Mio KITT GPS available (finally!), but only at RadioShack

(Credit: RadioShack)

RadioShack scored huge* Friday, announcing it secured exclusive rights to the Mio Knight Rider GPS. For $270, you too can get the voice of KITT (actor William Daniels, not Val Kilmer) to give you turn-by-turn voice guidance.

The 4.3-inch antiglare touch-screen LCD is flanked by voice synthesizer lights that move with every instruction, and the GUI is Knight Rider-esque as well. And just in case your name isn't Michael, there are more than 150 male and female names each to choose from. (I can only imagine how painful that recording session was. "OK, Mr. Daniels, here's the list of 300-plus names we need. Go.")

*By "huge," I mean this is a novelty that could be on many a geek's holiday shopping list.

[jaycustom]

AWESOME! I heard of this on the radio and thought it"d be cool to have KITT talking to you. Oh yea..for the geeks that get it. If you manage to get a girl in your car(no matter what kind or condition) This ought to get you some huh?! Really!

[mmntech]

In Canada, Staples Business Depot is selling it. They've been advertising it in their flyer for the last couple of weeks now.

[Buick107]

Be carefull before you buy! The demo units audio was way off. It was William Daniels but the pitch was way off. It really sounded bad, like a recording played back to slow. They may have corrected this in the production models after several gps hackers showed what needed to be corrected and posted it on YouTube as an open letter to Mio. If the voice has been corrected its worth it, but as it was at the trade shows, it will have to wait for Bonnie to fix it!

[chuzek]

Believe it or not, I hear that Bonnie is not one of the 300 names available.

[Ridge582]

That would get old really quick. The TV show did.

[kogdenflooring]

I'm frankly disappointed in the limited features of this GPS. I was excited to see someone make this, but I won't buy one until they add a few more features. First of all, Voice recognition would seem logical, its missing. Second, it does not pronounce street names(yes I know it is not possible using"real" voice). Heres my philosophical disagreement. They used the real actors voice, who now sounds like he is in his 70's, not the spry KITT we all remember. Someone on you tube modified it to have a slightly higher pitch frequency which does sound better, also my garmin's stock male "Jack" voice already sounds more like the real kitt than the actual person. So just so we understand; The TV show got a guy that sounded like what they thought a computer would sound like. Computers now, actually sound sort of like that, but they felt it better to get the real humans recorded voice who sounded like a computer anyway, and that would somehow be better than having more functionality. I say they should put more effort into it, take some of his real voice and used it like a hybrid so that when it simulates his voice its sounds more like him, but gives the flexibility of more interaction, since that is really what kit was all about anyway. Also you might as well through in the obvious features that are already availble, voice activated MP3 library (like MS-SYNC) bluetooth phone and voice dialing capability. And why not think outside the box and go ahead and allow voice activated internet searching using bluetooth with an internet capable phone. ("kitt, google ________ for me". and then have it read the wikipedia article at our option. It seems like a lot but really doesn't reqire that much to do all of these features.