iPod car stereo integration won't show podcasts

[CAlvarez]

I have a Clarion VRX755VD head unit with the iPod integration cable. Works great, and the display on the touchscreen is fantastic for controlling the iPod, but it doesn't show any of the podcasts. I think this is because it's on a different menu level from music on the iPod itself.

Ideas?

I could put them in a playlist, but then they get copied to the iPod separately and permanently (don't get rotated out and replaced). And it won't auto-update any more.

[ShavenYak]

I hope Clarion has some way for users to update the firmware in their unit!

I'm sure they released their iPod interface before Apple added Podcasts. They'll probably need to make changes to their system to accomodate the Podcasts. In the meantime, you'll have to do a work-around.

Podcasts are stored in the Library just like songs. You should be able to make a smart playlist with "Genre is Podcast" and put that playlist on your iPod. The smart playlist will always contain the same podcasts as the regular Podcast section of iTunes. If you want to make sure your older podcasts come off the iPod, add a criterion to the smart playlist for date updated in the last X days/weeks/whatever, or limit to a certain amount of space/number of files sorted by date added.

I'm pretty sure this won't end up copying the podcasts twice - it'll just have pointers to the same file on the iPod disk from the Podcast menu item and the smart playlist.

Let me know how it works out!

[CAlvarez]

Sounds like a great tip, I'll go give it a shot. I've never used playlists at all, and didn't even remember about smart lists.

Would you do this on the iPod itself, or in iTunes?

[ShavenYak]

In iTunes. File->New Smart Playlist, I think.

[CAlvarez]

Doesn't work. I created a smart playlist with "Genre contains 'Podcast'" but it contains nothing. And my podcasts are NOT in my library; they are in another container at the same level as the library on both the iPod Mini and in iTunes. I think that's the problem.

When I tried moving the podcasts into a playlist, then the podcasts were in the library, and copied twice to the iPod.

[ShavenYak]

Bummer. I thought I remembered that my Podcasts started showing up in my 'Recently Added' smart playlist, and I had to exclude 'genre contains podcast' to get them to not show up there. Maybe something else I did caused them to get included in my library. I don't know for sure whether they were getting copied twice to the iPod.

I'll play around a bit and see if I can come up with a better solution. At least most podcast files are small, so maybe they won't take up too much room copied twice.

[CAlvarez]

They're fairly small, but my 6GB mini has 300k free right now. So I have to start trimming my music library if I want to have dupes of the podcasts on there. Plus then it becomes a manual process, and I really hate that; I'll always forget to put the new stuff on there and then be annoyed not to have it.

Overall, the iPod <> Clarion integration is quite disappointing. Had I tried it before buying it, I wouldn't have bought it. I guess I need to go try the Alpine units; they've been doing iPod integration longer.

[ShavenYak]

Have you upgraded to iTunes 5 yet? I've heard a lot of folks complaining about Podcasts showing up in their smart playlists since they upgraded. Maybe this would be a good thing in your case.

And BTW, I doubt the Alpine units will be able to access the Podcast functionality either.

[CAlvarez]

Yes, with v5 my smart playlist suddenly started working. It's not a great solution, but at least I can listen to them in the car. One issue is that the podcasts aren't organized hierarchically, so the names sometimes don't make sense. For example, I can't scroll down to "Inside Mac Radio" then pick a day. The list shows just their file titles, which are "Wednesday September 7th 2005." Not as easy to make sense of when you have a lot of podcasts like that. I'm wondering if there's something I can do to auto-rename them in iTunes or create my own XML for the podcast to rename it as it is downloaded. Just haven't had time to investigate.

The Alpine units don't work either, I confirmed that last night at a dealer. They also have other limitations I found very annoying. The Alpine has two benefits; it has faster scrolling through long lists and it remembers the state of the iPod's settings and current track when you insert/remove it. The Clarion always starts at one default track, plus it CHANGES MY SETTINGS. Really, really stupid.

For a $1000 car head unit, it's pretty disappointing. The Alpines at half the price are equally disappointing. The high end Alpine with a touchscreen (same as my Clarion) is around $1600, and the dealer thinks it will have the same problem as the other Alpines (he's going to call Alpine today).

I guess we're ahead of the technology engineering on this still. I'm thinking about going back to just connecting the iPod to a line input and using its interface. The screen is just so small for use while driving. It would be nice if the integrated head units didn't disable the iPod interface, so you could use either.