We were thinking of buying an ipod, mostly for the car, but don't want to pay another $300 to interface it with the nav. We are re-thinking the ipod because of this. What is the least expensive way to get music to play through the car stereo and see the names of the music, etc on the nav screen? I am a completely non-tech savvy person. Rich knows more but has never had an ipod. We usually just burn CD's from Musicmatch, but don't even know if you can use the nav screen with those either. I have looked at other threads and can't decide what to do. Any advice would be appreciated, Laurie.

 

The CD player supports MP3 CDs and MP3 tags. The tags show the artist and title. I have the Non-Nav so I don't know how much more info is displayed, but imagine it would at least match the Non-Nav unit for features.

You can select CD, folders on a CD, and either play sequential or random play in a folder. I believe you can random play an entire CD, but I don't usually do that.

With 128 bit encoding, there is about 10 hours of music per CD.

 

For some reason, my nav system only displays 8 folders. . I know I put more on there. Is it problem with the way I burned the cd's? I see more folder when I put it in my comp.

Dogzen: if you don't do the full integration of the ipod, the names will not show up on the nav display. Sorry.

 

Why buy an iPod if you're only going to use it in the car. Burn your music to CD using Windows Media Player or some other music burner. I burn CDs in WMA format instead of mp3 because the sound is better. Each CD will hold 8 to 10 hours of music. 4 or 6 CDs in hte changer depending in whether you have NAV or not gives plenty of music for a long trip. To connect an iPod to the radio just buy a dual-mini plug cord, plug one end in the iPod headphone jack, to other end to the AUX jack in the dash storage bin, set the radio to AUX, and enjoy.

 

Bobbywalnuts - The Nav unit can only show 8 folders at a time but if you hit the little down arrow on the left side it will page down to the next 8 folders.

 

One thing I noticed in my new TCH w/Nav is that the display of track info goes blank when I start moving. What's with that?? XM Radio shows info while moving.

I made a disk of MP3s. Plugged it into the player and was able to scroll, browse, and select tracks. I play the track, display the TEXT (filename, folder) Start driving and the screen fields go blank.

Anyone else have this problem? Can it be corrected so I can see the text during driving?

 

One frustrating aspect of the MP3 cds + nav is that the normal display is of the folder + filename from the CD, not the Artist + Title (from the ID3 tag sinside the MP3 file).

You can get to that information, but only while not moving. Seems it should be the default display.

 

I think I've found the ultimate way to have my iPod integrated with the car's stereo. In the past (on other cars), I've tried several ways of integrating. I was never happy with anything. All of the expensive interfaces were limited in one way or the other. There was nothing that gave me the control that I wanted.

The solution was cheap and easy. (No need to tear apart the dash either)
AND I have use of the great iPod interface!

The Belkin Auto Kit.
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_ID=193794

and to give the iPod a great place to sit, the Belkin TuneDok
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProdu...duct_Id=193778

 

I wanted to let everyone know that you can use CD-RW discs in your system, at least the non-nav. This means you can make your "mix" CDs to your heart's content, and over/rewrite as often as you wish. Now if it would just play music from DVDs, I'd never have to swaps discs!

 

I have my iPod fully integrated with the VAISTech solution. It does cost some, but the sound is simply unreal. Also, the ability to control the iPod from the steering wheel and have it display on the Nav is simply too sweet.

This thing allows you to effectively have an 80 disc CD changer that weighs 8 ounces! Who wouldn't pay $300 for that if they really liked their music while driving?

- Larry