| benttop |
I really don't understand a few of the choices Nissan made with the music and Nav systems. For example:
While listening to XM, you can hit the left button on the controller to put the cursor on "Text" and hit enter to get the text that XM sends with the music. But it's cut off. You can only read about fifteen characters. Well, it's however many it takes to display "Stevie Ray Vaugh" because that's all there is. Now if the song is by him, you get the idea, but if the song is by "Stevie Ray Vaughn & Double Trouble" you still only get the incomplete name. At first I thought maybe the computer needed to reserve that acre of white space to the right on the display for something else, but when I play music from the CF card the text display uses the entire screen, and even wraps titles that are too long. Why would they do this, anyway?
Similar gripe on the Nav system. Certain things become unusable once the car starts to move. But the choices of what they have made unusable are odd. For example, with the NavTraffic feature from XM, I can set a route, then I can check the traffic on the route - a great feature for a 25 mile commute on the freeway. Except once the car starts to move, you can't scroll the report that comes up. On the surface that doesn't sound all that terrible, but here's the scenario - you've just pressed the Dest button, then chosen an address from the address book (which may take some scrolling). You have to confirm the choice by choosing the enter button. Now you want the traffic report, so you choose the Info button. The cursor is not on the Traffic report choice, so you hit the down button twice to get to that, then enter. Now you get up to five separate indications of traffic (it indicates how far away they are, but not the street names), but you want to know where they are, so you hit the down arrow until you get to the one you want, hit enter, and the report comes up. Now the report is frozen because the car is moving, but to get to the bottom of the report takes exactly two more down button presses. I've just pressed like thirty buttons to get here, and they lock me out now? Sometimes I can see enough info there, but sometimes the street names wrap and they are hidden. I'm on the freeway! I can't exactly stop, so I just have to do without this info, which is RIGHT THERE BUT HIDDEN!
I wonder if Nissan will issue any updates to the firmware in this system, and if so, I wonder if they are interested in anyone's user experience. Because these shortcomings really limit the usefulness of these systems that I paid WAY more for than stand alone systems that work correctly. |
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| fredbloggs |
| I'm on the verging of leasing a 2009 LE. Are you using an iPod/iPhone? Can you use the touchscreen to select podcasts and music when moving? Is anything grayed out? |
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| benttop |
quote:
Originally posted by fredbloggs
I'm on the verging of leasing a 2009 LE. Are you using an iPod/iPhone? Can you use the touchscreen to select podcasts and music when moving? Is anything grayed out?
Unfortunately that is the one feature that was missing on this car when I leased it. |
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| Corin |
quote:
Originally posted by benttop
While listening to XM, you can hit the left button on the controller to put the cursor on "Text" and hit enter to get the text that XM sends with the music. But it's cut off. You can only read about fifteen characters.
Yep, get used to it. Previous years were the same way. My XM cuts off at 10 chars. Cuts off. People have reported on here that the Serious module allows more characters, not sure if it wraps or not.
And XM in other cars has many more characters, it's something specific with the XM module that is designed for the MO. Very very stupid.
My Ipod interface, which connects through the XM module, allows virtually unlimited lines of text. You have to scroll the screen right and left to see the whole thing, but I've had three pages worth (45 chars or so?) display perfectly fine.
In other words, XM sucks. And not just for this reason. I liked it in the beginning, and signed up for a 2-year commitment to get a cheaper price. But after getting sick of all their commercials and the signal going out all the time (hills, tunnels, buildings, a random tree (WTF?)) I switched over to my ipod and haven't looked back. |
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| cwirth |
quote:
Originally posted by Corin
In other words, XM sucks.
XM doesn't suck. There are only a few channels that actually have commercials and then they do not have as many as what broadcast radio has. It is the XM tuner manufacturer that limits the number of characters that will be displayed. I rarely have a problem with signal dropouts with my XM. As for an iPod, I have no use for one and never will. Satellite radio is all I need and it is XM. |
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| Trbayth |
A lot of signal dropouts depends on if you are near any terrestrial repeaters. If you are near many you will rarely have a dropout.
Trb- |
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| fredbloggs |
Corin:
Do you have a 2009 LE? Is the iPod interface fully functional when moving? Also can it be controlled by voice? |
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| Corin |
quote:
Originally posted by cwirth
XM doesn't suck. There are only a few channels that actually have commercials and then they do not have as many as what broadcast radio has. It is the XM tuner manufacturer that limits the number of characters that will be displayed. I rarely have a problem with signal dropouts with my XM. As for an iPod, I have no use for one and never will. Satellite radio is all I need and it is XM.
Let me clarify on the whole "commercials" thing. XM says they have commercial free music stations, but in reality they are constantly playing their own commercials. THEY call them "service announcements", but I call them commercials. They are advertising other XM stations and XM products. And they play those "service announcements" just as frequently as any FM radio station. The commercial "blocks" are shorter, but it was still very annoying to me. I was paying for commercial-free music, and I wasn't getting it. I don't want to be constantly interrupted in my music to hear about what baseball games are playing over on XM channel XYZ. It reminded me of the pledge drives that public radio has, but it's ALL THE TIME, not just once per year.
OK, sorry, end rant... :) |
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| Corin |
quote:
Originally posted by fredbloggs
Corin:
Do you have a 2009 LE? Is the iPod interface fully functional when moving? Also can it be controlled by voice?
No, I have a 2005, which does NOT have voice controls (for anything). I have no idea if there is any difference between the 2005 and 2009 for the ipod interface. Would be very cool, though! |
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| fredbloggs |
| On my Acrua RL, there are only 15 letters or spaces, so it must be an XM thing. |
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| Gonzo |
Its not an XM issue... I have XM in the MO (cuts off characters) and have an small reciever in the office.... displays loads of text.
As someone mentioned, its either the MO's reciever not pass along all the data to the display or the display itself in the MO displaying everything that is passed to it.
Given that other have reported the sirus doesn't behave like this I would believe its the reciever in the MO. |
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| MoBetter |
I have the SL Merlot and really loving the car. Just coming off a 2004 Pearl SE. I had a portable sirius unit I used in the 2004 and it looked very close to custom installed. What I really liked was full text and convenience items like favorites (when a favorite would come up on any station, the radio would beep to alert me that my song was about to play on another station! I could also rewind! Then there was the numeric pad that I could enter the station with ease.
I'm really very dissapointed with the Xm radio - I see no features like rewind and favorites - I assume there is no way to input a station like "160" (Hope I'm wrong) - and of course, the text is truncated! That really sucks!
I hope Nissan will fix this with a firmware update - It really makes no sense why the sat radio features are so lacking considering what a really good job they did with the design of the 2009. |
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| martinrrrr |
| Add m name to the complaint list on the XM not displaying the whole line of text. Does anyone know if Nissan has a policy on issuing firmware to fix issues like this? If so, how does one go about actually getting the firmware installed? Is the something that only the dealer does and if so is it free? |
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| Gonzo |
| That would be interesting... I don't think I've every heard of Nissan doing this for the audio system (or any system for that matter) |
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