RocketsRedGlare, or someone else who has played with the MusicBox, when you say the dealer copied some CDs to the hard disk and the interface was easy to use - what does the menu tree look like when you are scrolling through music? Is it similar to an mp3 player with folders for artist, album, song, genre, etc? Can you quickly scroll through a large number of songs? What do you see on the screen, song titles or file names? How can you modify/delete?

 

Here are a few pics for you. I recorded a copy protected disc (Coldplay) and it worked. A regular cd U2 and recorded a CD-R mx cd which are listed as track 1 etc.


http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...0510862&size=m

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...0510863&size=m

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...0509740&size=m

http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne...0509737&size=m

Cheers,

 

07,
Thanks, that is what I have been trying to find out. Very much appreciated. Good info on the sort options, etc. I guess if you have the patience for it you can manually fill in the missing track info for mp3s, etc.

 

Great pics Mike, thanks for sharing. If you get a CF card, let me know if playing music from the CF card looks exactly like playing music from the HD. I am curious to know if you can use the Gracenote Database for music being played off the CF card.

 

Does the Owner's Manual say anything about updating the Gracenote database? If this thing isn't pulling CD-Text for the tracks/album title, then I'd assume there's some sort of DB update mechanism in place so we won't lose that capability moving forward...details?

 

I just got back from test driving a slate blue sport. I loved it! I don't think the guy I almost ran off the rode liked it as much as I did!

Anyway, I went armed with the new Killers CD and a CF card with two songs on it (one mp3, one WMA). I am pretty sure the CF is type I since the card I took from my camera does not denote that it is a CF II.

CF Card:
I plugged it in and it shows the directory structure, I selected the root folder and it started playing the first file. It read the band name and used the file name as the title. So for the U2 song, it showed Vertigo.wma as the title but it also knew U2 was the band. No album info. The other song was from a lesser known band (Band of Horses) and it was treated the same way. Thus it is just pulling whatever information is on the file. Unfortunately you can not record to the music box from the CF (unless they buried it somewhere in the submenus). I also popped the CF card out and reinserted and it continued exactly where it was at when I pulled it out.

Music Box:
I inserted the Killers CD and it prompted it was searching the database for CD info. It did not find any since this CD was just released a few weeks ago. It looks like you can manually enter the data (which would suck). So it just showed "Track 1" when playing. It had a button on the screen to record. I hit that and it started recording. After listening to the first song, it already had ripped 5 songs from the CD to the HD. I then switched to the Music Box. Since it had no track info, it just showed something like "10/26/2006 Track 1" for the first ripped song. I am hoping there is some way that the Gracenote database can be updated via a CF card. I know from the youtube walkaround that NAV is updated that way. It would be cool to be able to pop into the dealer for an oil change and also get the db updated.

Other items:
Salesman was clueless. I was explaining the whole CF\HD\RIP concept to him. They would not budge off of MSRP. That is OK since I already have $1000 off from a dealer a few towns away. Also, he stated his boss just got the price list in but he hasn't seen it. I provided him his very own copy of the price sheet that I printed out and took with me. They also had their launch party last night and sold 3 journeys and no Sport models.

Two things I did not like: paddle shifters are more gimic then useful. The time delay reminds me the 99 TL I drive now which I think was Acura's first attempt at the MM. The line on the center console where it meets the dash is misaligned. This was pointed out early on with the initial release photos in April. Trunk is small but will do the job (my wife drives an MDX so not a big problem). Should also be able to fit two cars seats in with little issue.

 

Great info, thanks. Sounds like it's not going to be perfect but will do the job. All my CDs are old anyway, so their data should be OK. Using mp3s sounds like it will be a pain in the a$$, both getting them on the hard disk and if you want song data to display.

What we really need is for Gracenote to do a deal with XM to deliver the database updates via satellite! Schweet!