geordie

Have a look at the link. Mercedes and Porche are supported now. Audi to come soon - I have asked what soon means!<ul><li><a href="http://www.diceelectronics.com/catalog/dice_ctlg_webres.pdf">Dice Electronics MOST Ipod Integration</a></li></ul>

Ringmeister

no date given on Audi compatibility.

All of the previous hoopla about DensionUSA having their own MOST-compatible iPod integration was misleading in that DensionUSA is just a distributor for Dice Electronics. :-(

geordie

the CD changer. I thought the A8 could take 2 CD units but I must have got that idea out of thin air!
I have emailed for a date but no reply so far

jersh

Ok, DICE is a holding of Dension, and the device was created by DICE, but will be distributed by Dension USA, and will be in stores in 2-3 months.

It is possible to have it in place alongside your existing cd changer. I didn't ask for the full details of this, but over the phone (1-888-DICE-999) they claimed you could have both.

Because it is accessed as a CD changer, you can only have 6 total playlists on the ipod. So I guess that translates to something like 3000 songs per playlist or whatever. Fantastic.

However, if, in addition to your 6 playlists, you want to listen to any particular song that is not in a playlist, you _can_ pick and choose that song. It is confirmed that you can do this through the ipod interface, and it is unknown whether you can do single, non-playlisted song through the head-unit.

Bottom line:

- it's a horrible hack

- 6 playlists drastically reduces the utility, and intended function of your ipod

- the low-end, super budget A3 has a USB port, which is the sensible, no-brainer way to do digital music in a car.

- your 80k+ a8 with super-fantastic fiber optic blah blah blah will allow you to trick it into thinking your proprietary, closed format ipod is a 6-disc cd changer. Enjoy that. Maybe they'll make a deluxe model that _does_ displace your cd changer and will allow you (gasp!) 12 playlists.

Ringmeister

our early hypotheses on this functionalty were not far from reality but none of us dreamed it would be this poorly executed.

PaulW

I sold one to a guy in CA a while back, but I don't think he had a clue.

If I had a D3, I would try it....I bet it wouldn't be that hard.

Granted, it wouldn't come over your MMI or anything with songs, but it would play the iPod.

TheBrit

MMI doesn't show them as two CD changers of 6 discs each, it just shows CDs 1 through 12, so the MMI code does know how to aggregate multiple CD devices.

The voice command help suggests that it understands something like 15 CDs and possibly 99 tracks on a CD (from memory; it's certainly more than 12 discs). If a device could pretend to be 9 CDs of 99 tracks each to leave 6 real CDs attached, perhaps MMI would aggregate those and show 6 CDs of however many tracks and 9 'CDs' of up to 99 tracks.

Without Audi coding something else into MMI that will be all you can do. Well, almost.

The digital TV tuner has an Electronic Programme Guide feature, but looking at it the TV tuner unit is generating it's own MMI-lookalike display and is capturing control wheel events to determine if the user is sending it commands. You can tell it's not a true MMI display as the colour is slightly out, the resultion is slightly lower and it flickers *very* slightly like the video signal does. However, an iPod device could theoretically do something similar and allow you to control the iPod from the MMI wheel, even if it does look obviously 'bolted on'.

Here's hoping the DVB tuner gets some people thinking about how else things could be added to an A8 without needing MMI recoding.

tozoM8

I know my car is old now and I've always thought that my speakers are old and weak. However, I have a Sony Vaio laptop connected to the CD changer so I can toggle between them. The sound quality is much better from the PC. It's like you are in a different car. 15GB music, excellent quality, all data displayed on a custom screen, 8 seconds start up from stand by ( music and navigation ) and no lawyer screen to accept. Why Audi is 6 years behind others? Any entry level car ( $13K ) can play MP3.

motionvector

In addition to the tuner you need:

custom cable: http://shop.kufatec.de/product_info.php/info/p266_TV-Tuner-wiring-harness-A6-4F-incl--fibre-optic.html

To enable the device in the MMI. Vag Com maybe?
there is no guarrantee that the north american version of the MMI supports this device.

time

i have 2 out of three