I'm looking for an appropriate HU upgrade for our brand new 2011 Prius III (Two). What I'm hoping for is a factory-look head unit that supports traffic monitoring in the GPS. RDS/TMC is not preferred at all (but maybe what I need to settle for?), as we don't have that here in Colorado Springs. Any suggestions? The only unit I've even seen rumors of traffic for is the Rosen. Otherwise, looks like I must give up factory-look and get a standard double-DIN unit with traffic, etc.
I don't think any factory look units offer traffic (United States). You need to first figure out which traffic covers your city. Current traffic includes NAVTEQ (fm), XM, TMC (fm) and TMC (HD). You won't have many (any?) choices if TMC (HD) works best for you. I'll make it easy. Kenwood offers NAVTEQ, Pioneer TMC (fm) and JVC TMC (HD). See what you need.
That is a very helpful start! I see that once "is it available in the places I care about" is known, the next question is to understand reasonable expectations. For example: * FM traffic (RDS protocol) updates once every 15 minutes. miss an update and your traffic info is a half hour out of date * HD traffic updates once every 2 minutes. Much nicer from that perspective. And on and on. Potentially quite confusing. However, for now it appears I should be grateful if any GPS provider actually offers traffic where I live. If not, I get to use Google Maps or Waze.com on my droid/ipod/etc...
