n00b, a few D3 questions

[Mr Mufakka]

Hello

 

I'm looking at getting a D3 from Best Buy, currently on sale for $699 + I have a 12% off coupon as well as quite a few gift cards. ANYWAY, I've got a few questions.

 

First, does the D3 display any of the vehicles dynamic gauges, like speedometer, etc?

 

Second, I've read about needing to keep the navigation DVD in the unit but you can load the route into the unit, and take the disc out. My question is regarding a road trip. Say I set the route when I leave the house then begin a DVD movie (nav DVD removed). What sort of limitations am I going to run into? If I switch from movie to nav, will it show me at my current location with my route still loaded? Is this a PITA (movie to nav back to moive)?

 

Lastly, how current are the nav discs? I take it Pioneer doesn't offer any sort of updating over the internet? How often do they offer new discs and how much are they? I hate to think of buying something like this and being stuck with a set of nav discs from 2007 for forever.

 

Thanks! I'm real glad I found this forum this morning!

[JPizzle]

It does display the vehicle dynamics: Voltage, Clock, Direction, Slope, Acceleration, Side Acceleration, Angular Velocity.

 

When using your movie, the D3 "converts" to Memory Nav., which basically means that you can't change your route that it has assigned you. It always shows the current route.

 

The Nav. discs are current up to sometime in 2006 or 2007.

[HiFiSi]

1. Yes, it can display speed, voltage, lateral and side acceleration, and a couple others I can't remember.

 

2. Once you set the route, you can remove the nav disk and use the DVD drive for whatever you want from then on. The route will be stored in the unit's flash memory until you remove or overwrite it with a new route.

 

The only time there might be a problem is if it's a cross-country trip that spans the coverage of both the east and west nav disks, but if that is the case, how many times would you really have to deal with that problem, right?

 

3. The current nav disks are from early last year, and there should be a new set coming out in the middle of the year sometime from what I've heard. They are not cheap, though. Like $250 or for a set. But there's always other ways of getting them, like getting them cheaper from ebay, or finding somebody to send you a burned copy, or downloading a disk image from a torrent site and burning it yourself...

[Mr Mufakka]

Thanks for the quick replies guys. I might just have to jump into the NAV world!