Until I see this thing on a shelf at a store somewhere, I'm going to suggest taking the promotional video with a hefty grain of salt. Still, Blaupunkt's new TravelPilot 500 and 700 GPS units are advertising some pretty astonishing features. According to the marketing video, the TravelPilot 700 has a built-in camera that takes live video of the road, and overlays GPS navigation instructions, creating a heads-up display-like experience.
Still not intrigued? How about Internet access, camera-based traffic sign recognition, voice recognition, the ability to automatically detect speed limit signs, WiFi for web browsing or e-mail, and a built-in TV receiver via DVB-T! Read on to see a video of this thing in action.
There are some concerns I can point with using a camera to project the actual street images on the screen.
One concern is that what happens in foggy nights or days or dark nights where there is no street lights? They will have little reference to go by compare to a map on a PND that allow some distant information and visual name of up coming streets before your actual turn executions.
Than there is the actual street that it will coming up on, there is no way to see the street names until you are right up on it which is not efficient.
The price they are asking for will not go over well in NA and what about the monthly service cost?
I know ad base navigation will soon be here, they are currently going to be using it on the new generation Garmin 7x5 and 2x5 with life time traffic service where there will be ads on your navigation device for the free traffic service.
The speed limit sign worries me also, wonder how well that really functions.
But I guess we just have to see how it pans out when it is in use. I can tell you the Blaupunkt did not go over well in NA market in their first few PND attempts and it will be interesting to see if it will make any difference with these new features offered by Blaupunkt to attempt to penetrate the NA PND market again.
Nice concept but have to see if it really function as advertised.
You can switch to the built in map whenever you like.
Victor