Just an idea at this point so don't anyone get their hopes up but...

The CD player app plays MP3s. If I can find in the code where it says, "Look at drive letter X for the CD." And change that to the library partition we might just be able to play MP3s from the hard drive!

This could be a very simple fix but there might be a lot more going on for instance if they are checking the disk type it would require even more work. The number of things they could be doing that will make this not work are limitless. But, looking at the poor coding job done on some of the other applications, I doubt the programmer would have the knowledge or ability to add too many checks.

I'm very reluctant to turn my $1500 navigation system into a $1500 brick so I'm not too sure I even want to try.

I think I'll go ahead an see if I can find the CD player app and see if I can find where it's saying what drive to look at. Oh, and if the player is in flash memory and not on the hard drive then this whole post is moot.

I have another twist on this...(dont mean to hijack)

As of right now, you can't play MP3's that have been burned onto a dvd. however u can play MP3's that have been burned on a cd.

Is theere any way to "fool" the player, in that when you insert a data dvd with mp3's burnt onto it, into thinking its reallly a VERY large cd? tryign to figure out various cd/dvd formats, iso's, etc...

Yeah, that's what got me thinking about this. I was thinking about how they had made it so you couldn't play mp3s from DVD and felt that this was a conscious deciscion. If that is true then it would have required extra work by some very evil people to disable this.

Or it could just be sloppy programming. For instance they have some app watching what kind of disk is installed and it fires off the applicable application. I still think they added a disk type check because you can't just go into the applicable app an listen to the mp3s.

Now that I think of it I have never actually put a CD or DVD in the drive with mp3s on it. I should do that to see for myself what happens.

If they are just doing a simple disktype check I might be able to just put a jump over that check or always force it to return a cd disktype to the mp3 player.

That's a lot of supposing though without doing any real investigative work.

Cirbirus said:

Just an idea at this point so don't anyone get their hopes up but...

The CD player app plays MP3s. If I can find in the code where it says, "Look at drive letter X for the CD." And change that to the library partition we might just be able to play MP3s from the hard drive!

This could be a very simple fix but there might be a lot more going on for instance if they are checking the disk type it would require even more work. The number of things they could be doing that will make this not work are limitless. But, looking at the poor coding job done on some of the other applications, I doubt the programmer would have the knowledge or ability to add too many checks.

I'm very reluctant to turn my $1500 navigation system into a $1500 brick so I'm not too sure I even want to try.

I think I'll go ahead an see if I can find the CD player app and see if I can find where it's saying what drive to look at. Oh, and if the player is in flash memory and not on the hard drive then this whole post is moot.

I would sure love for you to find this...because if you do...you are going to find the holy grail of being able to hack the entire unit. I think the problem your going to find is the code and software you need to hack and mod is on a prom and unaccessible without some sort of way to hook into it by USB, etc.

I think it was purposely made to not accept DVD MP3s, to try and counter MP3 downloading. To me it seems that the Z1 is really pushing for 'legal' CDs. The Gracenote database, only burning audio CDs to the harddrive and not alowing MP3s to be copied to the drive. Sure its a small step, only one headunit is doing this, but you never know, Pioneer might be in bed with the Music Industry.

I have to admit, I have started buying CDs again, just for the ease of being able to pop the CD in, have it burn to the drive and 90% of the time the Gracenote labels the tracks.

But I am probably way out to lunch on this.