Some Mazda owners in the Seattle area are stuck with bricked infotainment systems after listening to a particular radio station.
According to the Seattle Times, the problem began on January 30 and afflicted Mazdas from model years 2014 to 2017 when the cars were tuned to the local NPR station, KUOW 94.9. At some point during the day’s broadcast, a signal from KUOW caused the Mazdas’ infotainment systems to crash—the screens died and the radios were stuck on 94.9 FM.
From there, the infotainment systems became trapped in a rebooting loop, never successfully completing the task. When afflicted owners took their cars to be checked at local Mazda dealers, they were told that the “connectivity master unit” was dead and needed to be replaced.
The snag? A new CMU costs $1,500—if you can find one, which you can’t, because of supply chain problems.
Read more on Ars Technica here. Talk to us at Canstream about our solutions for digital radio.