Originally Posted by MacSid' post='410209' date='Apr 4 2007, 11:10 AM

You will indeed be able to use your iPod through iDrive, but be prepared for some idiosyncracies, namely:
- iDrive is not the quickest of interfaces to use to scroll through your collection if, like me, you have literally hundreds of albums stored on your iPod. It does work, but takes time and some getting used to.
- iDrive has a habit of starting to play the first song in your iPod's "all songs" list the moment you connect it up. It will continue to play this song throughout the time that you spend trying to get to the playlist, album or artist that you want.
- the CD1-CD6 designations on iDrive will now reflect playlists, albums, artists, etc., but I cannot remember which is which. I have 2,000+ songs on my iPod, and the spooling-up of each of this lists takes 2-3 minutes each time. May not seem like a lot, but it is frustrating when you are trying to search for / jump to something on the move. Again, it has a habit of playing the first song on the list, so you need to back out of it to get the full listing of albums, artists, etc.
- song information does NOT come up on the iDrive display when you go back to navigation, on-board computer, etc. It will only show, for example, CD3-004. Strangely, when I used the Denson iPod interface on my E39, this information DID show up on my head unit (I had the big-screen head unit in the E39).

Sound quality seems, to me to vary depending on the quality of my import of songs onto the iPod itself. Not sure how it compares to using a CD in the CD changer, as I never used it in my current car. In my previous E39 with Denson iPod interface, I would have said that the sound quality was equal. You may need to turn the volume up more than you did with the CDs though.

After saying all of this, let me be totally clear on one point - despite the little complaints I have on the way iDrive works with the Pod interface (as I described above), I LOVE the fact that I can use my iPod in the car this way. I will NEVER go back to just 6 CD's in the dash!

MacSid

Originally Posted by Falterkammer' post='410262' date='Apr 4 2007, 12:46 PM

The cost was $499. Not terrible, but not cheap either. Then again, I'm not talking about installing an iPod interface in a Hyundai.

Originally Posted by Falterkammer' post='410262' date='Apr 4 2007, 02:46 PM

I had the iPod interface installed in my 530i last week (along with the Progman 25 upgrade). It is great! I have over 5000 songs for my listening pleasure, BUT.........

The cost was $499. Not terrible, but not cheap either. Then again, I'm not talking about installing an iPod interface in a Hyundai.

The iDrive is very slow scrolling through songs and will lock up momentarily if I try to go too fast. I (and potentially you) will have to organize playlists to avoid this hassle.

I have not found a way to skip to another song when playing random tracks. The track skip function just goes to the next song in the playlist and stops the random play feature. If anyone has a solution, let me know please.