One of the few perks at work is the subscription to Ward's Auto World (WAW)trade puplication.

The latest issue had a small article on BMW being the first oem to provide hd radio in some of their '06 cars. They will be made by Visteon Corp.
They also named aftermarket brands such as Kenwood, Panasonic, and ??, that provide HD units right now.

Then they named Onkyo, Boston Acoustic, and Yamaha as coming out with HD units soon. What they didn't specify was aftermarket units or oem supply.

Does anyone know if those last three brands offer/plan to offer aftermarket head units at all? HD or otherwise?

I'd love to see a Yamaha line.

 

Yamaha did make HU's back in the late 80's early 90's if i remember right.

 

i can remember kenwood having played with this stuff at least 5-10 years ago
they usually had a demonstration setup at the dealer show

the onkyo and yamaha are probably going to be home pieces
yamaha has tried the car audio before but failed misurably

 

I figure waw is just reporting auto related...

...and sorry to hear yamaha didn't fair well.

 

Most of the mainly home audio company's that have tried car audio have failed.
Not necessarily because of bad products but because of marketing and price.

A few:
Harman Kardon
Denon
Carver

 

Harman Kardon still does some OEM stuff for european cars, and Denon still makes HU's in Japan, just no north american distributor