I must say that by far Infiniti's implementation/execution of the "MusicBox" in my FX is the most utter disappointment ever. It is 9.3GB of "usable" space, which immediately probably makes you(well, me at least) think "wow, neat, I can copy about 10GB of my MP3's there.. " WRONG.

Essentially this backwards-implemented device serves one purpose: to RIP audio from CD's and convert them into MP3's and store them into the MusicBox. Period.

Wait!  There's a compact flash slot! I can use that to copy music into the system, right? WRONG.

Oh, well there's the IPOD connector........... oh wait, that doesn't do it either.

Needless to say I am pretty annoyed at Infiniti's complete lack of proper implementation of the musicbox, it's really disappointing. Apparently the 2010's have a new nav/bluetooth system in which the IPOD port is replaced with a USB port (meaning you could use a USB stick to play from, novel idea!), and it also supports the bluetooth A2DP format which allows you to stream music from Bluetooth Audio capable devices, directly to the car stereo. Either way, mine doesn't do any of those things, so I am out of luck and pretty annoyed.

no its by design.  Mine is the same way.  I rarely ever use it, but I did burn about 3 cd's that I used to ALWAYS keep in my 6 disc changer into it... you know celine dion, miley cyrus, lol jk.  I did hear about the new usb port (my wife's jeep has this which is awesome, you can hook your laptop right up to it and feed movies into the HD).  But I didn't realize that the newer models had the new BT streaming audio mode.  Were you able to get your droid phonebook to transfer to it?  I gave up on mine a long time ago.

I wish I lived closer to RH, he always has great ideas on how to improve upon the OEM equipment.

I'm pretty sure it does support AVRCP bluetooth profile, right?  Not sure if it's 1.0, 1.3 or 1.4, but I'm pretty sure it does support AVCRP.  

So in theory you could use your notebook to be your bluetooth device to play songs.  You can attach maybe a 120-640GB USB HD to it (size would depend of course on how much media you have), and then you'll be able to play all your media.  You could even have a $200-$250 mini pc, half the size of a MacMini (like the FitPC) in the glove compartment if you don't want to bring the laptop all the time.  Just plug in the bluetooth dongle and the USB HD and you don't need a monitor, track song and artist would be displayed and controlled on the OEM display via bluetooth - because the car would think the PC is the bluetooth "device".  No video over bluetooth, but you could add an aftermarket composite input to the NAV screen just to add video.  

Now why the ipod control does not work?  It's about the iPod firmware?  Can you control the iPhone via bluetooth (again AVCRP?).  If so, you can also control the iPad too.  Too bad the iPad does not have much storage.

I'll probably go the IPOD route.. it's just another thing I don't really want to have

No DVD-A or SACD.. like they thought that far. I believe it rips to MP3's or some other bizarre format.. the bitrate ripping options (I dont remember them right now, but i know they were strange) lead me to believe it does VBR compression, or really really mediocre CBR.

There's a slew of issues with different generations of IPOD's and how they do/don't work with the IPOD interface on the FX, so that could be another project in itself..

I don't believe it rips to mp3, just because the size of the files is so huge.  Its like it rips to same size music file like a wma or something.  I'm not that computer literate, I just know that 9.3 gigs should hold a lot more than its advertised to hold IF it were mp3.  The Jeep on the other hand you can put anything you want on there, (just can't read it all) but say you wanted a copy of everyone's addresses in a pdf or word doc to save so you didnt have to save it all in your NAV system... you could save it in the Jeep HD.

You mean video files?  If you unlock it, you can play on the front display, right?  I wonder if it's just cutting the VSS wire.  On the Sequoia I had to ground the Parking break and interrupt the GPS antenna too.  On my old FX a simple SPST switch does the job.

 I just read that Infiniti puts a limit of about 5000 files on a USB drive, so there's no point in using anything over 20GB or so...very poor.  In any case, playing over a device that supports AVRCP seems to be the best way, since you can have voice control over all the basic functions, plus display.  I wonder if it allows for playlist control ("play playlist recently added", etc. besides play genre, artist, etc.), but that not a Ford I guess (Ford tech > Infiniti) who would have thought of that?).

Totally missed this post.. woops! I do not believe the 2009 supports AVRCP. The 2010 MIGHT.

My vehicle has the infiniti-standard composite input already, but as you know the quality is normally pretty bad.

Ipod control works, but in limited ways - again, due to Infiniti's poor selection of implementation methods, I guess.

http://www.infiniti-techinfo.com/refgh0v/og/infiniti/fx/2009-Infiniti-FXSeries.pdf - Page 222

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A little lost on your video files comment - I was referring to being able to play MP3's directly from CF, at first I didn't think it was possible based on what I had been reading, but I tried it and amazingly it worked. I haven't tried video but i am about 99.99% sure it doesn't support it over CF. I believe you can play DVD's on the front display but I haven't tried to, but it is subject to the same lockouts you mentioned, although KP technologies has a module to work around it. (http://www.kptechnologies.com/products.php#/6)

Apparently there are tons of "limits" on their silly implementations. I think Infiniti does a lot of the work in house rather than outsourcing to a capable company (eg, Ford running to Microsoft for Sync). The CF is limited to a pointless 2GB. Why? No one knows. There's also various file count limitations on both the internal music box HDD and media from CF. Pretty disappointing.


Not stupid at all. The main devices that i'd say they target with BT audio streaming is phones; although providers just recently started selling phones that even support A2DP. It would be, in my case, a convenient thing to have. My phone has a 16GB SD card so I can keep a decent amount of music on it. Being able to play it via the car's stereo would be nice, although the compression of the bluetooth audio does leave something to be desired.

Hmmm, not a problem on mine but I use a Touch.  Interestingly, the aftermarket aux/in unit I use in the BMW works in one way better than the unit in the Infiniti.  The audio is all normalized to one level with the aftermarket piece.  I know the IPod is supposed to do that but sometimes it fails.