), the German national standards organisation.

DivX: A brand name of products created by DivX, Inc (formerly DivXNetworks, Inc), which has become popular due to its ability to compress lengthy video segments into small sizes while maintaining relatively high visual quality.

Xvid: Xvid (formerly XviD) is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard. Xvid is a pri­mary competitor of the DivX Pro Codec (Xvid being DivX spelled backwards). Other than these, understanding a few standard terms will help in making a more informed ICE decision.

Built-in amplifier: The unit comprises its own amplifier to power speakers in your car, achieving superior sound performance without needing a separate unit.

Component package: Comprises a separate mid/bass speaker and tweet­ers. This set-up is supplied with the relevant crossover to filter the correct frequencies to the appropriate speakers.

Crossover: A unit which channels appropriate frequencies to the correct speakers high treble to tweeters, low bass to sub-woofers.

MOSFET: Metal Oxide Semi Conductor Field Effect Transistors. They add out­standing characteristics for audio power amplifier applications.

MP3: A format for storing audio, involving highly compression of CD-quality sound, allowing large amounts of audio content to be stored, for example, on a portable smart card or recordable CD (MP3 playback available on certain CD systems only).

Mid-range: These are speakers designed to reproduce mid-range frequencies lower than a tweeter and higher than a woofer/sub­woofer.

Monitor: A screen for displaying video content. For in-car systems this is usually a flat LCD (liquid crystal display) panel, due to space limitations.

Optical output: Allows the digital signal to be transmitted between components via fibre optic cable, maintaining absolute signal purity

Pre-out: An audio connection on your media system (source unit) to either an amplifier or interme­diate unit, such as an equaliser, rather than a direct connection to the speakers.

RCA: A specific type of connec­tor, generally used for pre-ampli­fier audio and video connections.

Sub-woofer: The lowest fre­quency speaker used in a multi-speaker system, used to provide clear and resonant bass sound reproduction.

Tuner: A unit for receiving and playing back audio and/or audio­visual transmissions. In its most common form in in-car systems, this is a term used to refer to a radio receiver.

Tweeter: These are small speak­ers designed to reproduce high frequency (treble) sounds.

2-Way: A single tweeter dedi­cated to treble frequencies and a mid/bass range speaker.

3-Way: A single tweeter dedicated to treble frequencies, a mid-range cone and a woofer dedicated to bass, all comprised in one unit.

Woofer: Large speakers to reproduce low frequency (bass) sounds. IM