Wow, it's good to see that this is finally going away. By the way, I'm the person who was one of the original HML purchasers, and the person who wrote the aforementioned HML review; the one which ranks on Google above Honda's official site when searching for "honda music link".
Anyway, mostly out of boredom I've been working for the past three or four days on a retrofit device which can sit between the HML and an iPod and, basically, turn it into an aux in adapter with next/prev track controls and such. The iPod's own interface won't be locked out, the crappy TTS software won't be required, etc. It'll make the HML into one of the decent aux in adapters.
I just need to finish up the software (an partial version of it testing the command sending procedure can be found
here if anyone wants to see), test it, lay out the board, then look into selling them. It'll be called the HMLiberator and will be thoroughly openly documented on
nuxx.net.
I'm thinking that I'll also sell them, as I'm sure there's a good number of folks who own an HML, can't really get a refund, and would like to use it as an functional aux-in adapter.
Look for more info to come later. I'm hoping that I'll have the breadboarded prototype running while connected to the car by next weekend.
-Steve