1.8 Prius T-spirit

[Charles Lea]

Hello all Happy New Year " 2010 " to you all

I am a new member to Toyota owners club website forum, I am due to take delivery of my New Prius in February 2010T-spirit in Pearl White.

My question is does the T-spirit have a USB socket in the compartment as is suggested via one link on forum via U tube or is this just the USA spec car.

I wish to use my Ipod classic in the T-spirit, and I thought if it had a USB socket I could just connect the cable to my Ipod fits in the base of Ipod other end is a USB male connector, and it would work through the in car Sat Nav, Radio/HDD/Cd.

Do I really have to buy the Toyota Ipod Intregration Kit which costs £299.00 fitted by the dealership, although the car I am trading in Auris T-spirit I bought a Blue tooth kit & an Ipod kit, I am aware the Prius has a bluetooth for my phone.

I really did not want to spend any more money than I have to, the dealership stated why would I want to use my Ipod as the car Sat Nv, Radio,Cd has a built in Hdd to store music and could put ALL my music on this. Did not want to spend hours downloading all my Cd's back in cars HDD, nor do I want to burn my Itunes libary on to Audio DVD-RW disc then on to the car's HDD.

There must be a way I can play my Ipod in the car or download from my Ipod hard drive to the car's hard drive.

Any help would be welcome

Charles

[OOTF]

USA version only I'm afraid. You do have a 3.5mm jack socket in the centre arm rest storage, which you can plug the Ipod into.

You can have a USB socket fitted for hundreds of pounds, which involves major dismantling of the dash/console - what a mess.

Hope this helps.

[The Traveller]

They are giving out mixed messages at the dealers. One told me that the USB/Ipod isn't fitted into the TSpirit, another told me that it is fitted as standard in that model. So when mine turns up (in 16 days :D ) I have no idea what to expect. I want that interface, but perhaps not for £300, when the 16GB USB stick I'm going to plug into it only costs a few tens of £'s . Well done Toyota; foot, revolver, bullet.

There was a thread a while back where someone discovered that the CD drive is also a DVD drive. They described how it possible to place up to 250 tracks into each folder, then burn multiple such folders onto a DVDROM and fill it up, then use that in the dashboard CD/DVD drive as a music source.

I reckon 4 or 5 such folders will fill up a single-layer DVD with about 80 hours of 128kb-MP3 music files. Get bored with that 80 hours? Swap for another DVD then. A cheap and simple way to have plenty of music on tap. Can anyone confirm if this info is correct, or what the true version ought to be?

Another place gave a mention to Shuangs Audio Joiner, for welding various MP3 tracks into a new single file. 250 such files at 17MB apiece equals a full DVD with no need for enclosing the tracks into folders.

[johalareewi]

Not sure if my CD player will recognise DVDs - will give it a go.

If it helps, I have the T3 prius which will probably be a different player to the one on the TSpirit but might function in a similar way. My CD player will play both MP3 and WMA and I can load a CD disc up with 8 audio CDs converted to variable rate MP3.

Having music files in folders isn't a problem with the T3 player because it just plays the files one after the other. When the end of a folder is reached, it just moves on to the next one so in effect you have one huge CD with lots of tracks.

EDIT: The standard CD player in the T3 will not recoginise or play an MP3 DVD. :(

The TSpirit comes with SatNav which is updated via DVD. I guess this is why the TSpirit CD player can also read DVDs.

[ian rooke]

Hi the CD player is also a harddisc drive which reads CDs and records them

[OvertheHill]

They are giving out mixed messages at the dealers. One told me that the USB/Ipod isn't fitted into the TSpirit, another told me that it is fitted as standard in that model. So when mine turns up (in 16 days :D ) I have no idea what to expect. I want that interface, but perhaps not for £300, when the 16GB USB stick I'm going to plug into it only costs a few tens of £'s . Well done Toyota; foot, revolver, bullet.

There was a thread a while back where someone discovered that the CD drive is also a DVD drive. They described how it possible to place up to 250 tracks into each folder, then burn multiple such folders onto a DVDROM and fill it up, then use that in the dashboard CD/DVD drive as a music source.

I reckon 4 or 5 such folders will fill up a single-layer DVD with about 80 hours of 128kb-MP3 music files. Get bored with that 80 hours? Swap for another DVD then. A cheap and simple way to have plenty of music on tap. Can anyone confirm if this info is correct, or what the true version ought to be?

Another place gave a mention to Shuangs Audio Joiner, for welding various MP3 tracks into a new single file. 250 such files at 17MB apiece equals a full DVD with no need for enclosing the tracks into folders.

The dealers do not understand their own kit. Technically, a 3.5mm jack socket is an "interface" so as standard you can plug your ipod into the stereo if you have a 3.5mm jack to 3.5mm jack cable. You control the iPod as normal.

The iPod interface kit is not standard. This replaces the 3.5mm jack with a usb connector which you can connect your iPod to using the cable that came with it for syncing with iTunes. The interface means that the ipod is controlled from the stereo itself and it's REALLY REALLY terrible.

In addition to the options above if you have an iPhone (or an iPod touch I think) you can use bluetooth to play music through the stereo

Hope this helps

[Seamaster73]

In addition to the options above if you have an iPhone (or an iPod touch I think) you can use bluetooth to play music through the stereo

But only on the T-Spirit with sat nav, right? The bluetooth implementation on the non-sat nav equipped IV does not extend to this?

[Dave R.]

They are giving out mixed messages at the dealers. One told me that the USB/Ipod isn't fitted into the TSpirit, another told me that it is fitted as standard in that model. So when mine turns up (in 16 days :D ) I have no idea what to expect. I want that interface, but perhaps not for £300, when the 16GB USB stick I'm going to plug into it only costs a few tens of £'s . Well done Toyota; foot, revolver, bullet.

The TSpirit doesn't have a USB interface.... as per earlier response it does have a 3.5mm AUX audio input (just connect a cable from the headphone output of an iPod (or other audio device) into the AUX input, then use the iPod's controls to select tracks etc.) The £300 ipod interface has a USB connection that allows you to plug in an iPod and control it via the stereo... as far as I know it is not clever enough to read MP3s from a stick plugged into the USB.

There was a thread a while back where someone discovered that the CD drive is also a DVD drive. They described how it possible to place up to 250 tracks into each folder, then burn multiple such folders onto a DVDROM and fill it up, then use that in the dashboard CD/DVD drive as a music source.

I reckon 4 or 5 such folders will fill up a single-layer DVD with about 80 hours of 128kb-MP3 music files. Get bored with that 80 hours? Swap for another DVD then. A cheap and simple way to have plenty of music on tap. Can anyone confirm if this info is correct, or what the true version ought to be?

Yes, the T-Spirit CD will read DVDs, but there is a limit of 250 MP3 files in total for a disk (not per directory).... hence the suggestion of using software to weld MP3 files together to make fewer, longer tracks. The drawback with this is that you then can't select individual tracks that have been "welded" together.

Also, as per the earlier post, don't forget that the T-Spirit has a hard disk.... put in an audio CD and it will automagically copy it onto the hard disk (though it will not copy MP3 files onto the hard disk). It has a capacity of 10GB, though some of this space is taken up with the Sat Nav data. Whilst this is not quite as much as an iPod, it is infinitely better than carrying around 10's of CDs in the car, and you can always augment the hard disk by carrying DVDs with 250 MP3 tracks on each. :)

[OvertheHill]

... as far as I know it is not clever enough to read MP3s from a stick plugged into the USB.

It does do this - I tried it - and in reply to the earlier question about bluetooth I'm afraid I only know about my car so can't comment on a T3

[Dave R.]

... as far as I know it is not clever enough to read MP3s from a stick plugged into the USB.

It does do this - I tried it - and in reply to the earlier question about bluetooth I'm afraid I only know about my car so can't comment on a T3

Fair enough.... sounds good to me!

[Pugmanic]

On 04/01/2010 at 11:10 PM, Dave R. said:

Also, as per the earlier post, don't forget that the T-Spirit has a hard disk.... put in an audio CD and it will automagically copy it onto the hard disk (though it will not copy MP3 files onto the hard disk). It has a capacity of 10GB, though some of this space is taken up with the Sat Nav data. Whilst this is not quite as much as an iPod, it is infinitely better than carrying around 10's of CDs in the car, and you can always augment the hard disk by carrying DVDs with 250 MP3 tracks on each. :)

I really must sit down and look at the manual. I have a 2010 T-Spirit and had no idea that it could do that. How do you play back the copied files?

**Just realised that this post was about a Prius - not an Auris as I have. Is this facility available in an Auris with Nav?

[Heidfirst]

probably worth stating which exact head unit that you have.

[kithmo]

IIRC, you have to turn on the automatic copy option in settings.

[johalareewi]

16 hours ago, Pugmanic said:

I really must sit down and look at the manual. I have a 2010 T-Spirit and had no idea that it could do that. How do you play back the copied files?

**Just realised that this post was about a Prius - not an Auris as I have. Is this facility available in an Auris with Nav?

Only the UK gen3 (2009-2012) t-spirit Prius had the hard disk drive.