iPod Showing Music info via bluetooth

[NLPenton]

Hey everyone,

I own a 2012 Mazda 3 GT-E.
I am wondering if any knows what I need in order to have my music info show while playing my IPOD via bluetooth? It works with my Blackberry but not IPOD.

 

[fatti03msp]

IPOD might not have bluetooth since its nat a phone, if it does it might have an older generation of bluetooth so that will also cause it to not work.

 

[NLPenton]

The bluetooth works just not the song info. Meh. oh well

 

[crsmclaren]

yea dude i dont think the screen in the car dash will show you the music info....if it does, pleaes tell me how because it just says bluetooth just never says any info about the music playing

 

[HandA]

I believe it has to do with the AVRCP capabilities of the bluetooth device:

Audio/Video Remote Control Profile (AVRCP):

This profile is designed to provide a standard interface to control TVs, Hi-fi equipment, etc. to allow a single remote control (or other device) to control all of the A/V equipment to which a user has access. It may be used in concert with A2DP or VDP.
It has the possibility for vendor-dependent extensions.

AVRCP has several versions with significantly increasing functionality:

1.0—Basic remote control commands (play/pause/stop, etc.)

1.3—all of 1.0 plus metadata and media-player state support
The status of the music source (playing, stopped, etc.)
Metadata information on the track itself (artist, track name, etc.).

1.4—all of 1.0, 1.3, plus media browsing capabilities for multiple media players
Browsing and manipulation of multiple players
Browsing of media metadata per media player, including a "Now Playing" list
Basic search capabilities

 

[crsmclaren]

OK you lost me handa so can I see the music info on my mazda screen in my dash via my iphone connected through bluetooth??

 

[crsmclaren]

^^^^ Yeaaa Handa any reply on that??

 

[HandA]

sorry for the wait, I hadn't seen the question.

The quick answer is apparently not. (although after reading some online it seems it works for some people in some cars with the more recent software updates < read more here> ) What you need is a player with at AVRCP 1.3 and it can be hard to find out what the players have when researching them. Most just say Bluetooth 2.0 or 3.0 or such.

I haven't tried an ipod or iphone with ours but I know the sony mp3 player we have does show the song info on the screen and the Nokia X2 we bought also shows it (but sounded terrible) and our blackberry playbook does with 2.0 upgrade. But the sony phone we bought doesn't and neither did the Samsung Galaxy media player that I tried. And both an ipod and a Galaxy player should be way more advanced than our old sony MP3 player. (from reading at the link above it turns out they might be too advanced and be 1.4 which may not work with 1.3...)

I've pretty much given up on finding a great solution for bluetooth streaming in the car.

The sony player sounds great and shows full info but when you park for a while and get back in the car the player stops the bluetooth and so you have to click through a bit on it to get it turned back on so the car will find it again which isn't the end of the world but is a pain when running errands and getting out a lot. And if you take too long getting it turned back on the car gives up on finding it and drops the bluetooth from the options.

The playbook sounds good, shows all the info but sometimes when you get back in the car it will show the song as playing and let you switch through songs but the audio won't be there. The only solution at that point is to shut the playbook down and restart it.

An ipod was going to be my last ditch thing to try but it sounds like I don't need to bother with that.

I even tried the Grom USB interface and it ran the battery dead and showed random song info and random characters half the time.

I can't believe it took Mazda this long to give up and finally offer a USB connection on the latest Mazda3. It has actually crossed my mind trading in for a new one.

It was interesting; in a survey I got on the CX5 they asked about bluetooth vs USB connection for music and then even sent a followup single question survey about why I preferred USB so at least they seem to listen to comments.

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