What Makes the In-Cabin Environment Unique

This blog post is part of a white paper on the Future of In-Car Entertainment. To download a full copy, go here.  

The in-vehicle experience with entertainment is like no other. Take for example the tablet experience vs the smartphone experience. A tablet looks like a larger version of a phone but it’s not. Tablet applications are often different from their handset counterparts. A TV is not a tablet turned sideways, made big and stuck in the living room. And in a similar way, the desktop computer is not a bigger tablet. All these are unique devices that lead to tailored experiences for the use case.  

Bringing this full circle, the car is not a handset on wheels.  

First, the kind of attention that people have in the car is different. From the driver to the front seat passenger, to the rear seat passengers, each of those three zones require different levels of attention from the occupant, especially as the cabin is moving.  

Second, the audio environment is pristine. It’s a sealed environment and the car companies deliberately tune it in a particular way. If it’s a sports car, it’s tuned one way, if it’s a luxury car, it’s tuned a different way, if it’s an SUV, it’s tuned a different way. But they’re all tuned. And that environment is intentional. And entertainment should take advantage of that.  

Third, let’s look at the quality of those systems. Regardless of the content you choose, it is extremely likely that your car is the best audio system you own. Hands down. That’s just one of these universal truths.  

To be prepared for the future, OEMs must leverage platforms, such as DTS AutoStage, that capture these differences in the automobile entertainment system. And if all you do is glue a handset experience to the dashboard, you’re going to get none of it.  

This blog post is part of a white paper on the Future of In-Car Entertainment. To download a full copy, go here.