I am considering buying a bottom of the range iPod ( a Nano). However, I cannot decide if it is a pointless thing to do. I don't thiink that the current Nano has a screen. If connected via MDI on my vRS, would I see anything on the car in terms of song titles or navigation?

Sorry if this is a stupid question (I don't even know if it is...)

You should still be able to see music info on the radio screen as its the actual format of the stored music that contains track info and such

But im not 100% if the the nano uses the same format as other ipods....like how some cds show info on the screen and some dont

You should still be able to see music info on the radio screen as its the actual format of the stored music that contains track info and such

But im not 100% if the the nano uses the same format as other ipods....like how some cds show info on the screen and some dont

It should use the same format, as its stored on itunes so you can use on any apple device

We have an iPod nano (6th gen) in our vRS and it works great. The latest nano (7th gen) has the new 'lightning' connection so it won't connect to the MDI without buying a lightning-to-30 pin adaptor which is £25 from Apple! Bit of a rip-off if you ask me. Both these iPods have an inbuilt screen.

Not sure if you are talking about an iPod 'shuffle' tho? This is the most basic variant with no screen. No idea what type of connector it has so cant say if it will work in the fabia. Which version MDI lead to you have in the car?

Edited 30 March, 201313 yr by Furbytom

I used to use my iPod , now use a 32gb USB drive with a USB mdi cable , £20 for both, drag and drop music from your pc and it displays on the screen in the same file structure , ie artist / album / track. Saves having to keep the iPod in the car.

I used to use my iPod , now use a 32gb USB drive with a USB mdi cable , £20 for both, drag and drop music from your pc and it displays on the screen in the same file structure , ie artist / album / track. Saves having to keep the iPod in the car.

Is it slow off the usb stick?

I use an external hard drive (Western Digital 1TB) formatted to FAT32 and find no issues with slowness, as this drive is a physical one and a USB stick would be solid state I would guess it would be even faster, with the bonus of being cheaper than an iPod (and easy to hide for security reasons)

If it is just for use in the car with the MDI, it's a waste of money buying an iPod, a USB stick will serve just as well and can store literally thousands of tracks and would be much cheaper -that is what I do.

That's interesting that the MDI will work with a large HDD. I was going to use my iPod nano until buying a larger iPod to use in the car (car on order - not yet arrived!).

All my music is stored and arranged via iTunes... Not sure how easy/difficult it might be to export it all to a file and folder friendly format as I think iTunes has a fairly unique system to manage the music files?

with reference to iTunes, anything that's been purchased from there will be saved as an AAC file which wont play on any of the OEM headunits. You need to convert the files to mp3 or similar.

The way that i've arranged my hard drive is alphabetically A-Z as separate directories, then artist name in next directories, album titles in next directory, songs within that directory and it works very well for me.

You don't even need a hard drive the size I have, mine was just for future expansion but currently got over 500 albums and it takes over little more than 60gb, so I reckon could realistically fit a life times worth of music on that hard drive lol

Is it slow off the usb stick?

Same speed as iPod was (almost instant) , just dragged iTunes library in explorer on to USB stick. Very easy .

Same speed as iPod was (almost instant) , just dragged iTunes library in explorer on to USB stick. Very easy .

Is it just a cheap stick,or a hi-speed expensive one?

Edited 30 March, 201313 yr by PulsarET

A cheap one will do fine -I tend to stick with Sandisk as other brands have let me down in the past but they are not expensive 32gb will take a lot of music and is about £14

A cheap one will do fine -I tend to stick with Sandisk as other brands have let me down in the past but they are not expensive 32gb will take a lot of music and is about £14

What cable are you guys using?

My cable is mdi to ipod connection but would imagine there needs to be usb on one end

Seen some on amazon ,is £10 about right?

Just bought two Lexar JumpDrive 64GB Sicks,one for the wife in the 1 series and one for my "soon to be" vRS. Have about 41GB in my iTunes library and have iRip,so it's very easy to push about my iTunes libary

What cable are you guys using?

My cable is mdi to ipod connection but would imagine there needs to be usb on one end

Seen some on amazon ,is £10 about right?

Yes those are the ones -eBay or Amazon, as the dealer will charge you £25

Yes those are the ones -eBay or Amazon, as the dealer will charge you £25

Just bought a new Genuine USB cable from the Bay for £8.99

I use a 6th Gen Nano via the MDI cable, and it shows all the track names etc when you press the info button.

We've just changed the wife's car from a mk1VRS owned for 7yrs to a MONTE CARLO 105 diesel in candy white so i'm new to the MDI? I get what people are saying about right format/order etc etc my problem is i'm anti APPLE?mp3 players,phones,ipads etc etc so the question is can I buy a cable with usb put a 16/32/64 stick on it drop my music on it and the radio will list it or is it maxi dot that list it? Oh and were can I get the cable "a link would be nice " wot a great forum.

The MDI unit plays standard MP3 files as well and reads M3U playlists and ID3 tags so all your tracknames etc will appear on the stereo so no need to worry about Apple -I don't use their stuff either. It is worth noting that it can read the Apple formatted stuff too though as you can copy files on to a USB stick from iTunes and play them. Plugging an iPod in to the MDI is just a an expensive way of storing your files unless you plan to use it outside of the car.

As for a link I would just go to eBay and search for mdi usb cable

That's very handy to know that I can just transfer my iTunes library to USB and it will read the Apple file format directly - saved me a few bob on getting a big ipod, thanks!!

Cheers greenstripe already scouring ebay n amazon, Atleast I don't have to put up with 10million cd's stuffed into the glovebox lol.