amg4john

What kind of save disk do I purchase? Thanks John

jvanbrecht

Your going to need to be a little more detailed.. as I have no idea what your trying to say.....

Yuille36

Any factory music disc, say George Benson for example can be ripped to your cars hard drive. And even some disc with burned music can be also.

amg4john

i just did some research....looks like I need a PCMCIA / SD card to transfer music back in forth between car & computer...

jvanbrecht

Okay, that makes more sense, although technically PCMCIA is a type of interface, not a disk (but I wont get into semantics).

Compact Flash memory is dirt cheap right now (seeing as its being phased out), so I would pickup a PCMCIA to CF adapter, and a few cheap CF cards.

Yuille36

Yes, I use the SD card in my C63. I found out that only the standard SD cards work, not SDHC. For what ever reason, doesn't work in my car, I thinknits a formatting issue personally. But the SD card reader was like $125 when I bought mine last year. But it's a good interface for transferring music from computer to car, and can also be ripped to your cars hard drive.

brt3

I don't know why Mercedes chose such an arcane interface. I haven't used PCMCIA for about 4 years now. My guess is they needed something a little more robust (larger, easier to handle, and logical in the context of needing a slot on the dashboard) that would accept any type of card.

Regardless, anyone who wants to can buy a PCMCIA card adapter via Amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/Sandisk-PCMCIA...1655537&sr=8-1

Can someone also confirm the size of the hard drive on the C63? My data, when I inspect the HDD contents via COMAND, indicate that it's a 6GB drive. If that's the case I'm guessing it's flash, not HDD. IF there's a HDD in there, it's hard to believe they'd choose something so small. I'm using 32GB SD cards on my video camera, and a single DVD will hold up to 9.4 GB.

I'm also curious about how the unit stores music on the HDD as regards compression and quality settings. Does anyone know if they're using WAV, or if the audio is being compressed into MP3 form? Given how long a single CD download takes I wonder if it's having to perform compression. My wife's old 2007 Lexus could ingest a disc in roughly 1/4 the time it takes on the C63.

Yuille36

But you Mercedes has always been behind the power curve when it came to entertainment. They lead when it comes to electronic innovations in safety. But they are trying, I have the media interface module, and it's a step in the right direction. And there a software upgrade coming out in January that will give test and email capability.

jvanbrecht

My guess on why PCMCIA.. because its an interface that supports connectivity to multiple formats (SD, CF, Sony Memory Stick, hell, microdrives if you want it), without the need to run USB cables to adapters.

I have not really looked into the hard drive aspect, I suspect the 6G is what your seeing as available for use, it is most likely larger but partitioned in an odd way for various functions in use by the entertainment system, and the nav system.

ATL_MB

I believe that the hard drive is 40 or 50 gigs (still small), but most of it is used for navigation and other stuff - whatever is left can be used for music.

Instead of putting everything on the HDD, you can get the Media Interface Plus from the dealer - then you can just link your phone to the car using Bluetooth, and play your music directly from the phone. Hard to set up at first, but works pretty well.

jvanbrecht

While that certainly is a nice option, its an expensive option, its not that hard to keep your phone/ipod/whatever synced on a PC, and those same songs synced onto an SD or CF card using the pcmcia slot.

The downside of course would not being able to use online music services like Pandora if that is even supported

deeoh

This may help sort things out...

http://www.mbusa.com/mercedes/servic...ts/accessories

nickia

The best solution is to use DVD-RW.

Each disc is 4gb, and you can add songs whenever you want because it's RW.

You get 20gb of songs with 5 discs and cost you less than $5.

ATL_MB

Pandora is supported on Media Interface Plus.

ZephyrAMG

True, but again its a "moving part" system. I guess people are leaning towards a drive slot interface with no moving parts. I can understand using CF cards and SD cards but what about just also using the ipod plug and pluging in thier ipod?

jvanbrecht

Not everyone owns an ipod.. although I do have 3 old iphones (2g, and 2 3g's) collecting dust in a drawer.. heh.. (I switched to android).

Yuille36

I have to say that once the media Interface is hooked up, and synced it works like a charm. I'm enjoying the hell out of it.

nickia

Sometimes I just turn off my Comand system at night. The entire cabin becomes so calming because there is no light glaring at your face.