I have no idea if it will be fruitless or not, but I just sent a question to XM themselves detailing this situation and asked if they can/will be doing anything from their end about this.

 

Seems to me that if the logos that USED to be there aren't any longer, wouldn't they be able to put the new ones up once they have them situated?

 

Or am I missing the boat completely here? I'll let everyone know what they say when they reply.

 

Cheers,

Kev

I called XM simply to see if there was a file or a webpage that I could obtain that had high quality clips of the new logos and for the 'inconvenience' I got 5 months of free service. I wasn't even a jerk about it. Now THAT is customer service!

I have no idea if it will be fruitless or not, but I just sent a question to XM themselves detailing this situation and asked if they can/will be doing anything from their end about this.

 

Seems to me that if the logos that USED to be there aren't any longer, wouldn't they be able to put the new ones up once they have them situated?

 

Or am I missing the boat completely here? I'll let everyone know what they say when they reply.

 

Cheers,

Kev

 

I called XM simply to see if there was a file or a webpage that I could obtain that had high quality clips of the new logos and for the 'inconvenience' I got 5 months of free service. I wasn't even a jerk about it. Now THAT is customer service!

You can get the logos in very high quality with transparency by ripping them from the channel list PDF. I did this as follows:

- Grab the latest devlopment version (the release version is bugged) of Inkscape from www.inkscape.org. This is free open source software.

- Run Inkscape and open the XM channel list PDF. Uncheck the "Embed Images" option as there is a bug with embeded that prevents you from saving and reloading the PDF saved as an SVG.

- Click the white background object of the whole document of delete it (Delete key).

- Click on the white backgrounds and rounded borders for each station on the list and delete them. Also delete the blue background for the Sirius stuff. Be careful not do nuke any parts of the logos accidently. This will leave the logos with their original transparency so they can be placed on any new background.

- Click File->Export and export PNG bitmaps for various DPI ranges from 150 to 320.

- Launch Photoshop or your graphics editing program of choice and make you images by copying the logos from the exported PNG bitmap with the highest DPI that will fit in whatever size graphic you are making for the AVIC.

The export from Inkscape is somewhat time consuming. I ended up exporting over 40 PNGs for every 5 DPI from 120DPI to 350DPI. Because the logos in the PDF are vector scaled graphics you should get optimal quality in each exported PNG. I can't upload the PNGs because they are too large.

This sort of is what I already asked in my previous post here, but I am still trying to figure out:

If there used to be channel icons/logos for these stations on the XM display of these units before this latest marriage of channel line-ups, and now their NOT there - how was that possible with no disc update that folks are saying would be necessary to update the channels with this merger?

I'm confused on how XM or the tuner or whatever was able to "delete" these logos, but they can't reimage them or update them as well?

Could anyone explain that to me by chance?

Cheers,

Kev

The images are stored on your unit, XM only transmits the channel name, song title, and artist... if there is not a logo on the unit that goes along with the channel name then it defaults to displaying the generic sattelite.

OK, gotcha - thanks.

I guess that makes sense. It DOES seem like Pioneer/XM would release some kind of an update for this (just like the recent 2.0 update) so folks don't have to wait for the mapping release (and pay for it) or have to hack the unit to make them work, but what can you do?

Maybe I'll call XM anyway and ask - and get 5 months free service!

God know I've been with 'em long enough to deserve it!

Cheers,

Kev

The images are stored on your unit, XM only transmits the channel name, song title, and artist... if there is not a logo on the unit that goes along with the channel name then it defaults to displaying the generic sattelite.

I know the above is true for our various Avic units and this doesn't help the current discussion but I also have a Pioneer Inno and somehow all the channels now have the proper logos. It hasn't been connected to a computer in over 2 years. I have aboutely no clue how that could be possible without some over-the-air data transfer. Too bad Pioneer didn't use the same update method for the Avic.

Tom

Ok Mike... I burned your image file... trying to render a few of my BMP's... RawDog Comedy does not show up on my D3, but 16, 46, 49 ect... do....

I am also working on re-rendering some of my images... weird things happening (See my picture under the "D Series" (I think the thread its called XM Sirius logos)

Yeah, that imagetbl.dat file was good only up until the rock stations. I never got around to finishing them so Rawdog, etc wouldn't show up nor anything beyond like channel 56 or so.

yea I changed it in the version I had... Im working on perfecting some logo's for the D3... Ill mail a few of them over in PIM & BMP to you, let me know how they work... (Prob early next week)

but I did get Rawdog to show the XM COmdey logo... I like the XM Comedy logo more... so im not even gonna modify it..

Right now Im testing 32bit bmp... 24bit wont work with the AVIC D3...

Bad news...Inkscape is not handling certain gradiant colors correctly when importing the XM channel list PDF. The logos may look correct initially but if you compare several of them closely to the PDF you'll see the colors aren't right.

I'm going to have to find a commercial application that handles vector graphics to convert the PDF to transparent PNG images.

The logos are here too

http://xmradio.com/images/channels/logos/main/48.jpg

Just replace 48 with w/e chan number..

I have resolved the problem with color management and am starting the manual process of making optimial AVIC sized images. Details are here: http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19365. Once done these will have to mated with an updated IMAGETBL.DAT.

Can someone please post some samples of a few of the existing logos from the F and N series units from the XMLPS and XMDPS subdirectories so I can know what the file format, sizes, and background colors are. The format is the logos is different for each AVIC series. I already have the details for the D and Z series.

Here is the XM file...

XM.zip

Here is the XM file...

Thanks...I will make a set of 360x96 and 90x30 cuts for the F. I should be able to get all these done in 3-4 days.

The F is using RGB555 bitmaps which won't be supported by most graphic editing programs. The "checkerboard" like pattern that is visible on the backgrounds is from the conversion from 32bpp to RGB555 through the Windows GDI/GDI+.

The Z3 logos generated by my program work OK. I don't expect issues with the D/N ones.

I now need someone to please test out the attached F series logos generated by my program. These are for channels 11 and 13 (Nashville and Willie's Place), I choose these for the test since they work without modifying the imagetbl.dat.

I need to know if the unit displays them without issue on both the large and small sizes, is the background handled correctly, and there are no problems with borders/sizing.

The reason I ask about borders and sizing is many of the Pioneer generated logos are actually smaller then necessay to fit in the box and I can't figure out why. On the Z/D/N series it looks like they tried to follow a rule of a 2 pixel border for large images, and 1 pixel border for small images, but it was completely inconsistent in that many logos touched the borders. The F series is worse..many logos are far smaller than necessary...the thought "low quality rush job" keeps coming to mind.

Now that I saw the some of the new ones on my Z3 last night, I'm convinced there is no need for leaving border space, and all logos can be as large as possible.

FSeriesLogoTest11-20.zip

Thanks, Vandal, for all your hard work. I will give those logos a test out tomorrow and let you know how it goes. I don't THINK that the F series cuts anything off of the image for a border or anything since I have made some replacement logos that showed up perfectly, bit for bit. Thanks again.

Thanks, Vandal, for all your hard work. I will give those logos a test out tomorrow and let you know how it goes. I don't THINK that the F series cuts anything off of the image for a border or anything since I have made some replacement logos that showed up perfectly, bit for bit. Thanks again.

No no...the AVIC doesn't cut off the image, I'm talking about Pioneer's logos...they don't size their logos to use all of the available space in the bitmap. The graphic of many of their F series logos are smaller than necessary.

I finally just finished cracking out the new ImageTbl.dat file about 10 minutes ago. XM made a large changes to many station IDs. I will be posting the update packs for the Z and D/N series tommorrow sometime. As soon as someone gets back to me that the the F series bitmap work ok I will post that one too.

I'll definitely get back to you on the logos tomorrow. I have had a hectic couple of days after having my wallet and cell phone stolen from me (Credit cards, driver's license, cash, etc), but tomorrow I'll give those logos a go.

Since I was ready with the D/N and Z packs, I went ahead and posted the F series pack also at:

http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19631

Please try it out and post back on that topic any issues.