[dopper99]

On my non sat nav 330d the climate controls are below the stereo.
I noticed cars fitted with a sat nav seem to have the climate controls above the stereo. Does this mean the stereo is any better/worse? Why did they do this?

Also, what does the the sat nav screen display other than navigation directions? I take it that is displays radio and CD track info too? Are they any better than non sat nav cars?

Sorry for the daft questions but dont know a lot about cars fitted with sat navs!

Cheers.
Andy

[toxicnerve]

You're going to get two points of view in this thread.

1. iDrive is brilliant, integrates a lot of features and makes the cabin look a bit more high-tech etc.

2. iDrive sucks, my £100 TomTom is better...

Personally, I think the latest CIC iDrive (hard drive based) is great. The routing is brilliant (took me all over France with no issues) and the other functions like ripping CDs etc is good too. Only thing it lacks is speed camera warnings but I run an Android phone with CoPilot for those.

[ALF_E90]

Originally Posted by toxicnerve

You're going to get two points of view in this thread.

1. iDrive is brilliant, integrates a lot of features and makes the cabin look a bit more high-tech etc.

2. iDrive sucks, my £100 TomTom is better...

Personally, I think the latest CIC iDrive (hard drive based) is great. The routing is brilliant (took me all over France with no issues) and the other functions like ripping CDs etc is good too. Only thing it lacks is speed camera warnings but I run an Android phone with CoPilot for those.

If we are talking about the "sat nav" side of things only (i.e. not integration with the car's other systems, ease of use, screen/button position etc) then the navigation/safety camera/traffic aspects of a good aftermarket satnav are miles ahead and will always be so given how many years in advance the electronics/maps are fixed for a production car.

Saying a £100 TomTom will be much better may be pushing it - the maps will be better, the UI arguably so, and map upgrades a lot cheaper. But a high-end aftermarket satnav - for example a TomTom with IQ routes and LIVE services such as HD traffic (unique features to TomTom and both excellent advances in the technology with real benefits) will be much better than any inbuilt OEM car system. I can explain why if anyone is very bored.

FWIW I dislike the cancerous growth of the satnav screen on the dash, though all modern car dashes seem to be going that way - obviously this is just an opinion! I actively sought a car without satnav for this reason, and not just because I work for a major satnav/telematics company...

[xenon]

"Cancerous growth" of the screen is one thing but an after-market unit on a windscreen sucker simply will never look as neat.

As has been said though, everyone has their own opinion...

[ALF_E90]

Granted, but it is more in your field of view. Personally I prefer the satnav at the bottom right of the screen, where I can easily reach it with my right hand, but it is not obscuring the road ahead. This tends to the industry standard for a fixed cradle install of a screen in a commercial vehicle also.

Older OEM screens without the cancerous growth look neater integrated into a standard-style centre console but are much more dangerous - you don't want to be looking down near the gearstick somewhere for navigation guidance... The cancerous growth has its merits.

If I had inbuilt satnav, then the very first time I decided to use that instead of the TomTom and sat in a massive traffic jam that was on HD traffic but not RDS-TMC would persuade me not to do it again! Satnav always on, voice instructions off, speed camera alerts audible, is my default. I'm not keen on sitting in traffic so make sure I bother to use it for all except short local journeys...

[shane55]

With idrive you can adjust things like the blower intensity, set a timer for car ventilation, set how sensitive you want the auto lights to be...and so on...you can possibly do this with non idrive too but I'm not sure. I personally wouldn buy a car without idrive I really missed it from the dash of the last car I test drove! The DVD drive occupies the extra space the non idrive cars have and the newer HDD operating system is much quicker than the older type as its not constantly reading info form the DVD drive...

[toxicnerve]

Alf,

Does the TomTom HD use something other than TMC for traffic info then? How does it work?

[dopper99]

Originally Posted by shane55

With idrive you can adjust things like the blower intensity, set a timer for car ventilation, set how sensitive you want the auto lights to be...and so on...you can possibly do this with non idrive too but I'm not sure. I personally wouldn buy a car without idrive I really missed it from the dash of the last car I test drove! The DVD drive occupies the extra space the non idrive cars have and the newer HDD operating system is much quicker than the older type as its not constantly reading info form the DVD drive...

Thanks for that. Looks like is does a lot more than the non-idrive.

Interesting to hear others view on the idrive too.
Cheers.

[kaishang]

Originally Posted by shane55

With idrive you can adjust things like the blower intensity, set a timer for car ventilation, set how sensitive you want the auto lights to be...and so on...you can possibly do this with non idrive too but I'm not sure. I personally wouldn buy a car without idrive I really missed it from the dash of the last car I test drove! The DVD drive occupies the extra space the non idrive cars have and the newer HDD operating system is much quicker than the older type as its not constantly reading info form the DVD drive...

Jeez I never paid enough attention to realise you need a menu based interface and LCD display screen to operate an air-con.....

[kaishang]

To answer OP. IDrive has no influence on the stereo system. There are 4 levels of sound system, any car, iDrive or no iDrive can have any system.

If you look next to the wing mirrors, if you cannot see tweeters then you have the base - and crap - system.

[kaishang]

Originally Posted by ALF_E90

Granted, but it is more in your field of view. Personally I prefer the satnav at the bottom right of the screen, where I can easily reach it with my right hand, but it is not obscuring the road ahead. This tends to the industry standard for a fixed cradle install of a screen in a commercial vehicle also.

Older OEM screens without the cancerous growth look neater integrated into a standard-style centre console but are much more dangerous - you don't want to be looking down near the gearstick somewhere for navigation guidance... The cancerous growth has its merits.

If I had inbuilt satnav, then the very first time I decided to use that instead of the TomTom and sat in a massive traffic jam that was on HD traffic but not RDS-TMC would persuade me not to do it again! Satnav always on, voice instructions off, speed camera alerts audible, is my default. I'm not keen on sitting in traffic so make sure I bother to use it for all except short local journeys...

How does iDrive get traffic info? Is it RDS-TMC?

[doughboy]

Originally Posted by ALF_E90

Granted, but it is more in your field of view. Personally I prefer the satnav at the bottom right of the screen, where I can easily reach it with my right hand, but it is not obscuring the road ahead.

....ok if you're right handed....

But you still have to lean forward out of the seat to reach anywhere near the dash top.

[dopper99]

Originally Posted by kaishang

To answer OP. IDrive has no influence on the stereo system. There are 4 levels of sound system, any car, iDrive or no iDrive can have any system.

If you look next to the wing mirrors, if you cannot see tweeters then you have the base - and crap - system.

Thats interesting to know. I'm looking at a car tomorrow so will look out for this. Thanks.

[ALF_E90]

Originally Posted by toxicnerve

Alf,

Does the TomTom HD use something other than TMC for traffic info then? How does it work?

HD traffic tracks the movement of all Vodafone SIMs over a certain speed. This is ALL SIMs - so all of our vehicle tracking customers but also all phones etc. This data produces automated traffic info of delays down to a single minute, updated every couple of minutes. It has no reliance on cameras or any infrastructure whatsoever, and covers 99.9% of roads.

RDS TMC relies on cameras on the side of the road and a human being to guess at the delays from looking at the queues. Updates are as often as 13-20 mins but usually the data is very late. Road coverage is around 5% of minor roads. Only larger issues are captured, and (having used both) I have seen a lot of traffic incidents still on the system - big ones - when actually they have cleared.

One example of how HD helps you. In a typical scenario of a huge motorway issue both systems will take you off the motorway - but only HD traffic will know which of the roads around the motorway are also congested. I have often been taken off the motorway, and rather than taking the A-road alongside the motorway, which is also gridlocked, I have been taken along tiny lanes and saved a lot of time.

I used to be a big satnav and traffic systems sceptic but I totally trust it now. It just has to be the right system....

IQ routes is similarly clever for picking the right route (for that time of day, day of the week) in the first place - and similarly unique. Most satnavs just make assumptions about road speed and lean heavily towards main roads - inbuilt care systems are especially poor for this, whatever they cost.

Ironically BMW (along with Google maps and many others) actually use our maps, they just use them in a basic way.

[Fx1]

i dont understand why BMW dont just use TomTom in their Idrive which can be updated.

Problem solved everyones a winner.

£2000 option with a £150 payment to Tomtom still leaves a shed load of profit and people will love you for it!

[toxicnerve]

I honestly don't think TomTom is as great as people make out.

I certainly prefer to run CoPilot on my phone.

[gIzzE]

Tom Tom is shit!!

the routing choice is just crap, bordering on absurd at time.

Garmin is even worse!!

[Fx1]

Originally Posted by toxicnerve

I honestly don't think TomTom is as great as people make out.

I certainly prefer to run CoPilot on my phone.

Phone GPS chips suck.

Originally Posted by gIzzE

Tom Tom is shit!!

the routing choice is just crap, bordering on absurd at time.

Garmin is even worse!!

You obviously used a budget tomtom since the new IQ routes takes some beating with the HD traffic.

Not to mention near instant route planning.

[F31-340i]

Originally Posted by dopper99

On my non sat nav 330d the climate controls are below the stereo.
I noticed cars fitted with a sat nav seem to have the climate controls above the stereo. Does this mean the stereo is any better/worse? Why did they do this?

Cheers.
Andy

I think the simple answer is that with idrive there is no need for a radio display, hence they could make the climate controls easier to reach and put them where the radio normally sits. Thats why its different, and another reason to have the cancerous growth....

TMC traffic has its limitations, but can still be very useful.....plus it works properly in idrive....





I used to have a TomTom with a TMC receiver and it never worked properly - the aerial was crap.

[toxicnerve]

Originally Posted by Fx1

Phone GPS chips suck.

Really? That's news to me, works fine on my current phone and my previous phones

Having read some of your previous posts I am going to conclude that you're full of shit with very little to actually contribute to the forum.

[Cyprio]

Originally Posted by toxicnerve

I honestly don't think TomTom is as great as people make out.

I certainly prefer to run CoPilot on my phone.

+1

[ALF_E90]

Phone/PDA GPS chips are very limited - obviously they vary but they generally don't update very quickly, can't track as many satellites as a dedicated GPS, and don't have enough GPS receivers to be able to handle signal contention from things like tall buildings. I am endlessly approached by people at trade shows moaning about the speed of GPS reception on their phone. It's nothing to do with us - it is hardware. Personally I use a DSLR for photpgraphy, just as I use a dedicated satnav for nav - any all-in-one device is always going to be limited.

Likewise there is no point complaining about routing methodology or traffic or map quality in some old, low-end TomTom and saying they are all crap (again something I hear a lot of).

With regards to maps, there are only two large digital map/navigation companies in the world, almost all satnavs use one or the other. TomTom own one (teleatlas), Nokia own the other (navteq). Teleatlas cost TomTom 2 billion dollars. Smaller companies are unlikely to have map data as up to date as TomTom - the data is priced on its age, so a lot of people are buying/selling map data already years old. The fact they say it is navteq or teleatlas data does not mean it is the latest data. TomTom's latest maps are the latest available.

With regards to routing, all non-IQ routes satnavs basically make assumptions about road speeds and lean heavily towards main roads. They do this with varying degrees of success - I actually think the basic non IQ-routes TomToms are pretty good, some other systems I have used are also OK, some are absolute rubbish and seem to ignore all non-main roads. I have also noticed that something like a TomTom quickly accepts the route you want it you just drive the way you want to (for example to take in some fun roads) whereas some cheapo systems and phone/PDA systems will never re-plan, whatever you do. On some you just drive off the tiny amount of map it has downloaded...

IQ routes, unique to TomTom, looks at real previous journey times for that day of the week/time of day and stitches together the fastest route (made up of 100m segments) based on real previous average journey times. When it was launched over 2 years ago TomTom had 1000 journey times for each 100m of navigable road in Europe - obviously a lot more for busy roads, and a lot more since then with 50million devices out there. So when you plan a route with an IQ routes enabled TomTom it will be the fastest route from A to B at that time of day/day of the week - and of course HD traffic then sits on top of that if you have LIVE services (which come in via a mobile phone SIM not a crappy aerial). It is based on averages so you may well beat it, or take a more cross-country route and beat the more main road route (as I often do) but only if you are driving well average journey times for that road! Other companies struggle to copy this feature as they lack enough devices in the field, or the means to get journey times back from them accurately.

Nothing in this field will ever be perfect but I have yet to see anything nearly as good as a TomTom with LIVE services and IQ routes. I drive a lot and sometimes use other devices alongside TomToms of various ages. TomTom's USP'a are also getting better all the time - there was a massive HD traffic update just a month ago to improve road coverage, for example.