I'm a bit knackered at the moment but I 'think' it seems to work by being a DAB tuner that picks up DAB signals and then 'channels' them to a FM car radio along the normal 88-108 (ish) mhz frequencies.
it doesnt' 'actually convert' FM radios into a dab unit, merely 'focusses' the 'delivery' of DAB signals from one side to analogue recieving equipment to the other...
Paul 1966 - over to you to tell me if I'm right or wrong!
You've pretty much got it.
It connects via the existing antenna socket on the radio, so it's acting as a converter. It's basically just a DAB receiver which then re-modulates the audio onto a normal FM stereo signal to which your existing radio can tune. You would just tune the car radio to one specific FM frequency, then use this adapter to select your station (in other words the adapter is simulating a normal stereo FM broadcast so that as far as your car radio is concerned, it's receiving just another FM signal).
As for quality, I can't say as I've never seen this unit before. That would depend entirely upon the quality of the DAB receiver itself in the unit, and of the modulator which is used to convert the audio back into a form which the radio can receive. The supplied DAB antenna will have a huge effect on reception as well.
And what about the plugging in of the iPod?
It says it has an auxiliary line input. You would just connect from the iPod's headphone jack to that and the modulator then works just as it would with DAB, converting your iPod's audio into the same format as a normal FM stereo broadcast signal that the radio can "understand."
If you remember the Sony Walkman boom of 20+ years ago, similar modulators were sold then to allow a tape cassette to be played through a radio which had no cassette player built-in. It's exactly the same principle.
I have a device (like a cassette) that allows me to plug in my MP3 in the car. I'd be lost without it!
That's another way of getting a signal into the car's system, assuming it has a cassette deck. The player has a magnetic head which normally picks up the signal from the tape. Your adapter cassette just generates a magnetic field from the audio you feed into it and couples it up to the player's head. In other words, you're "fooling" the unit into thinking it's playing a tape by just substituting your own magnetic field for the tape.
Of course, these days, many of the more upmarket car radios (or "In car entertainment systems" as the manufacturers prefer to call them now
) have direct audio inputs on the back intended for trunk-mount CD players and such like. If you have a car radio with such an auxiliary input, you can just couple audio up to that from an iPod, MP3 player, cassette player etc.
