GLE43_Sube

I just wanted to share the video and photo capabilities of COMAND. In case anyone was wondering, it plays video files and displays photos just fine. Obviously, this feature is disabled while driving. I know it has limited uses, but it's perfect for killing time while waiting to pick up a loved one at the airport, train station or bus depot. Just shot a bunch of vacation pics and want to show them to the whole family? Just pop the SD card into the slot on the dash and click "slideshow".

The multimedia system supports the following formats:

Video: DVD-V, mpeg, wmv, mov, avi, mp4

Photos: jpg, jpeg, bmp, png

yxc145

wow nice. where do you have the video file store? on a flash driver? or are you bluetooth streaming from a phone?

GLE43_Sube

I have movies, photos and music on a single 128GB USB drive (below). It's plugged into the port inside the armrest. Being a low profile design, this flash drive works great. There's no risk of accidentally bumping it while removing things from the center console. You could use the SD card slot on the dash and separate your media by content type. Both USB ports and the SD card slot have a combined capacity of 15,000 files. So far I have 7,070 songs (320Kbps MP3's) and a few movies and photos just to try out the feature. The drive is only about half full.


As far as I know, the Bluetooth protocol doesn't support video streaming. Even if it did, there's not enough bandwidth to stream video. Maybe you could do it using the car's WiFi hotspot, but then you'd be using a ton of data. It's easier to just put your videos onto a flash drive.

I tried Bluetooth streaming of music from my phone. Half the metadata didn't carry over. Plus, I prefer to keep my media separate from my phone. The flash drive operates essentially just like a HDD. You just plug it in and forget about it. This model is water proof, shock proof, magnet proof, temp proof, and X-ray proof. You can keep it plugged in year-round. I only remove it to edit my collection. Of course, I have to remember to remove it when the car's being serviced. I'm sure it would disappear in a heartbeat.

yxc145

Awesome! thanks!
I once bought a software from video in motion to unlock the restriction during drive. Was only $100. And I ended up playing video only twice. ha ha.

Mahermm

So, I found out that in the GLE400 (2016), the one with GCC Specs, that Mercedes discontinued the music hard drive all together and that is why I could not find the option to "REC" or record/ copy music from a CD or USB. I was a bit irritated especially knowing that the above option is available in the US models/ Specs. But then I settled for the fact that I could also put all my music on a simple SD memory card and play it and it won't get in the way of anything like a traditional USB drive.

GLE43_Sube

Mahermm,

First there were 8-track tapes. Then came cassette tapes. After that came single disc CD drives. Then came CD changers. Next came HDDs. Now, everybody uses SD/USB flash drives. Now, you can put into perspective this never ending quest for greater music capacity/convenience.

My last car had a 10 GB HDD and a USB port. 10 GB was pretty good at the time. It could store about 2,000 320 kbps mp3s. But eventually, flash memory became less and less expensive, and that HDD became obsolete as well. Besides, the thing I didn't like was ripping CDs via the car left you stuck with "their" ID3 tags. Sometimes the Genre was wrong. Other times they'd have a total of five different artists for one track. There was no way to edit this in the car. For this reason, if you already own a huge CD collection and want to listen to them in the car, it's ALWAYS better to rip CDs on a computer. Then, copy them to a flash drive.

Trust me. Use the flash drive and you'll never look back.

P.S. See my post in this same thread about "low-profile" USB drives.

cadman_ks

How do you do this?

I tried doing this the other day, and I couldn't get it to work. I had the phone paired, but I couldn't figure out how to make the car play media files.

I figured that you went into media, and picked bluetooth as an option, but when I went there, it wasn't there...

GLE43_Sube

What year/model car do you have? What model phone are you using?

Even older phones will support Bluetooth "Call" connection, but not all smartphones support Bluetooth "Media" Streaming. I don't know if you're using Android or iOS. If it's Android, go into phone "Settings", "Bluetooth Settings". Find your vehicle. Click on "Settings" next to your device (vehicle). Here, you should see something similar to the attached screenshot, which is from an LG V20. If you don't see "Media Audio", your phone doesn't support this feature.

If your phone supports BT Media Streaming, it should connect to your car by default. I didn't have to adjust any settings. As soon as I opened my phone's audio player, it was already connected and playing through the car.

You'll also see "Message Access" in the phone's BT settings. This permits the vehicle to display text message content on the car's LCD. But again, only the newer vehicles/phones support this.