BillP

I'm going to get my replacement E500 in September (after a battle royale with my dealer). The pictures I've seen of the Comand II show a "SAT" button. Mercedes has announced that 2004 cars are prewired for Sirius satellite radio.

Question: Will Sirius be installable on my new 2003?

bmms8

since its on the replacements, it should be pre-wired, and sometime nect year, MB will hopefully come out with it at the dealer. if not, you might want to contact drb, or slipnby, i believe he has sirius or XM, he can probably tell you the details on his car

slipnby

The dealer told me MB is not ready to install Sirius in the 03 replacements with Command II, and there is no word about when. Meanwhile, I installed XM. It does not use the sat button. I tune the fm dial to a specific frequency and do the preset. The tuner sits in the ashtray area, hidden from view. The antenna is snaked to the rear and sits under the rear shelf below the rear window. There was concern the metalic tint could cause drop outs. Drop out has happened about 5% of the time, but I'm not sure it is due to the antenna placement. I have XM in my office with the antenna pointed to the sky and experience drop outs at the same rate. I suspect there are really thick clouds between the antenna and the satelite.

Anyhow, when/if I can have SIRIUS installed I will reevaluate. There are pros and cons for both systems' programming mostly that XM is for old people and SIRIUS is for the youngsters or so I've been told.

NitroShredder

From what I can gather.. the '03 NAV replacement cars are basically "early" 04's. Notice the subtle changes to the car in the NAV cars.. ESP in the command cluster. The rearrangement of buttons and so on seem to reflect a "new generation." I'm not sure they would have made a running change MID year otherwise. Since the NAV cars have the COMAND and the other 03's dont.. I'd expect there's some "04" spec wiring harness in there somewhere.

perhaps?

Peter

bmms8

im sure it there is something there hence the SAT button. or atleast the NAV cars are compatable for the future.

jposhea3

yeah....buy the car without it (SAT), and MB will be able to retrofit it at the dealer later. Should only be a simple box-swap using the same wiring, doable in a few hours at the dealer, targeting the end of the year for availability of the retrofit.

they'll probably even give you a discount if you prepay for the Satellite radio

what could go wrong ? :-)


[heavy heavy sarcasm mode was used to create the contents of this post, for anyone newer than the whole 03 NAV adventure]

ctouhey

James! Shame on you!

I stilled laughed! :p

mrandery

slipnby, a few questions -

Do you use an FM modulator or a low power transmitter ?

If you use the modulator, where did you connect it to the MB antenna ? Did you do it yourself ?

I occasionally have drop outs in the sat signal too. But my antenna is on the roof (not in my 211, in another car). The drop outs are usually due to tall buildings or hills on the sides of the road/ overpasses etc. Mostly in areas where XM does not have repeaters. So your antennas location on the rear shelf is probably not much of a problem. I'm going to put my antenna there too, but I still have to figure out how to get the audio into the head unit.