My dealer wanted $1,400 to upgrade my '06 satellite-ready radio (and nav) with a satellite radio tuner and antennae. I called a local car audio store and it turns out the OEM part, the XMDirect car kit for BMW/Mercedes XMDBMK, is $99 and installation is $49 and takes an hour. What is different about the $150 solution from the $1,400 solution besides price? Are they different?

 

do more research, and find a new local car audio store

It uses RDS, the factory is factory, and is integrated, which means steering wheel controls, Instrument cluster display, radio display....


seriously, you think the dealer is trying to rip you? it is a Benz, not a Chevy, they like to be more integrated or not at all.. and you gotta pay for it

 

Very different. With the device pictured, you get a non-integrated 3rd party add-on. The Mercedes kit is designed to integrate with COMAND, give appropriate instrument cluster readouts and COMAND or radio display readouts, and respond to the steering wheel controls. Pretty much what jbondox said.

That third party kit looks like a good way to junk up an otherwise nice car.

 

The XMDirect kit shown is described by XM as being the OEM upgrade which includes full integration with the command unit and steering wheel controls. Maybe its bogus marketing but that is what I was told. XM says about the $99 part:

 

Did some more digging. XM refers you to your local car dealership if you try to purchase this XMDirect Factory Vehicle Kit so it may be what MB sells. I did find one distributor that sells it outside the dealer parts network for $99. They say the XMDirect Factory Vehicle Kit provides XM programming through your factory-installed satellite-ready car stereo and is only available through your local car dealer.

 

Then please stay after it - we may all learn something. Would like to see how it turns out if you do it.

 

Oh great, I get to be the guinea pig huh? Nobody else has tried this new XMDirect Factory Vehicle Kit yet? As you say, I would hate to find out it was crap after the fact and "junk up" my baby. If I can find out anything more about the kit, and it seems for real, I may go for it with fingers crossed. It's been out for Chrysler, Ford, Chevy and Mercury for a while now but this BMW/Mercedes part # seems new. Yeah, ok, it's not a Chevy but if I can get the same clean look, sound quality and integrated controls for $1,200 less, that would almost cover the headers I am craving! If not I'll probably end up at the dealer. And yes, I do think they are frequently trying to rip us off. I like to do my homework before I walk in there.

 

The thing I don't understand (and someone please fill me in) is how can this be factory for OEM - when the MB Sat radio system is Sirius ?

 

Thank you!! I thought I was the only one who realized this waaay back at post #1.
WTF!! now al of a sudden you can backdate a crossgrade and it's an OEM swapout?? please...

For a minute there I thought I was on another planet.

 

Makes sense that it's not "OEM" as they claim then if XM was never offered. Does this also mean it probably won't work? I know nothing about it other than what I have read and it seems nobody here has tried it yet.

 

As I said - we may all learn something. It's 3rd party, not OEM. And, of course, it's not Sirius. It looks like a way to junk up an otherwise nice car.

Perhaps too droll to have shown the skepticism intended.

 

Yeah I guess he would never know if he'd not asked the question right?

BTW I phoned the people over at sirius recently because I was curious about how their merger that's supposed to be finished very soon would affect my unit and the future of proprietary sirius systems...

I was assured that existing sirius only systems such as what mercedes offers will not be affected and will still work fine... This is part of the reason why the integration process will take so long from what I understood out of the conversation.

I'm just hoping for some sort of cross platform programming to come out of it. That would be real nice.

 

to answer your question, here is the difference: the $1400 sirius kit from the dealer is a product that actually exists... the XMDBMK does not. (just try to order it and you'll see what i mean)


i looked into this piece about 18 months ago.. terk/audiovox has been advertising it all this time but it has never been released nor do i believe that they have nay plans to. additionally there is really no practical way to build an xm adapter that would interface with both mercedes and BMW since they use entirely different data networking systems.

the adapter that has been getting alot of attention is the XM RDS adapter which in theory should be able to work (although it is also a non-existant product last i checked). the idea is that if you have a RDS ready radio the XM adapter basically sits inline on the antenna lead and disconnects the normal antenna. then it transmits a set of three channels using RDS interface: when you tune to the higher or lower channel the unit detects the channel change and uses the RDS emergency tune feature to bump you back to the center channel and changes the sat channel. it also sends the artist/title/album info over the rds data channel.

its actually a really great idea since the end result is that you can use channel up/down on your radio and it will appear to be changing sat channels *but* it is still transmitting the signal over fm modulation which means the sound quality is lousy. additionally i understand they have been having problems getting the unit to work properly which would explain why it is not in production.

the expensive factory unit is that way for a reason: it sends all audio and data over the fiber channel. there are no aftermarket alternatives juts yet because MOST fiber bus is difficult and expensive to develop for and it takes time for aftermarket developers to gain the necessary experience. i would bet that in the next year we will start to see aftermarket sat solutions for mercedes and probably at half the price.

 

Well if so then this option is DOA no matter how good or bad or potentially a dealer part. Thanks for jumping in as it seems you understand this stuff far more than I.

 

The principal technical difference between Sirius and XM is that their satellite constellations are in different orbital planes. The effect of this is that geographic coverage differs; it is optimized for different geographic areas. Right now, each service also uses coding on the satellites that differentiates their signals - XM receivers decode only the XM satellite signals, and Sirius receivers decode only Sirius satellite signals.

What will happen in the merger is that the new company will re-code the transmissions from both satellite constellations so that they can be received by receivers with either kind of coding. If they do this wisely (it is by far the most cost-effective solution), there should be no need for firmware updates to receivers - only the coding on the satellites will be changed. It is neither complex nor difficult.

The result for subscribers will be far better geographic coverage (reception) than existed on only one system or the other, no matter which system you bought initially.

As to the vaporware issue discussed by rob13572468, he knows far more about it than I do. Thanks for your contribution (again), Rob. And, after the great results with the Gateway 500 iPod installation, which also uses the fiber optics bus for the audio input, I know you're right about that being the best way to go for satellite radio.

 

In bold is the key here.....you don't have a "factory-installed satellite-ready car stereo".

 

My 07-E-350 has Sirius. We want it out. With my Audi, I can get a unit that is the same size as the Sirius (see navplus.us) and is interchangable.

Why wouldn't a comparible unit for MB be available?

Thanks for the reseach.

 

The same reason you can only use the I-phone with At&t. And that little unit for your Audi is Not OEM so realistically you could do the same thing at Best buy..
and you can do the same thing to your E350.
But that is the biggest waste of money. Didn't you know that Sirius and XM have merged so they will share programming very soon?

 

We have the non-COMAND head unit, the 1/2 DIN (approx) head unit with AM/FM/WB and 6 disc changer. It is SIRIUS compatible I suppose... is it the same fiber optic as the COMAND unit?

Can someone elaborate on how the Gateway 500 operates, what are its features? Do the songs show on the radio and/or in the speedo? Do the steering wheel features work for selecting music from the iPod?

 

See https://mbworld.org/forums/showthrea...88#post2234888 and https://mbworld.org/forums/audio-electronics/195743-dension-gateway-500-most-o-menus-comand.html for the MOST unit. You don't give us the year and model of your car, so I cannot say whether you need the MOST unit or the D2B unit.

A new version of the hardware (v3) is just coming to market that will give song titles on the instrument cluster for both MOST fiber optics bus and D2B bus units. Right now, the v2 units for MOST bus give song titles, etc. only on the COMAND unit or other text-capable head unit. D2B units give only track number, not song title (this is a limitation of the MB D2B head units, not the Gateway 500).

Most Audio (10, 20, etc) are not text-capable, nor are D2B COMAND units. It may take a bit more time for the v3 units to come to market; check on the Dension site (www.dension.com). Right now the MOST units are starting to ship with v3 electronics, but the CAN Bus cable (needed for the instrument cluster readout) is not available. CAN Bus output is a very new feature for the Gateway 500. One of the developers (GW500 on the forums) has said the D2B Can Bus cables aren't available yet.

 

I'm sorry, you are right. It's a D2B unit... I need to update my sig line to reflect my car. It's a 2004 CLK 55 AMG with the standard radio, not the COMAND unit.

 

This isn't a great pic, but it's all I have access to here at work. Here's a picture of my head unit.



it does have the 6 cd changer in the glove box.

 

BTW, if someone can tell me what that head unit is called, it'd help me.
Thanks!

 

In case this hasn't been mentioned, but there have been other 3rd party packages developed that look and function like you'd expect from OEM devices. Here's another 3rd party XM package for Lexus vehicles that is fully integrated:

http://www.vaistech.com/slx.php

Also, many Lexus users have successfully installed this themselves from the testimonials on clublexus.com. Also, I noted that the description for the lexus solution expressly said no fm transmitters/modulation etc. My point is that this has been done and is possible.

 

THANKS!!! I was looking for an answer to get Sat Radio in my 2004 GX470 w/nav, do you know of any bluetooth solutions... so I can connect my phone as well?