My first experience with getting my iPod to work on my stereo was with a cassette adapter. It worked as good as it should, short of the whirring of the tape deck, but when I upgraded my car, I no longer had a tape deck for which to use it with. So I looked into FM transmitters. I was forced into a weekend at the Hamptons, and the 4+ hour drive meant that I needed an functioning iPod. At the time, Griffin just started to ship their mass amount of back log so I was unable to purchase an iTrip and had to settle on Belkin's FM transmitter.

Their transmitter isn't specifically designed for the iPod, however they have a Black standard color and then a white edition that matches the iPod beautifully. It can only tune to 4 stations (vs iTrips 100 or so) and requires two AAA batteries. It has a wire that tucks around the device when not in use, and has a button to turn on and off. Often I would forget to switch off the Belkin device and would return to a dead transmitter. The four provided stations worked good in the boonies, but driving through the five boroughs was a tough battle, and if you did find a good station, it often required you to hold the device, thus making yourself part of the antenna loop and taking a hand off the wheel.

It wasn't an ideal solution, I missed the ease of the cassette adapter (I never thought I would say that), hated the waste of batteries and was annoyed by the limit of station selection. My eyes turned back towards the iTrip. I started to research more and heard mixed reviews, nothing that forced me one way completely, so it wasn't enough to quench my curiosity. In the mean time I found out about devices that hook up to your factory sound system but not wanting to rip open my new dash, I decided against it.

Somehow, I convinced myself to purchase the iTrip. But once I bought the thing, it took me a couple of weeks before I would even open it, for fear that I wouldn't enjoy it and would have to suffer Apple's 10% restocking fee. So last night, after Alias, I busted into the package and gave it a shot. It's very nicely boxed, echoing Apple's own iPod packaging with the white slip cover and the gray box inside. Setup was a breeze. I had already put the iTrip stations on my iPod a few weeks before incase I passed an Apple Store and convinced my self to purchase it that I wouldn't have to wait to get home to test it out. I decided to test it out on my home theater system.

I tuned the iTrip to a sounding dead air station that I found, and I was able to make out the songs coming off my iPod, but it was faint. I was only 3 feet away, but I moved the iPod directly next to the antenna, and the signal came much clearer. I turned the iPod's volume in up from about the midway level point, in hopes to boost the signal, but received feedback as part of my broadcast. I tried this repeatedly with ever station I could, but would always get feed back when I tried to turn up the volume on the iPod.

I decided to do a side by side comparison. I tuned both the iTrip and the Belkin FM transmitter to the the clearest of the four Belkin provided stations. Belkin's device clearly, and disappointingly was the winner. At four feet away it came in as clear as if it was directly next to the antenna. At full volume on the iPod, the Belkin's signal did not falter. Sure, it needs it's own power supply, but the power of the transmittion is necessary in an over saturated market such as New York.

Now I'm trying to connivence myself why the iTrip is better. Perhaps a real world test (road trip) will prove worthy. Sadly, it looks like this may be going on eBay.