Anyone working on new logos to fix what XM has done to us? If you don't already know, XM changed the names of many of the channels and now whe get the standard Satelite logo instead of the channel logo. So if anyone is working on it, I won't start it for myself. No need duplicating someone else's effort you know.
Also, some of you DVD, CD users (N1-3, D1-3) etc. Are you also working on a fix disk? If so, can you post your new logos here?
I just got my new Z3 hooked up and XM throws these unnecessary station name changes at me.
I'm studying the last update from the the sticky post. It looks like you need to convert all the jpegs to PIM and update the IMAGETBL.DAT file but I don't see any technical details on the structure of that file. It also appears the logos come in 3 sizes.
The first task would be to get the new logos in the 3 sizes. I see the smaller versions of the logos on the XM website. Anywhere know if there is an "official" place to obtain the new logos?
Correction...the AVIC needs the logos in 2 sizes, not 3.
Anywhere know if there is an "official" place to obtain the new logos?
http://xmradio.com/onxm/full-channel-listing.xmc
If you follow the channel links off of this page, it appears each channel has a current logo in the upper left hand corner.
Anywhere know if there is an "official" place to obtain the new logos?
http://xmradio.com/onxm/full-channel-listing.xmc
If you follow the channel links off of this page, it appears each channel has a current logo in the upper left hand corner.
Ya, I saw those, however those are in lossy JPG format. I can get the logos in a much better resolution from the XM station list PDF which has them logos in a high-res scalable format. The logos can then be brought into a tool like PhotoShop and resized to the 72x24 and 136x40 formats for the AVIC and then converted to PIM. The problem is that logos need to be transparent to appear right on the AVIC and several of the logos like "Escape" have semi-transparent pixels which is quite difficult to undo once combined with a background color.
any ideas on how to update the logos would be GREATLY appreciated.
I emailed pioneer about an upgrade but probably will not hear from them.
I also emailed the guy on ebay that sells the upgraded harddrives to see if he can get the new logos in to his build.
I finally figured out how to get the logos out of the XM station list PDF without losing resolution and transparency but its a tedious manual process using 2 applications and PimView.
It appears from the existing logo PIMs I found that the background color should be 200,200,200, but when I covert the bitmap to PIM all the colors darken by 8 bytes so I had to trick it with a background of 208,208,208. Anyone know why PIMView shifts the colors?
I'm still tweaking the process but attached is what I have for the large (136x40) Octane logo.
Reply from Pioneer:
At the present time there are no updates for the XM displays on this model. With future updates this should become available, however at this time we not ETA for this.
The guy that sells upgrades on ebay said he would look in to upgrading the images in his build.
I just got off the phone with Pioneer and they said that the station logos are updated through the Map Update discs. The next map update won't arrive until April '09! Lazy *** Pioneer 
. Take several hours to fix this and make your customers happy.
Call them at 800.421.1404 (opt 2, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1) and let your voice be heard. I'd be willing to pay someone on here, that has the skills to fix the station logos, $20 for their service 
.
I just emailed this to Pioneer at [email protected]. Maybe everyone on this forum should do the same 
.
** Please forward this to the head (Manager) of Customer Service **
As you may or may not know, yesterday XM and Sirius completed their merger and changed the station lineup for their service. As a result, most all of the station logos displayed on your navigation units are missing. So, last night I emailed your department to ask about a fix.
Well, I just got off the phone with your customer service department and was told that the XM/Sirius station logos on all Pioneer units will be updated with the next Map Update due out in April. You are doing a disservice to your image when you're going to make ALL your customers that own a navigation display (Z-series, D-series, N-series & F-series) wait 6+ months to have their displays corrected.
Normally I could understand the wait...if XM or Sirius makes a slight changes to their station lineup. BUT, they just merged and more than 2/3 of the stations (and logos) have changed.
I'm not the only one venting my frustration. A browse at the AVIC411.com forums will show other customers that would like this resolved:
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19377
http://avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19359
http://www.avic411.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19365
Please don't make your loyal customers wait 6+ months and spend $120 to fix their displays.
S**** W.
AVIC-Z2 owner
I found the following Pioneer corporate emails that I copied on the above email: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
They said the next April map update...would this be those same map updates with $200+ rip off pricing?
I'm going continue working on making a new logo package. I was able to sucessfully extract the new logos from the channel list PDF with full quality and transparency preserved to PNG images.
Since the logos all vary in height and each needs to be scaled seperately, I made the PNG exports in resolutions from 120DPI to 300DPI in 5DPI increments. The next step is to manually find the largest DPI of each logo that fits into the 72x24 and 136x40 images used by the AVIC and make bitmaps of those which can then be converted to PIMs.
I've mostly decyphered the IMAGETBL.DAT but I'm working off an old update pack posted here. I still need to pull the HD from my Z3 and see what the image sizes and the table look like on a newer AVIC. I suspect the F series probably has a different format for all this. It appears that bytes describing each station are indexed by an internal station offset which is different that the displayed station number, for example Miami Traffic is station 230 but its internal offset is 18. It seems the AVIC needs the indexes and the station name strings to match up correctly in the table file in order to get the logo PIM file ID and display it.
I'll post the bitmaps and PIMs once I get them done.
They are $120 retail
They said the next April map update...would this be those same map updates with $200+ rip off pricing?
An update...I had ran in an annoying road block involving color management. The PDF displays using the ICC profile of your monitor which is not the actual color in the document. The actual color in the document is the one used for printing and those colors appear dulled out on screen and the logos made from those were not coming out looking right. To get around this I had to convert the color profile on all my exported PNGs to the "Apple RGB" profile and then use a program I threw together to strip the ICC profile from the PNGs so the colors don't re-adjust when I open the PNG in Axialis or Adobe applications. The "Apple RGB" profile seems to closest match the colors of the existing AVIC logos. I do not know what color profile Pioneer used but you really won't be able to tell the difference and I question if Pioneer got the colors right themselves as theirs are not consistent between the Z3 and D2.
In order to make sets of logos for all the different AVIC series I need to know the format and the 2 sizes for each AVIC series. Garret Toomey generously sent me the logos from the Z3 as I don't have an unlocked drive yet, so I have those. I also have the format from a D2 series CD. The logos are stored in the XMDPS and XMLPS directories.
The Z3 uses actual bitmaps in 24-bit 136x40 and 56x24 with a black blackground.
The D2 uses PIMs in 136x40 and 72x24 with a 200,200,200 background.
Can someone please post a some samples of logos for the N and F series? I don't need all of them, just a few in both sizes will do.
I just wanted to post up a big thank you to vandal for doing this for all of us. I know I don't have the skills, so I appreciate you taking on this job. I just finished installing my z2 last week and then all of my icons disappeared 
I also want to thank Vandal for doing this. He didn't have to do this, especially trying to make icons for all the different Avic models. He could have just made ones just for his own deck and left it at that. But he's not , so THANX 
Vandal.............. 3rd Kudos........ Thanks.....
On the color space used........ I would go with sRGB. This is likely the space that will give you the most accomodating gamut for the displays on the AVIC. Given the OS is Windows based, I would guess that will be the profile.
The added benefit is that you can either used Photoshop's Image Processor to batch the changes by simply selecting the sRGB option on the conversion/resize process and then make sure to embed the ICC Profile. The other option is to simply make an action that takes the logos you find and save two sRGB JPGs for each logo. From there you can convert to the final file formats.
Make sense? Did you already consider this?
Vandal.............. 3rd Kudos........ Thanks.....
On the color space used........ I would go with sRGB. This is likely the space that will give you the most accomodating gamut for the displays on the AVIC. Given the OS is Windows based, I would guess that will be the profile.
The added benefit is that you can either used Photoshop's Image Processor to batch the changes by simply selecting the sRGB option on the conversion/resize process and then make sure to embed the ICC Profile. The other option is to simply make an action that takes the logos you find and save two sRGB JPGs for each logo. From there you can convert to the final file formats.
Make sense? Did you already consider this?
I'll check that profile again. I'm trying to use colors that match what Pioneer generated going off existing logos that did not change such as "Top 20 on 20". So far AppleRGB came out very close to whatever profile Pioneer used. The AVIC uses bare RGB555 BMPs and PIMs with no embedded color profile so the colors have to be right before the BMP/PIM is written.
I am not using JPG becuase that is a lossy format and these need to be of the highest quality at the time they are pasted on the background or they won't look good. This also means I cannot make the logos by resizing them in any bitmap (BMP, JPG, PNG, etc) file format or they will distort. They have to be exported from the scalable vector graphic in every size needed.
To generate the logos for the size ranges to cover the F series I had to make 150+ PNG file exports from Inkscape in 75 DPI to 770 DPI and each one had to be re-color profiled in photoshop. I just had to re-do this step all over again because I needed to remove all these graphics artifacts from the PDF/SVG to make the program find the logo edges correct. I also found and removed an XM goof on in the PDF...there is an oval shaped object partially obscuring the NASCAR letters of the channel 128 logo, if you zoom the PDF in far enough you'll see it.
I have a custom program just about ready that examines each PNG, pulls the largest sizes logo that will fit for each AVIC image size needed, and spits out PNG file of those. The program then converts those to the special format of each series. The F, Z, and D/N each use different formats and backgrounds.
wow, I understood almost none of that! Thanks again for doing this!
Vandal,
As a grpahic designer, I DID understand most of it, and you are to be commended highly for your work on this. I must ask though; it seems that XM will most likely supply all these station logos to Pioneer in the near future (I've heard that perhaps with the newest mapping update that folks may need to pay for). Doesn't it seem like what you are going through is an incredibly HUGE amount of work for something that may be released to everyone pretty soon - and that it would make more sense to just live with the generic "satellite logo" on the channels until then?
Trust me, I LOVE the station logos - I have been an XM subscriber for a long time, and think they help to add to the experience of listening to XM, but MAN what an ass-busting project!
I think I'd only attempt it if there was no indication that they wouldn't release them to us EVER!
Cheers (and a hearty thumb-up to your efforts!)
Kev
Mr. Womo that would all depend on if the logos were worth 250 bucks to you. From what I have seen, the "map updates" are much to be desired. It may be in the map updates and it may not be who knows. If you've dealt with Pioneer long enough you know not to trust them.
Vandal,
As a grpahic designer, I DID understand most of it, and you are to be commended highly for your work on this. I must ask though; it seems that XM will most likely supply all these station logos to Pioneer in the near future (I've heard that perhaps with the newest mapping update that folks may need to pay for). Doesn't it seem like what you are going through is an incredibly HUGE amount of work for something that may be released to everyone pretty soon - and that it would make more sense to just live with the generic "satellite logo" on the channels until then?
Trust me, I LOVE the station logos - I have been an XM subscriber for a long time, and think they help to add to the experience of listening to XM, but MAN what an ass-busting project!
I think I'd only attempt it if there was no indication that they wouldn't release them to us EVER!
Cheers (and a hearty thumb-up to your efforts!)
Kev
This started out looking like a huge task with trying to manual pick and place the largest sized image in the boxes, especially once I tried making F series sized images, even at 1600x1200 trying to zoom up and select the edges of 360 pixel graphic is a pain. That changed once I got my program written to do that automatically. So if need to tweak something I can just re-run the program and wait 5 minutes. I just had to make such an adjust to impove the quality on some of the image. Even still some of these smaller images will likely need some manual touch up, but that can be done later.
Right now I'm trying sort out the mapping of private to public channel numbers in the ImageTbl.dat because manual editing was getting convoluted. If two or more station entries point to the same public channel number it pisses off the AVIC and it stops loading any logos past that channel index.