ice

I have a 2005 BMW 525 with iPod integration. I find the song menu in iDrive a bit annoying. :thumbsdown: I have stored lots music albums on my iPod. For instance, I choose CD3 for album selections and then I scroll down to an album that starts with the letter 'W'. Then I enter the album named 'W'-somthing and I will get the list of the songs in this album. So far it's working fine. But if I regret my selection and go back to the album menu again, the cursor will jump to the first album in list starting with the letter 'A'. So if you have hundreds of albums stored on your iPod, you'll have to scroll all the way down again to find another album that starts with the letter 'W'. It would be perfect if the cursor would go back to last album selected instead jumping all the way to the top. I know that the iPod is not suppose to behave like this when you use it standalone. I hope someone understand what I am talking about and have a solution for this problem. Thanks in advance.

subterFUSE

Well..... you have to understand that the BMW iPod interface is what we commonly refer to as a "ghetto rig."

Greg530

I know what you mean and I agree. This is very annoying. My 30 GB ipod is fully loaded which means the lists are very long - scrolling is very slow.

The way they solved it in the facelift model is finally very promising. It will access the ipod as a hard drive only, then read, catalog, and play the files using BMW's player. Exactly how the Xbox360 does (those who have it know what I'm talking about.)

Greg

ice

So, do you know if this solution will available for previous models through CIP upgrade?

andy545

The LCI will have a USB input. I guess you will be able to connect the ipod via this interface and access it as a hard drive. Pre LCI does not have this possibility - only aux in and ipod interface...

my530i

I wish USB interface can be retrofitted. Let's wait and see. If CCC unit is the same, it's very promising, but I doubt it since part number change from 01/07 as I was told. Keep our fingers crossed.
Having USB input gives us a broader capability.

subterFUSE

I might just go back to using CDs. Regular CDs. Sound quality is so much better, it's shocking.

Raighne

I have a few questions...

if the iPod is accessed as a hard drive then the host device has to do all the decoding, decryption and rendering. Right?
So, in the case...

- can Protected AAC be played. To be more specific... can you play music you purchased from iTunes store (I have lots of this)
- apart from MP3, what non-encrypted encodings are supported - Apple Lossless, AIFF, WAV?
- what ID3 tag versions are supported? The MP3 decoder in the CD drive has serious limitations on this front currently (i.e. you can't just burn an MP3 CD from iTunes and play it in the car (at least on the E90))
- are iTunes Playlists parsed and displayed on the host device?
- what about metadata like album art. Is that supported.

Thanks.

Greg530

It will not be able to play protected files (a.k.a. iTunes purchases). That is the only downside.

Look at your ipod from a computer (make sure to display hidden files). There is an xml file somewhere. that is the database. You can open it with any text editor or internet explorer.
In an ideal world this file would be read by BMW for the fastest operation.

(But a directory scan across all dirs/files and reading id3 one-by-one is another possibility. Takes a bit longer at first use to build a DB on its own.)

Greg

Raighne

That is a pretty enormous downside!

Every piece of music I have bought in the last few years has been from the iTMS.
I think I am not alone in that.

So, some of us may also have the buy the dealer installed iPod glovebox kit for the LCI.
(if it still works with the updated iDrive that is).

BMW have some cheek marketing that dumb, poorly located USB port as 'iPod support'.