BiTurboAmg

Any one used this yet? My mb service guy said they can add a factory mb I pod interface into the benz that I can control from the head unit or steering wheel. They say it mounts in the glove box? Any one know anything about this?

mez456

I have this in my C55. I have never used the CD player.

http://www.mbusa.com/features/iPod/index.do

Demo at the bottom

Mez

BiTurboV12 AMG

Have it in the E350 you can only control it on the wheel and screen by the spedo it doesnt show up on the main head unit it just says AUX. I havent played with it much but the sound quality is very good. I guess i am going to have to change my info since i no longer have a 2000 ML lol

deaddog

I have it and like it very much. Sound quality is very good (but it depends on how you record your music - 256 minimum bit rate for decent sound). But, it is far quieter (>25% lower volume) than any other source (CD, radio) If you really like to crank your music (as I do) you wil be a bit dissapointed. I'm trying to figure out a solution short of re-ripping all my hundreds of CD's.
FYI, Ihad a PhatBox in my old BMW that was far superior in every respect to the MB Ipod set up. In the interests of full disclosure, I am not a fan of the Ipod itself - hate the copy protection limitations. I'm not a downloader, just a guy who wants to move his purchased and ripped CD's freely among all my music devices. Thats why for portable I much prefer my iRiver 20gb.

Nij

If you didn't add it as an option when purchasing, how much is it installed?

BiTurboV12 AMG

what are you talking about? you can burn CDs in itunes no problem and transfer to other players. If you want to talk about copy right protection Itunes is on the consumers side. The others make you convert it into none MP3 format so they can control your music more. where as Ipod uses MP3 format that is the standard and is not copy protected. If you dont know how to use it then please refrain from posting about how you cant transfer music to other media with itunes it only confuses more people.

http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033_1-5654...ag=cnetfd.blog

go watch the video labeled cat fight. the part i want you to watch is about half way in. about apple vs real player

BiTurboV12 AMG

I had the sales guy give it to me with the car. i guess the kit is $299 and labor is 1.5 hours if i remember right labor is like $100/hr.

deaddog

Maybe you ought to read my post before you get all hot-headed. I never compared Apple to RealPlayer, sony or any of the others that use proprietary ripping/coding/copy protection systems. I think ALL of these systems are bad for the honest consumer. But, my complaint is specifically about the iPod.

My iRiver operates as an external hard drive, plays lots of formats, requires no recoding, and has no copy protection. I can rip my cds in mp3 using any of a number of programs (even itunes), put them on the iRiver and they act like any other unprotected data file.

I do not believe that this is the case with the iPod. Maybe I'm mistaken but I believe that, among other things, Apple prevents you from moving music FROM your iPod to another computer. So, if I load an iPod with music from my home computer, I cannot then take the iPod to work and UPLOAD the music from the iPod to my work computer. Is that correct?

If so, I stand by my assertion that the iPod uses copy protection that unfairly limits the use of purchased music by the vast majority of honest consumers. Just because RealPlayer and others do the same thing or worst doesn't make it better.

so, bottom line, absent the MB interface, I don't like the ipod

machz990

Is this just for 06's or can the 05's hook up the IPOD or MP3 player also?

deaddog

You can put it in '05 as well. It works only with iPods. And, to be clear, it is well worth it to put 20 or 40 gigs of music in your car in an integrated, easily accessible manner (even if you have to join the evil iPod empire to do so!!)

Cormac

I'm just gonna chime in quickly concerning the iPod and iTunes. There are two distinct modes of operations and they have an effect on the music. If you use the iPod, you'll never know which mode you're in until you try to "move" your music to another device/computer.
1) You ripped the music from your CDs. It doesn't matter if you encoded into AAC or MP3. Either way you can copy the music or convert it to MP3 if you recorded in AAC (the latter is useful for making MP3 CDs)
2) You bought the music through iTunes. In this case, Apple uses a DRM solution that prevents you from playing the music on an unauthorized computer. Also, you cannot convert the songs to MP3. That means you can only enjoy legally purchased and downloaded music by threes means: play it in iTunes, play it from your iPod, or burn a regular audio CD with it.

BiTurboV12 AMG

#2 is not true. all you have to do is export them from iTunes to a cd and then export them from the cd back to your computer. just make sure under preferences you have it importing everything in MP3, so #1 also is not 100% accurate you can tell how you import it and you can tell it what quality to import it as. I hear plenty of people complain about quality and i ask them well are you using default importing and they always say you cant change that... well yes you can.

deaddog

So I take it everybody agrees that you can't move music FROM your iPod to a computer. The reason you can''t do so is due to articifial "protection" constraints that Apple puts on the iPod. That alone renders the iPod inferior to other devices that act as an external hard drive + music player.

By the way Biturbo v12 is correct about how to avoid the copy constraints of iTunes. Its a hassle imposed by Apple but you can avoid it with a little work. And, he is right that you can rip to your own personal quality preferences.

But, it doesn't change my basic point that the iPod limits your ability to move music.

'nuff said.

BiTurboV12 AMG

If you want to just take music off an ipod and onto the computer that is even easier. just left click on the ipod and tell it to show all hidden files then open the folder labeled music and take what ever you want... thats how i take music off my friends ipods. and if your to lazy to do that there are a ton of freeware programs that integrate into itunes that make copying music even easier... The only restrictions on an ipod is the user.

Cormac

Both my points are correct. In #1, I said you could rip to AAC or MP3. And in #2, I stated that you could export to CD. You're merely expanding on my post, not correcting it.

pas

do a search for pod util it is a program that lets you install your ipod on another computer or multiple ipods on the same computer. I agree with Deaddog even though I have an Ipod, Apple is a piece of **** for setting it up the way they did.

korveine

Have it in my car as well, and I like it for the most part - sound quality is excellent, and controls thru the steering wheel and the info shows up on the speedo, so you don't have to take your eyes too far from the road.

As aforementioned by members, the display doesn't show up on the COMAND (head unit) and can't control it from there.

A few other suggestions for improvement (if MB ever reads this forum)
1) if the song title is too long, what shows on the speedo display gets chopped off - would like to have an option to scroll the text.
2) also it only shows ASCII characters (so if you have non-English titles, it will just show blank where the non-ASCII characters are) - being able to display Unicode would be awesome
3) haven't figured out how to scroll through a playlist to select 1 song out of say 250+ songs while the current song is playing -- I have to click next, through one song at a time, and wait for the song to actually play before I can click next again (so if I know the song I want is 20 songs from the current one, I can't click next 20 times in quick succession, because it won't register).
4) would be cool if they didn't disable the iPod controls when it's plugged into the kit (or have the option where it can be re-enabled), so I can actually still use the iPod's scroll-wheel to select that song 20 down in the playlist - but it's probably done because of legality issues.

All in all, pretty satisfied with the MB iPod kit. Hope they can improve on it.