Touch Screen Mark-levinson Audio In 2006 Rx-400h?

[Aaron_in_SF]

After demo’ing several ’06 and ’07 RX-400Hs we bought a “Taste of Lexus” 2006 demo car with 300 miles on it, full original warranty, Mark-Levinson audio, premium plus, NAV, rear enertainment system, etc.

We were shocked to find when we took it home that the Mark-Levinson stereo had *no* support for MP3/WMA CDs!!!

We recall that all the various demo cars we had driven supported this and even said so on the front panel of M-L head unit in the dash.

Our dealer (Lexus of Stevens Creek) offered to make it up to us by adding the VaisTech iPod adapter for free. We got that going and then found that the VaisTech iPod adapter *only* displays the CD TEXT on the 1/2 “ LCD of the CD changer in the dash … *not* on the full color NAV screen!!! Impossile/dangerous to see while driving and *not* the touch screen, color NAV viewing capability.

This dealer's tech rep thought they had dip switches mis-set on the iPod adapter installation. WRONG!!!

It turns out that this ’06 RX-400H does *not* have the AUDIO button in the dash along with MAP/DEST/INFO, buttons, etc. Therefore this unit cannot receive CD TEXT into the NAV screen.

So we are stuck with tiny CD TEXT scrolling in back lit mode about 8 -12 inches below the beautiful NAV screen. DIfficult to see, difficult to use.

We have had this car for almost 10 days now and have been haggling with the Stevens Creek Lexus management about returning this car to get an ’07 that supports AUDIO touch screen on the NAV screen and MP3/WMA on the CD changer.

QUESTION: Does anyone with an ’06 RX-400H have the AUDIO touch screen capability on their NAV screen and support for MP3/WMA in their Mark-Levinson CD changer? We get different answers depending upon which tech rep we speak with. Some believe that our car was early production run and did not get this feature, while later ’06 production units may have.

Anyone have an opinion or some data?

THANKS.

--Aaron in San Francisco

[larrytrk]

After demo’ing several ’06 and ’07 RX-400Hs we bought a “Taste of Lexus” 2006 demo car with 300 miles on it, full original warranty, Mark-Levinson audio, premium plus, NAV, rear enertainment system, etc.

We were shocked to find when we took it home that the Mark-Levinson stereo had *no* support for MP3/WMA CDs!!!

We recall that all the various demo cars we had driven supported this and even said so on the front panel of M-L head unit in the dash.

Our dealer (Lexus of Stevens Creek) offered to make it up to us by adding the VaisTech iPod adapter for free. We got that going and then found that the VaisTech iPod adapter *only* displays the CD TEXT on the 1/2 “ LCD of the CD changer in the dash … *not* on the full color NAV screen!!! Impossile/dangerous to see while driving and *not* the touch screen, color NAV viewing capability.

This dealer's tech rep thought they had dip switches mis-set on the iPod adapter installation. WRONG!!!

It turns out that this ’06 RX-400H does *not* have the AUDIO button in the dash along with MAP/DEST/INFO, buttons, etc. Therefore this unit cannot receive CD TEXT into the NAV screen.

So we are stuck with tiny CD TEXT scrolling in back lit mode about 8 -12 inches below the beautiful NAV screen. DIfficult to see, difficult to use.

We have had this car for almost 10 days now and have been haggling with the Stevens Creek Lexus management about returning this car to get an ’07 that supports AUDIO touch screen on the NAV screen and MP3/WMA on the CD changer.

QUESTION: Does anyone with an ’06 RX-400H have the AUDIO touch screen capability on their NAV screen and support for MP3/WMA in their Mark-Levinson CD changer? We get different answers depending upon which tech rep we speak with. Some believe that our car was early production run and did not get this feature, while later ’06 production units may have.

Anyone have an opinion or some data?

THANKS.

--Aaron in San Francisco

No Nav screen for Audio on 06's that I know of. Not so sure of same on 07's, either. I put in Vaistech i-pod and love it, only way you can go.

[silvercorvette]

Lexus is protecting you from yourself. Most of the NAV and audio messages are disabled when the car is moving. I love my RX400H but will not get another one when the lease is up

[SOMEONE ELSE'S GOT MY NAME]

Don't know about the whatever brand sterio they put in your 400h, but the ol' fashion regular system has a port you can run an aftermarket adapter cable into the back side (when you add on mp3 wma etc players). You can read a ton of threads about the topic on prius chat. Here's just ONE ~ for example ... scroll down about half way & you'll see the screen display all your mp3 song data, that I'm guessing your aftermarket sterio / cd / mp3 player won't do, right?

http://priuschat.com/index.php?showtopic=32412&hl=mp3

Sorry to hear you find your car so tainted due to its cd player.

[Aaron_in_SF]

OK, guys, thanks for reminding me what a *fine* car this RX-400H is … which I never doubted, but we all know the A/V side of Lexus is a little outdated compared to the market as a whole.

That said, I do appreciate the comment that most of NAV/AUDIO functionality is disabled while driving … that point escaped me!

And I think we all know that 6 CDs full of MP3s at 3MB per song is about 24 full albums worth per 720MB CD … or 6x24 = almost 150 albums in your CD changer when using respectable MP3 quality. That is, *if* this car had MP3 capability which it doesn’t.

At this point, I’ve organized a new 5.5 gen 30GB iPod to hold 10,000 songs .. some finer points follow for those who are interested

• Note that the Vaistech interface is limited to 95 PLAYLISTS on an iPod and those individual PLAYLISTs cannot have more than 100 songs
  
• Else the Vaistech behavior is”erratic” (freezes, etc.)
  
• Another nuance to be aware of is that iTunes sorts PLAYLISTs in ALPHA mode so that your favorite PLAYLIST may be 95 jiggers of the “>” button on your CD changer or steering wheel control
  
• A work around is to put “-“ (minus sign) or other numeric/symbol as the first character in the PLAYLIST name to force those PLAYLISTs to the top of the list … -husband, -wife, -kids, -crunch, -Disney, -funk, -CSN&Y, -LedZep, etc.
  
• Note also that the LCD on the M-L changer in these cars does not scroll more that what the LCD shows so you are limited to the readability of the PLAYLIST name
  

This a *beautiful* car … and this is my 7th Lexus (all owned until their end of life .. just retired a beautiful 1990 LS400 :cries: ).

Aaron in San Francisco/Hillsborough