secretdonkey

I know the bar at the bottom is semi-transparent, but on the way home today I paid careful attention to how text appears underneath, and the way that text was displayed was unlike anything I've seen before or since. So again, great call on figuring out that Todd Mission was a nearby place name, but whatever was happening was still abnormal, I'm pretty sure.

 

One of life's great mysteries. Okay, one of life's *little* mysteries...

Whoa! Great detective work! Todd Mission is indeed about 20 miles away from the location in question. I want to swear that I was zoomed in way too close for it to show up, but I've been wrong before...

 

I get up one morning to run an errand from my girlfriend's parents house - it's in a gated community and all the roads are mapped but not all named. Down at the lower left of the screen, near the area where the street name would normally appear, there were two words - a name? - that appeared very faintly on the screen. They took on the appearance of text that gets "burned in" on monitors that display the same words/pictures for extended period. The words did not scroll around when the map moved, etc. I looked awhile later and the words were gone, and have never returned.

 

The words: Todd Mission

 

Any ideas? I did a search on these words but came up with nothing. Interesting, eh?

I have Sirius, and feel that the audio quality is inferior to a good FM radio signal. I've talked to others who agree. It's good enough though, and the content makes up for the small quality shortcoming. Talk stations can be pretty bad, though - I don't listen to much talk, fortunately.

I have heard many opinions that content is better on Sirius than XM, btw.

It's a shame, isn't it? There's generally plenty of leftover room on the A/V screen that could have been used to display the time.

Not sure if different tuners cause things to function differently, etc., but here is my experience...

Simply hold down the preset button for a few seconds while tuned in to the station you want to enter, and it will be stored . As you know, you have six presets in three bands. No, neither the station name or number will appear on the button, it will simply continue to say "preset 1, preset 2," etc., which does suck.

But you live with it. I know what the presets are by memory, so it works out okay.

The directional knob seems to work like this: up and down moves through the currently selected bank of presets (though up = down and down = up, just to ensure the interface is as screwy as possible). Moving right and left will advance the station number by one station either way.

That has worked out okay for me. I tend to use just one of the three preset bands, but pick my presets strategically... one preset will plant me in amongst the jazz channels, one in the indie rock channels, one in the classic rock channels, one in the news channels, etc. I can scroll up and down between the presets and then jog over to similarly-themed stations with a left-right flick of the directional knob.

Good luck with it!

8)

Thanks for the suggestion, j!

Yes, it does. You cannot access certain functions while the car is moving, presumably for safety reasons. I believe there are hacks around this, that have been discussed in these forums.

jhoglesr - Sounds like I should have just RTFM, right? Now that you mention it, this is indeed what that feature seems to do. I think most would agree that the way the function is presented on the interface, is confusing and misleading.

Adam - I will tell you exactly why it's an issue. I was navigating to a club in downtown Houston last weekend with my wife. I DID NOT need the AVIC to remind me not to take each major freeway exit ("in 7/10ths of a mile, keep left," etc., once every two minutes). When I got into the area, I wanted to turn up the volume AND apply the muting so I would be alerted to my exit. While trying to adjust TWO settings on the AVIC (amidst busy downtown traffic, no less), I missed the exit. No, I didn't understand the exact functions of the settings at that point, but this is what happened, and what could easily happen again. If you simply turn down the volume, you still get the muting, meaning that you have TWO settings to adjust if you're like me and like to have interruption-free music AND silence during voice guidance.

Also, I make frequent road trips along the same highway and want to set a destination to know my ETA and miles to go. I DO NOT need the voice and a simple on/off would be much better than the volume thing.

Well, clearly my poll was misguided, and thanks for clearing it up, j! Maybe Pioneer will make some improvements on the interface next time around. There are PLENTY of things they could have done better on the AVIC, much as I like it overall.

Cheers!


:)

I find that I cannot turn off voice guidance on my D2. I can set the voice guidance to "off" but it does not have any effect. My only option is to turn the voice level all the way down. I have read another post from someone with the same problem, and was wondering if the bug was universal, common, or isolated.

I just have a cord with RCA plugs on one end (plugged into AUX) and 1/8 plug on the other, which runs into my glovebox. I can select a playlist and shut the iPod in the glovebox or the door will close with the cord hanging out, too.

I won't argue the point that you may get better sound quality using a dock connector, but I have been very satisfied using the headphone output with a wide variety of different devices. Use the iPod volume to set optimum input level, and set the iPod EQ to flat (or another preset that doesn't emphasize bass). I am pretty picky about audio quality but not obsessive - I use similar adapters for home stereo and other applications and like the idea of spending $5 on an adapter I can buy at Radio Shack rather than paying for an iPod-specific product. There is some music where I have a fidelity fetish, and for that I buy the CD and skip the iPod entirely. Everyone will have different preferences on this.

I'll bet that GnatGoSplat is right about improved fidelity with a dock connector, but try the AUX input first, it's not much of an investment if you're not happy with the sound.

I find that 0.25 mile scale seems to retain all detail while allowing you to see what's around you. Aside from the detailed urban maps that are available for some larger cities, I'm wondering if I am indeed seeing ALL roads and details that are available. Can anyone confirm that 0.25 mile scale shows full detail? Anyone have a favorite scale for this type of environment, or others?

Not that I know of, but it sure would be nice if you could see the name of the artist playing without leaving map mode or changing stations, wouldn't it?

I usually just press the AV button to check what's playing and then MAP again to get back to the nav screen.

Given the shortcomings in the interface, ESPECIALLY Sirius, I doubt there's some cool hidden feature lurking that we don't know about. I'd love to be wrong about that.

I also noticed that voice guidance continues even when I turn it off on my D2. Lowering the volume shuts it up, but it still mutes the audio for guide voice instructions. If I remember correctly, there *is* another setting that will cause it to not mute A/V audio, but makes it more of a pain in the @$$ - especially if the second setting is one that requires the parking brake to be set.

I like to use navigation on certain trips just to keep up with my ETA and I don't need or want guidance.

I imagine Pioneer knows about the issue, and am sure they care. And I'm not surprised to find them unresponsive to a user pointing out the problem. Sadly it's typical for big companies like that.

Oh well...

There's a picture on page 88 off the D2 manual, which you can get in PDF from the Pioneer website and probably some retailers' websites, too. Nothing to get excited about - XM is implemented far better from the looks of things. It looks pretty much just like the FM radio interface. I am still trying to puzzle out setting the display options - it looks like you can select it to display ONE useful item but only one - i.e., you can have it show station number OR station name, show artist title OR song title - but not both, which is ridiculous.

I might be wrong about this - the interface screen for setting options is, IMO, a beta-level implementation at best, and the manual is not much help.

Still, it works - I am able to listen to Sirius just fine. The interface is not elegant or well thought out (figuring out functions of the scroll wheel was a particular challenge/frustration at first).

Hope that helps.

I was keeping a steady speed on cruise control on a weekend trip out of town this weekend, I was trying to maximize MPG just as an experiment. Two hours away, the AVIC was able to predict the time I'd pull into my driveway within one minute. By the time a bit of rain in Houston slowed traffic down a tad, about an hour and a half out, it nailed it to the minute.

8)

Was able to get it as I drove through the middle of Houston on I-10 but it reverted as soon as I got out of the city center. I wonder if it's downtown only or if it covers uptown (Galleria area) and other dense pockets in the sprawl. Cool feature in any event. 8)