[Toiman]

Hi everyone,

Picking up my new car this week sometime, I'm just loading all my favourite songs onto a usb thumb drive. Does anybody know if the I Drive system reads all the popular files types. I'm assuming .mp3 is okay but what about .wma??

Does the usb/mp3 player feature work okay, the reason I ask is that I think only BMW offer such as awesome thing. I hate burning a CD just for a few new tracks.

Toiman

[OzStriker]

The best way to send audio to iDrive is via a USB stick, this will send the audio digitally to iDrive and will also upload all the artist names, song names, genres, playlists etc.

I originally used an iPod however the USB is used for charging the iPod and the audio is sent in analogue via the 3.5mm jack so you will lose sound quality.

MP3 and .WMA work fine.

I agree with you on CDs, my car has never seen one...It comes with a CD drive and a separate stacker in the boot, absolute waste in my opinion.

CDs are like, sooooo 20th Century

EDIT: This thread might help:

http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthr...&highlight=wma

GeriFix, solid work on there, better than my seat belt handover post

[Toiman]

Ozstriker,

Thanks for that thread. Explained everything. The I Drives looks fantastic in how it handles the thumb drive data. I personally thought it would be very basic, you know just bring up the songs not bring up the entire directory tree.
It will be like having my media centre in the car - yea ha.

Here's one. Can you play .mpg, .avi's, .mp4's. Now that would be cool!!
Play some music videos while in traffic..

Toiman

[GeriFix]

Originally Posted by OzStriker

<snip>
GeriFix, solid work on there, better than my seat belt handover post

Cheers Oz.

I loved your belt handover post and was quite surprised at the luke warm response it got from the yanks (hope that's not too offensive) on the forum. At that point (before the US release) they were requesting photos of everything ... I think I even took a photo of my battery for one thread!

Back on topic, if a USB stick becomes too small there are some USB hard drives that work with iDrive, but not many. I am now using a LaCie Little Disk (60GB), which cost about $170. Two others on the forum have also reported that this drive works for them as well.

The file formats that have worked for me are mp3, wma, m4a, and aac. Ogg-vorbis don't work.

[GeriFix]

Originally Posted by Toiman

<snip>
Here's one. Can you play .mpg, .avi's, .mp4's. Now that would be cool!!
Play some music videos while in traffic..

Toiman

Hi Toiman,
Nope, I've tried video files and no go on iDrive. The other thing that doesn't work are DVD-audio disks in the Navigation (DVD) drive. That drive will however play a DVD with mp3 etc files on it.

[Toiman]

Geez Ogg Vorbis is pretty fringe (or are you just taking the piss) but I'm impressed it handles the sony stuff.
Shame about video files, but still can't wait to test it. Pick up the car in 3-4 days, come on Thursday!!!.
Toiman

[OzStriker]

Just dont play anything too hardcore for those first few hours.

Chris Harris has some good tips on taking delivery:

[AndDee]

That video is gold!

[Toiman]

That video is gold alright. Pls post next week.....

I pick up my 325 M Sport 5pm tommorrow - yeah
Picked out my shoes, music, attire - I am READY!!!

Toiman

[OzStriker]

Originally Posted by Toiman

That video is gold alright. Pls post next week.....

I pick up my 325 M Sport 5pm tommorrow - yeah
Picked out my shoes, music, attire - I am READY!!!

Toiman

If you like Chris Harris' style, I recommend subscribing to his Podcasts, you can get to them via:

http://www.autocar.co.uk/

Good luck tomorrow, take photos!!

This is Part 2:

[coopersim]

Awesome looking car, not sure how I came across this very old post, sorry!