Thread: iPod Cable...
View Single Post
      11-13-2007, 11:11 AM   #3
13eastie
Lieutenant
13eastie's Avatar
United Kingdom
33
Rep
563
Posts

Drives: 2007 E92 M3
Join Date: Mar 2007
Location: London

iTrader: (0)

Garage List
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChrisW View Post
Reads and plays all tracks. No new cable needed.
Hi Chris - Ignoring the fat that MY iPod does not seem to work, if this is the case (and I'm sure your not making this up), why did they tell me to buy a new cable... do you get any extra functionality at all with the BMW cable?

Now that I have finally got the Universal Remote Control to work, this iPod nonsense is the one remaining fly in the ointment...

EDIT: OK, my impatience has been getting the better of me...

It works OK with the original cable (although older models will not charge on USB), but you need to give it a few minutes for the song-titles etc. to upload to the head-unit (the bigger the disk, the longer it will take). The iPod used like this works as a gigantic USB stick: the head-unit merely downloads from the file system on the disk only (which I presume must be FAT32/NTFS format) .mp3 files are browsable, all directories on the disk are visible, the audio is decoded on the DRM-compliant head-unit.

The one gripe so far is that, unlike iTunes etc., it groups all the "The ####" bands together under 'T'.

My suspiscion is that the BMW cable will work as follows:
1) The device itself will be recognised as an iPod and control instructions will be sent directly to the device by the head unit.
2) The decoder on the device itself will be used rather than the .mp3 decoder on the head unit (this means that you will not have DRM problems and you can play AAC files)
3) The consequence of 2) is that you must use the auxillary input for audio

I don't have any answers on Mac-compatibility

I'm not going to bother with the BMW cable because I don't need it, but I'm miffed that it wasn't supplied as standard.

Now all I need to do is go and collect the new iPod my mate brought me back from NYC.

Last edited by 13eastie; 11-13-2007 at 01:21 PM..
Appreciate 0