Not sure if this normal or not. We have an 09 TCH with navigation..... been listening to mostly ipod. Yesterday we inserted a couple CD's and they played fine......but would not list any details like Artist or Songs. These were "store bought" CD's. Surely this is not normal....is it?
Also I noticed that when pulling up to and stopping at a red light, the car will shut down (engine stops) and the gauge will drop to the bottom of the blue. But....in most cases, the combustion engine will choose to start after a short while....and peg the needle up to Zero MPG.....is this normal??

 

The engine is supposed to shut down (when it's warmed up) when not needed.
Depending on whether the engine is warmed up enough or not, or if the battery is running low, it may start up again.
When engine is on and you're not moving, the 0 MPG read out is correct.
Everything you describe (after the word "Also") is normal

see the FAQ in my signature for further reading on the topic

 

I don't know about the CD's. Some might not have the artist and song details.

The engine is behaving "normally". The computer decides when it needs the engine to run, based on how much power you are using, engine and catalytic converter temperature, battery condition, and other parameters. The heater uses both electric elements and hot engine coolant. The electric elements are disabled when the ECO switch is on. If the ECO switch is off, the electric heater can drain the battery enough to make the computer decide to start the engine. Heaters take a huge amount of power, so that might not take very long. Even if the ECO switch is "on", the computer might still decide to turn the engine on to maintain temperature, or for some other reason.

Basically, there are about thirty computers in this car. They sometimes seem to act strangely. After a while, you learn to trust them. For the most part, the engineers who programmed them knew what they were doing.

 

Steve and Larry are both right. Much of what you know about how a conventional car operates does not apply to a TCH or a Prius. In fact, if you go out to your garage 20 or 30 minutes after you've parked your TCH, you'll hear whirring and clicking sounds from various systems, all them "normal" for a TCH.

As for your CDs: older CDs often don't have title info encoded. Play a cd on your computer's media player to see if the title comes up. While you're at it copy your music to a blank disc in WMA format. You can put about 8 to 12 albums on a single disc.

 

WMA or MP3 are supported.

I have a question for someone with Nav. Have you tried burning MP3/WMA files to a DVD and playing it in the JBL system? I'm curious since the Nav is updated from a DVD, if it will work for audio files. I tried it on my non-NAV and after a minute or so the system popped up an error message on the radio.

 

Actually the statement about playing a CD on your computer media player isn't necessarily going to tell you whether the CD has the info encoded on the actual disc. Most computer media players will go to the internet and look up the CD info from the one of the online databases. This won't be possible in the vehicle.

In my experience, I have seen very few CD's with the artist/title info on them (but I haven't bought more than 2 CD's in the last 2 years - I prefer buying my music from Amazon)...

 

I usually use my iPod since it holds all my CDs and songs I've bought/downloaded, but unfortunately I'm not able to use the steering wheel controls or nav screen (i don't have the iPod integration kit...yet). I do, on occasion, play a couple of MP3 CDs that I've burned that hold 150-200 songs each which do list the artist/song info on the screen, plus you are able to use the nav screen (when car is stopped of course ugh!) and/or use the steering wheel controls.

BOFH: I have several DVDs that I saved my songs on, I'll try it on my NAV and see if it works.

 

You can also use these functions when the car is moving, if you have the override active. I made a 5.1/6.1 nav DVD to have the capability of override. I later ordered a DVD that had 5.1/7.1 (5.1 software with override, 7.1 version maps) for override. I got sick of my wife not being able to put in the desitination info en route. If you are not familiar with this, search the forum for "override."

 

Thanks for the info Chris. I have heard of the "hack" from the previous threads regarding the dvd override but never got around to trying it. I've been using the voice commands but it is very tedious. Where did you order your dvd from?

to BOFH: I tried playing the DVD with MP3 songs burned on it to no avail.

 

Thanks, I was curious what it would do, now I know.