"No transfer. You can't even transfer music from a data mp3 cd to the harddrive. The only music you can transfer is if you're have an audio cd in there...to the harddrive."

I had planned to get an 07 without the Nav. because I don't like the CD player in the trunk. I feel much better now about not getting the Nav system now that I know the HD is pretty much useless for music since you can't load MP3's to it.

 

You can load "mp3s" sorta -- only that your source can't be mp3s ....
it would read a regular audio CD and convert it to mp3

the G has got that a$$ backwards if you ask me

 

The stereo is made by clarion, so it is most likely running Windows CE....

 

Sweet, so if I remove the Compact Flash Drive and put a USB there.... can I then hook up misc. USB device on there? Such as keyboard, mouse, laptop, b, microphone, DVD-R, iPod, and perhaps even the Playstation 2 steering wheel? That would be sweet!

 

I wouldn't think it would be a "drive", it probably more of like RAM, where there are not acual moving parts or it would be prone to skipping and the reader actually touching the disks (hard drive crash).

It does seem stupid enough not to be an oversight to not be able to save from flash/CD to the onboard drive. Not sure why they didn't allow it but they might have something to do with copywrites and such?

 

My business partner like to take his new cars apart. More than once he's either shorted out the electronics or couldn't get the proprietary piece of S**t working again. So far the dealer (Toyota) hasn't caught on, and covered under warranty.

I'm not exactly an old fart (over 40), and am fairly adept at all PC related technology. I'm always trying stuff like reflashing my graphics card clock speed, etc., but I'd be pretty afraid to try messing w/ the HD in this car considering a possible void warranty.

 

I can't wait till the day the Inf navi system becomes one of the first OEM navi systems to run *nix...

 

Hmm...I'd love to crack this thing open and find out what kind of drive it's running. Probably a little 1.8"...it'd be crazy if one could route an ATA-spec connector out to the glovebox or something.

Then you'd be able to upload the MP3s with full ID3 tags directly...and we all know how sweet that would be.

I'm going in to Infiniti of Nashua tomorrow to pick my baby up (assuming everything's A-OK with the car!) - I'll pick the service guys' brains and see if I can find out how hard it'd be to get the drive out of the HU.

 

Do we know if the system reads ID3 tags even for MP3s off the CF card?

 

I don't think so. I threw a bunch of songs on a CF and this is how it looked.


Btw... I've been using Nero to encode MP3s back to CD, then use the CDs to load the Nav music box. To me the quality sounds fine, but I'm no audiophile so don't take my word for it.

 

Thanks for the pic. Do you know if those MP3s have ID3 tags? I ask because there's no consistency to your files...haha....I'm one of those **** retentive people that has to have perfect ID3 tags on my MP3s.

 

Hmm. I was under the impression that they did. Here's what I see when I open the file in winamp.

 

Take out the number 3 where it says track #3 and Collide should look OK.

Did you place any of your mp3's in folders on the CF card?

 

Any difference from the CD or Music Box sound?

 

I'm pretty sure that taking the drive out would be very easy and that it would be a known format(either windows or unix filesystem). And you could probably put mp3 files on it pretty easily. That's the easy part.

But it won't play them...

All systems of this kind that I have ever seen have a database of song names, artists names, playlists, etc. If we are very lucky those will be in an easy to decode format and someone(maybe me) can write a program to update them. If not... then we are screwed.