MP3/WMA Hard Disk Drive Player for the Car Is Ultimate Gift for Digital Music Enthusiasts

TORRANCE, Calif., Nov. 20, 2003 -- For the really serious MP3 music fan, burning tracks to CDs is passe. Why fumble around with all those CDs when you can fit thousands of tracks on one small hard disk drive?

Alpine Electronics' new in-dash HDA-5460 player with a 16GB removable hard disk drive enables people to take upwards of 3,000 of their favorite MP3/WMA/.WAV music files on the road with them. The Alpine HDA-5460, available nationwide at Alpine authorized dealers in early December (target retail price $1,000), is the quintessential holiday gift for any MP3/WMA music enthusiast.

"With up to one million paid music downloads taking place weekly, it's clear that people are building massive MP3/WMA libraries," said Steve Witt, Alpine's vice president of Brand Marketing. "Alpine's HDA-5460 defines compressed media playback in the car with industry-leading functionality that addresses the particular challenges online music enthusiasts face, including the need to more intuitively navigate through large libraries to easily find the music they're looking for."

With Alpine's HDA-5460, enjoying large MP3/WMA music collections in the car is easy. The HDA-5460 is designed for in-dash installation, putting all the system controls in front of the user. The tricky task of managing large music libraries is made much easier with Alpine's exclusive Quick Search(TM), which enables people to search for tracks by genre, artist, album, song or playlist using a simple "paddle switch" on the front panel.

The HDA-5460 features a selectable DJ function that personalizes 10 genre selections with different DJ voices and sound effects. Alpine's Music Visualizer(TM) even provides cool accompanying graphics on the display.

Transferring music files from the desktop to the hard disk drive is fast. Users simply plug a cable from the computer directly to the removable disk drive's USB port. The system comes with Alpine's Mobile Multimedia Driver computer software, providing powerful desktop tools for burning, downloading and managing music collections. An "auto-synch" function enables people to quickly update their drive with the latest music and playlists on their desktop.