WilliamG Posted July 26, 2009 Report Share Posted July 26, 2009 I used the get album artwork as well. The original iPhone might be the problem here. I never tested that, I only tested my original iPod nano, which had the bad artwork, and my latest gen nano, iPhone 3G and 3GS which all are fine. I'm currently using a 3g, and im still getting the problem. I have no idea. All I can tell is it's not normal for the 3G. I'd try someone else's new-ish iPod if you know someone who has one.... Quote Link to post Share on other sites
robotprom Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 I had the problem with my first gen iPhone, and still have it with my 3GS iPhone. My wife's iPod Nano (a 3rd gen) doesn't have this problem. My artwork looks fine in iTunes and in coverflow on the iPhone. If someone wants to see pictures of my pixellation I'll take some. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dianebrat Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 I had the problem with my first gen iPhone, and still have it with my 3GS iPhone. My wife's iPod Nano (a 3rd gen) doesn't have this problem. My artwork looks fine in iTunes and in coverflow on the iPhone. If someone wants to see pictures of my pixellation I'll take some. That's because itunes and coverflow don't use the thumbnails that way, they use the higher res image, but the MP3 contains both a higher res and a thumbnail res image.... The more I see this discussed, the more I think it's the way the newer units that support thumbnails present the artwork to the AVIC. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MR. WOMO Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 As a follow up, I went out and connected my new iPhone 3Gs to the AVIC just to see if perhaps my earlier iPhone and current iPod (5G w/video) models may have been ones that had the pixelated art, and this one would be better. . . OMG! If it's possible, they look EVEN WORSE!! Unbelieveable! Which really cracks me up, because that can only mean that the "bad album art" I have been seeing for the past year from my other units are actually the "good" art that others are saying they see! Wow! Needless to say, the AVIC in no way, shape or form displays the iPod/iPhone album art anywhere NEAR the way it could/should be displayed. As I have said in past posts - it isn't a deal breaker for me, just a dissapointment. Cheers, Kev Quote Link to post Share on other sites
WilliamG Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 As a follow up, I went out and connected my new iPhone 3Gs to the AVIC just to see if perhaps my earlier iPhone and current iPod (5G w/video) models may have been ones that had the pixelated art, and this one would be better. . . OMG! If it's possible, they look EVEN WORSE!! Unbelieveable! Which really cracks me up, because that can only mean that the "bad album art" I have been seeing for the past year from my other units are actually the "good" art that others are saying they see! Wow! Needless to say, the AVIC in no way, shape or form displays the iPod/iPhone album art anywhere NEAR the way it could/should be displayed. As I have said in past posts - it isn't a deal breaker for me, just a dissapointment. Cheers, Kev Err no? It's quite possible that there are several bad types of images being displayed here. Maybe take a picture and show us both types? Like I said, my images look super sharp. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MR. WOMO Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 WilliamG, I'll go out there in just a bit and give a comparison shot or two - will post up in a little while (good suggestion) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MR. WOMO Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 The following shots I just went out and took a little while ago. I have the shots in the following order: 1. Super sweet album art as viwed on my Mac screen in iTunes (and viewed at approximately 6" square, so pretty big) 2. Sweet album art from cover flow view as seen on my iPhone 3Gs (approx. the same size as the 2 images to follow) 3. Terrible album art (this is how the SAME album is viewed from my 5G (w/video) iPod (terrible, but still not as terrible as what follows) 4. Super terrible album art (this was the heinous image I saw when I viewed ablum art from my new iPhone 3Gs) Images 2-4 were all at approximately 2" square (the shots from the AVIC were when you view the art slightly enlarged when you tap the image) If I can view the SAME art in iTunes at around 6" in size, and from the iPhone at the same size (2" approx.) as the AVIC and have the mind-numbing difference in quality, pardon me if I call it PIXELATED! In my opinion, unless someone can give me a good reason, we should be able to see our album art on the AVIC just as sharply as I see it on my iPhone in cover flow size. This is what those of us that say our album art is pixelated (and looks like shite) mean when we say it. Cheers, Kev Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Swift1113 Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 Kev, wow great work here! I'd say those 4 screenshots are a pretty comprehensive description of the problem. There has got to be some ultra-obscure cause to all of this. I have managed to get nothing but pixelated artwork from the following devices: 1. 30GB 4th gen iPod Video 2. 120GB iPod Classic 3. 1st gen 16GB iPhone 4. 32GB iPhone 3G S I am using Pioneer's iPod cable. It seemed like a problem related to how the images are stored in the iTunes library, but now I am not so sure. I am reading reports of it occurring with the same files from the same library on different devices which blows that theory away. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
WilliamG Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 OK, update from me. I plugged in my iPhone 3GS for the first time and using the VERY SAME Ting Tings artwork, I had some bad pixely nastiness. I then plugged back in my 4th gen 16GB nano and used it, and there are really no issues. Here are some new pictures I just took, clearly showing NO issues with my 4th gen nano... So, also clearly, there's something going on with some of the iPods/iPhone. I had the pixely nastiness terribly on my 1st gen nano as I mentioned earlier... I wonder why some models are troublesome and others aren't? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MR. WOMO Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 Thanks William for taking the time to post images as well. This is the sort of problem that really gets my brain working - there HAS to be some explanation to this. Whether it's pixel count, or source file origination - something! There has to be a logical explanation as to why album art that all looks pretty much the same on an iPhone or iPod can look anywhere from the same to different shades of junk on the AVIC! I might go out and surf through a bunch of different album covers to see if there is any difference in them, but I've never noticed any that I can think of. I mean why would OLDER versions of the iPhone or iPods show that art any better than newer ones? Odd, very odd. Cheers, Kev Quote Link to post Share on other sites
MR. WOMO Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 Well, I just went out and scrolled through a few dozen albums (even ones I KNEW had album art that was huge and extremely detailed) and they all looked the exact same degree of pixelation. William - what happens if you take the Ting Tings art you said looked bad from your iPhone and viewed it on the Nano model that these other decent looking images are on; is there a difference then? I'd be interested to try and narrow it down to just device, or if the art is somehow always crappy, when other may not be, no matter the device - let us know. (Edit: Also, as far as I can tell, the art looks just about the same as the pixelation on my 5G iPod to tell you the truth - I mean, since I don't have that album myself, it's hard to say, but I might buy even one track just so I can take an image to compare them to see if your resolution is the same) Cheers, Kev Quote Link to post Share on other sites
WilliamG Posted July 27, 2009 Report Share Posted July 27, 2009 ALL album artwork looks perfect on my iPod nano - well, as perfect as I've ever seen on the Avics. There's definitely something wrong with the way these artworks are being rendered on the Avics by the iPhone, various iPods, my old iPod nano 1st gen etc. Don't forget these artworks are never going to look as good as they do on your computer etc because the AVIC is an 800x480 resolution device. That tiny square for your artwork isn't very many pixels anyway. That said, it shouldn't look as bad as the other images posted, and should look as good as my images. This does appear to be device dependent. Don't buy any tracks to test this. Just go to Amazon.com, save the cover art and put it into a track you downloaded already in the "Get Info" of the track. I tested the Ting Tings track by downloading the cover art from Amazon's Ting Tings page and applying it to a Muse album I already owned. No need to buy any music to test this. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
simmo Posted July 30, 2009 Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 Have we not got a definate answer on this yet, it is highly annoying on such an expensive item Quote Link to post Share on other sites
dianebrat Posted July 30, 2009 Report Share Posted July 30, 2009 Have we not got a definate answer on this yet, it is highly annoying on such an expensive item And despite my discussion on the fact that there are multiple pieces of art/thumbnail in the MP3 process, it's as if no one has seen it. The answer is that it's not a 100% every unit, every song, every ipod situation. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ghostdunks Posted August 17, 2009 Report Share Posted August 17, 2009 Following on from MR WOMO's post, I've done some further research into this. I too have seen the pixely artwork, I've got a 80GB 5.5G Ipod, and a 16GB Iphone 3G, hooking into a F900BT. When I first tried my 5.5G ipod, I thought the album artwork on the headunit was a bit pixelated...until I tried the iphone, and it was much much worse... Made me want to accept the slightly pixelated artwork from the 5.5G Ipod as good Don't know what you have until you lose it! Anyway, a bit more research into this revealed the following post from an ipod forum: http://forums.ilounge.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=94 As can be seen by the chart, it seems to be taking the lowest resolution album art it can find on the ipod/iphone(not sure if the ipod is sending the artwork, or the F900 is pulling the artwork) and using that for the artwork. so for the ipod, its taking the 100x100 artwork, and for the iphone, its pulling the 64x64 artwork. Confimed this by looking at the pictures that MR WOMO posted as example images. He seems to have similar hardware to mine with respect to ipod/iphones. The one he's listed as "Terrible album art" is from his 5G, and I did a quick count and guesstimate of the number of pixels that picture is showing and I would say its close to 100x100. Did the same thing with the one listed as "Super terrible album art" which is from an iphone 3Gs and that would come close to 64x64. The album artwork is stored on the ipod/iphone on .ITHMB files and I've been trying(unsuccessfully) to manipulate these files to display the artwork in the higher resolutions(which our AVICs screens are more than capable of I'm pretty sure), but no luck so far. on my ipod, I have two versions of the album art, one's a 100x100(currently displayed on the F900BT), and a 200x200, both stored in different .ITHMB files. I tried stuff like renaming the lower resolution .ITHMB file(caused the ipod not to be recognised), and other weird stuff. Maybe some code can be changed on the AVIC headunits to try and pull the higher resolution artwork, rather than going to the lowest? Anyway, hope this helps someone else who might be looking into this. Right now, the album artwork is "acceptable" from my ipod, but thats due to blind luck that the lowest resolution artwork my ipod stores is at 100x100. If i had one of the other ipods with even lower resolution artwork stored, I would be pretty annoyed. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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