Lancel

I feel such a fool for missing this. So I spent about an hour reverse engineering what my one CD did and what this other CD didn't by ripping their images to my hard disk. Eventually I learned there was an extension to Red Book that enabled CD Text without compromising the standards, with standard tags for artist, title, album. And while I was adjusting the non-texted CD image and checking to see what a "FLAGS DCP" meant (Means Digital Copy Permitted) I discovered a quick how-to that mentioned that it was a simple matter of checking off "Use CD Text" in iTunes when you go to burn the disk. Apparently I somehow missed that when Stinger mentioned.

For corvette, if worse comes to worst you could rip them to iTunes and then burn them to a copy with CD Text, and the EP will be able to read the CD Text and get you Title/Artist/Album despite Gracenote's lackings.

In short, I haven't figured out anything new yet. I wish I had more time to do this right now, but maybe this weekend if I'm not too busy driving all over creation.

corvettedreamin

OK, so with MY issue (and the theory that the CDDB is out of date), I checked the system last night. It says the CDDB is 2006. Weird. It's 2010. So I called a Nav/Sync specialist at Ford who was anything but. My primary question was why can't it recognize a brand new CD I put in. (4 for 5 so far have worked.) He said, "Maybe you purchased it after the car was built"... um, yeah... specialist... got it. Well, I didn't. I got it last year some time. Foreigner's Can't Slow Down CD.

His "work around" was to record the CD to my computer and then burn the recorded tracks to a new disc and use THAT disc to record to the jukebox.

STUPID, IMO. I have this $2,000 toy that can't find CDDB information that my $800 computer can using the SAME CDDB?

RandyW

You're doing it the hard way, in my opinion. Forget about the hard drive jukebox. Just use your computer to rip your CD's into MP3 files. Copy the files to a flash drive. Plug in and play from the flash drive. I've ordered the Electronics Package and I can't imagine that I will ever use the jukebox.

Steven

What Ford needs to do is make it so that it's easy to update the CDDB. That should be a simple fix, but so far they haven't indicated anything to show that they are moving in that direction.

If you have to have the music on the hard drive and don't want to carry around or leave an MP3 player in the car, ripping the CD, then burning it again works with iTunes and the "write CD Text" option. Just use rewritable CDs to save some money. This still won't get you album art though. . .

corvettedreamin

Of course I am. And I do keep an MP3 player in there but I wonder what the eff I'm supposed to do with this fancy 10GB hard drive that came with the car. LOL! I'm just thinking it would be cool to buy a CD while out on a trip, drop it in, burn the tracks, and forget about it.

They told me the CDDB was updated with the Nav disc and that update wasn't scheduled for the 2011 cars yet.

And please, everyone, stop talking about iTunes. I don't do "apple" . . . :-)

RandyW

The way I see it, the hard drive was kind of an afterthought from Ford. They installed a hard drive to hold navigation data and there's 10GB left over, so we may as well let the customer do something with it. I believe that Ford's thinking was that people who know what MP3 files are and know how to copy them will just copy them to a $40 flash drive and play from there.

The hard drive jukebox is nice for grandma who doesn't have a computer. She can just bring some CD's out to the car and rip them to the car's HD. Even if there were enough hard drive capacity to hold my collection, and even if I could just transfer directly from a flash drive, I wouldn't bother. I'd still just play directly from the flash drive. Why go through the extra step of copying to the car's HD? I'm not putting anyone down who chooses to use the hard drive jukebox, I'm just explaining why I don't find it necessary.

Lancel

So, here's my little update. First of all, I haven't had any luck getting album art to show up on a USB stick either, which leaves us in the same boat as before. Song Title-Artist-Album, but no artwork. So far, the only success I've had with album art is with MP3 CDs, which I'm not fond of using because... well, I really like being able to tell it the song name and having it start playing. Voice recognition works on USB too, but it took forever to connect up to my iPhone, at the end of which it told me it could not load up all tracks. Might be some duplicates in there or something, and then that there are 2142 tracks on it for 10.93 GBs and 4.9 days of music. It still does not display the album art, though the phone does quite clearly display it still, but even more weirdly it doesn't display the album in USB either when on the Media screen, although you can navigate to it.

The Sync Jukebox has a Gracenote Database physically installed on board. It does not link up to a master database, it's literally on the car's hard drive. This explains why it is largely incomplete compared to what Gracenote has listed. Gracenote can't help us here though, as they just sell the license to Ford/others. Ford obviously cuts down the supplied database from the full database, likely culling it to just mainstream. Updates for the most recent albums are included with the map updates.

I really can't find any mention of it using CD Text in the book that it came with, oddly enough, but it clearly does, which is a very good addition. To me though I think it should allow you to customize your own Gracenote updates through syncmyride.com. They must have some way of building a Gracenote update and identifying what should be added, so why not just develop it one-step further and let the user build their own updates using the full Gracenote database? I digress.

That's basically all I've figured out so far. If I ever figure out the album art I'll let you all know.

17fan

I see you guys are having the same frustrations that I have had for the past year and a half. I have a 2009 F-150 Platinum with Nav. If I put a new CD in to download to the jukebox, cddb can't find the info. This is because the cddb is out of date. The only way to update it is to take it in to your Ford dealer and have them upgrade the map software. This includes the new cddb information. From what I understand, Ford updates this once a year. However, it is expensive. I've heard, depending on the dealer, anywhere from $180 to as much as $400. I cannot believe that this thing cannot updated through the syncmyride website, but it can't. Good luck, this is why I did not order the nav in my 2011 gt/cs. I can update my garmin for free or just use my iphone for directions. The nav unit from Ford is way too expensive, especially when you have to fork out hundreds every year just to keep it up to date.

Lancel

I still like the EP quite a bit, though it would be nice if the Jukebox were a -little- easier to use for us computer savvy people, especially with album art, because I love my album art.