There are several rumours on German MB boards that a major software update for the COMAND and AGW will be available in Europe Monday February 2. This update should make it possible to play MP3 CD’s. Let’s cross our fingers. Talked to my mechanic today and he promised to call me on Monday and give me the status of the update/upgrade.

 

I wonder what the chances of this being available in the US anytime soon? Probably minimal but would be real nice.

 

Hi Oslo
I would be very grateful if you could keep me informed.

Brilliant if they do.

John
Torquay

 

Sure I will. When will you pick up your new car?

 

Hi Oslo
Thanks for that.

The car is at the Dealership and hopefully it will be delivered sometime Tuesday.

Nice hearing from you,
John

 

Hi,
would you please post a link to one of these "rumour-boards". I contacted MB approx. 2 weeks ago because of this rumour and they said only the S-class will get an MP3-update at this time, they don't know anything about an update for the E-class.

Since this update woulod save me some money (was just about buying an iPod) and make the COMAND even better - I would like to get it asap.

Thanks
Michael

 

http://www.db-forum.de/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10776

http://www.motor-talk.de/t231898/f155/s/thread.html

http://www.mb-navigation.de/foren/viewtopic.php?t=2597

 

I like your style. Lucky my wife wasn't hovering over my shoulder when reading one of the links (Raven1488) I don't think she would have believed I was reading about software upgrades for motor vehicles

Regards,
John

 

My wife actually did . And she does not read German, so I had a hard time convincing her . Perhaps we should inform raven1488 about the troubles he could get us into.

And now it's less than 6 hours to go.

 

:p Unfortunately I am one of the the great number of English speaking nations that are to lazy to learn another countries language. However I can certainly understand what the threads were saying.

Apart from that some of the pictures were entertaining

Regards
John

 

Hi Oso - so no word from your mechanic? Being able to play MP3s would be great. Also wonder if there would be any other updates/fixes for the Command system.

Thanks!

 

Hi Oslo
Any further news on the Mp3 update? The service department at my dealership have supposed to e-mailed Mercedes-Benz UK.

Not had any reply though.

John

What made you change from your National Flag to the Mercedes-Benz emblem?

 

Hi John

Been away for some days. Congrats with your new car! Got some pictures yet? I can post them for you if you like.

I have two new dates for the 3.0 update. The 12 and 16 of February. Really hope this turns out to be correct. I will keep you informed as soon as I know, but its getting closer for sure.

 

Thanks very much for the kind offer. The sun is shining and I might put pressure on my son to help with the pictures (must wash the car first

I note your flag is back in its rigfhtful place

John

 

Hi Oslo
Although your National Flag is back, the beautiful picture of your car has disappeared?

The photograph of your car is excellent, the angle you took it at shows the cars lines superbly.

John

I have accidentally deleted your e-mail address. (when the my-doom virus was at its worst I removed my address book, but unfortunately I was too clever for my own good and I backed up an old address book).

John

 

Hi John

Just send you PM with my e-mail address.

I had some troubles too, not MyDoom , although I probably should rename wy wifes name to MyDoom. They are causing the same mess No, she's not behind my shoulder as I write this.

 

Thanks,
You should have received the reply with pictures.

Regards,
John

 

Any update on the availability of an mp3 software upgrade for the cd?

 

Does '04 S have the same command unit? I noticed a post in S forum telling that S command can play MP3 as from CD as from DVD. Isn't it cool?

 

There are 3 new dates for the upgrade. February 12 and 16, and the first week of March. And MP3 will be playable only from the DVD slot, not from the magazine.

 

The nav systems on the 04 S and CL are different from the one on the New E. On the audio side the 04 CL and S systems are still Bose while the W211 is HK with Logic7. One difference on the nav side is the inclusion of the bird's eye view in the 04 S and CL systems while initially absent in the W211 system (although rumored to be added to the W211 in MY 2005).

And yes, MP3 playback from the 04 S nav system is indeed cool especially with the discovery it's ability to read and play MP3s off of a burned DVD. I'm going to tinker around with the menu structure a bit to see how well it handles album/artist folder structure to make searching for a particular song easier. There are 2 items I wonder about though. Those are whether the system has an upper limit to how many titles it can store in memory (see * below) and whether it will accurately read dual-layered discs created with burners with that capability which will be available later this year. I'll be testing both of them as soon as I can.

* My thinking here is that just because the system can read MP3s off of a DVD, it may not have been designed to handle a disc with say 500 or 1000 songs on it. When you load an MP3 encoded disc, the system reads it and there is a delay (the message on screen says something like "loading disc, please wait" with a little pie chart showing that the system was working). Presumably, this delay is due to the system reading the names of the MP3s off of the disc and copying them into it's local memory for display on the screen. I noticed that the delay was much longer when I inserted a DVD with 255 MP3s vs. a CD that with about 100 MP3s. Additionally, when I inserted the DVD, the system actually showed that it was an "MP3 CD". While this label is certainly not conclusive, it makes me wonder if the system has been optimized for MP3 CDs and their relevant storage capacities. When I take delivery later this month, I will test the system using a DVD with many more songs and a more complicated file structure. For the initial tests I did, both the CD and DVD had all MP3s in the root directory of the discs (the nav system's display actually showed "Root" at the top of the screen). I'll test later how well it handles a disc created where every song is within a folder named with the title of the album or even a 2-layer folder sytem with artist named folders first which then contain album named sub-folders.

 

"When I take delivery later this month, I will test the system using a DVD with many more songs and a more complicated file structure. "

Have you had a chance to test the system? Playing MP3's would be awesome!

 

On the positive side, I was able to test a more complicated directory structure by using a CD-R with ~150 songs sorted with each song in an appropriately named album folder. The system recognized the folder structure and would let you browse within a folder then move back out into the root directory. I was pleased to see that it worked after talking to a technical rep from MBUSA who stated emphatically that the system would not recognize folders (But hey, I thought MBUSA was ALWAYS right!!! )

On the negative side, I had some problems with further DVD testing. I created 2 new discs, each with 1008 songs (4.18GB). One had all tracks in the root directory, the other had the tracks sorted into folders named with the album title. Unfortunately, when tested on a 2004 CL600, neither could be read. I think the message on the display was "Unrecognized Disc Format". I tried the previous DVD-R with 225 songs and it worked just fine. Both new discs were created in iTunes like the previous DVD-R that worked using the "MP3 CD" format.

So, I'm going to do some more testing this week. My plan is to try a few different quantities of tracks. I already know that 225 titles @ 970MB works while 1008 @ 4.18GB does not, so I'll try quantites of 250, 500 and 750. Hopefully at least the 500 will work. While not as good as 1000, of course, it's still a whole lot more than what you can get on one CD-R.

 

You gotta love this. So I get my car and what do I see in the COMAND manual? Information on the system's ability to read folders within MP3 CDs and even a couple of examples with screenshots of how the display appears under those conditions AND an option for shuffle playback by folder (there's also a shuffle for the entire disc). So I guess the tech I spoke to doesn't even know what's in the manual.

On another banging your head against the wall note, the COMAND manual also goes into detail (13 pages worth) on the DVD playback functions of the system. However, as another user posted previously, there's a notation at the beginning which states:

"The COMAND system is capable of playing DVDs. However, in order to avoid driver distraction, the video function is disabled and no images will be shown on the COMAND screen.

Upon loading a DVD, the following message will appear:

To prevent the driver from being distracted, the picture is faded out."

Seriously? Is that the ultimate tease or what? Obviously, manuals are region specific as this one has info related to the upcoming Sirius Sat Radio feature so it's not like they had to include the DVD instructions like they do over in Europe. If this market can't get the rear seat entertainment option to make the front slot's DVD playback capabilities useful, why the hell include DVD playback as a feature at all and talk about it in the manual? Sure, you can still listen to the audio portion (which is still useful for concert DVDs, stand-up comedy DVDs, the DD streams of DVD-A discs, etc) but let's face it, no video options (front or rear) make it much less useful.

The Sirius section was pretty cool as it gave further details of what we should expect from that option when it is available. I'm on my local dealer's list to have it installed as soon as it is out.

Ok, now back to my MP3 testing. More good news, bad news. The good news is that all of the following discs I tested loaded and played just fine:

250 songs @ 1.04GB
500 songs @ 2.05GB
750 songs @3.10GB
1000 songs @ 4.15GB

So, maybe 1000 is the system's limit for how many songs it can recognize on one disc (since the discs with 1008 were not recognized). I did notice longer read times as the number of songs increased. In the case of the 1000-song disc, the read time is over 2 minutes! So, while that's an inconvenience, I came across something else that in combination with the long read time is downright annoying. There doesn't seem to be a resume function for MP3 discs once you turn off the car. If you turn the COMAND system off, then back on again while the car is running in the middle of an MP3 disc playback it will resume. But I noticed while running some errands today that each time I came back to the car and started it up, the disc (the 1000 song one) had to be re-loaded. After loading, the disc would begin playing from teh first song. I also had to choose shuffle disc in the settings menu each time as that was forgotten as well. I'll do some additional testing to see if this is isolated to higher capacity discs (maybe the system's internal buffer wasn't designed to retain that much info and be able to resume after a re-start) and try a regular MP3 CD-R.

Additionally, I came across an issue with folders. After having success with the 1000-song disc, I decided to re-burn that disc with album folder structure. Unfortunately, while all folders appear (that disc has 162 folders), the system only reads MP3s in the first 42 while the system doesn't see songs in the rest. I'm going to try re-burning this disc to make sure there wasn't a problem during the burn that is causing this behavior.

Also, CD-Text is supported from the changer magazine while MP3 playback (I tested an MP3 CD-R) is not.

 

Has the upgrade version 3.0 been released yet? and if so is its full description 2004/3.0 or 2003/2.3?

John