Nissan Murano Navigation System
Software Bugs in the Navigation / Hard Drive software?
Has anyone experienced issues with the 2009 Murano's navigation or hard drive? I find sometimes that some of the options seem to disappear. For example, when playing music from the Hard Drive hitting MENU doesn't display all the options such as Search Album/Artist etc and then shows all the songs in one long list. Also, have experienced something similar with the Navigation where I went to enter a new address and the options were greyed out.
Has anyone experienced issues with the 2009 Murano's navigation or hard drive? I find sometimes that some of the options seem to disappear. For example, when playing music from the Hard Drive hitting MENU doesn't display all the options such as Search Album/Artist etc and then shows all the songs in one long list. Also, have experienced something similar with the Navigation where I went to enter a new address and the options were greyed out.
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I bought my 2009 Murano 4 weeks ago, and I'm so angry about how much functionality is disabled while driving that I wrote a letter to Nissan North America, Mr Al Castignettie who is the VP and GM for Nissan Division. Garmin is the standard for GPS and does not disable anything at all, but as you have also discovered, our GPS is almost completely disfunctional while driving. The Bluetooth is similarly disabled. I transferred 40 numbers into the car's phonebook, but you can only see 12 while driving! If you stop the car, you can see the whole list. On the MusicBox, you have over 9GB of storage - well over 100 albums or CDs, but when you're driving, you can't search and select by album. The irony here is that you can manually scroll through the 2000+ songs on those albums, but you can't scroll through the list of albums except while in your driveway or on the side of the road. If you're on a road trip, you have to stop every 45-60 minutes to change the CD you want to hear, you can't look for a Mexican (or Chinese, or American or Italian) restaurant for the family to eat while passing through a town, or look up the phone number of someone in your phonebook. The problem isn't with the Murano, it's with every Nissan and Infiniti car with this technology package. I traded a great 2004 Maxima for what I thought would be a great Murano with all the bells and whistles. I didn't get what I thought I was buying! All this extreme in the name of my safety. Safe, attentive driving is my responsibility, not Nissan's or Toyota or any other manufacturer. If Garmin doesn't have to disable anything, then neither does Nissan. Anything disabled should be accessible using voice commands, but they didn't do that either.
I encourage everyone who reads this to write a letter to Nissan and complain. I'm willing to share my letter with anyone who wants a copy.
Mr. Al Castignetti,
VP & General Manager, Nissan Division
Nissan North America
333 Commerce Street
Nashville, TN 37201-1800
I am thinking about leasing a 2009 Murano but your message is very off-putting.
Can you set up the phonebook so that the first 12 numbers are the most important ones?
I thought that you could use all of the functionality except typing in an address while driving. And whatever is disabled can be accessed through voice.
What about using the iPod screen to scroll lists of songs while driving?
The Infiniti/Murano Nav system LOOKS great but I can't help feeling that Acura's is far more usable. I have an Acura RL now and the Nav is excellent.
First, the voice commands for Bluetooth will let you say any area code and number you wish to call while driving, and if you've assigned a voice tag to every number in your phonebook (all 40), you can say any voice tag and it dials the number. I did use the Bluetooth feature to transfer my numbers from my cell phone - nice touch. What I couldn't do was scroll through the 40 numbers to retrieve a number that did not have a voicetag. The "Down" button disappears off the screen when numbers 8-12 are displayed and there is no voice command to continue to the next set of numbers. The first 12 are alphabetical, so there isn't any mechanism to structure the list. So, today, I will assign voice tags to every number. The Bluetooth works great as long as your memory is great, but I'll freely admit my memory isn't as sharp as it once was.
Second, the Nav display is the best I've seen in any car. The voice commands for the nav will let you request nearby restaurants, gas stations, atms, hotels, and one other POI category which slips my memory at the moment; but will not let you ask for anything in the remaining 5 POI categories. If you want to find the nearest airport or bus station, you're out of luck while the car is in motion. When you ask for nearby restaurants, it returns the closest 5 only regardless of type. So if you're starving and just want food and don't care what it is, then you'll be fine with the results. What is disabled are the POI menus which allow you access to all 10 POI categories and allow you to specify type of food. All the disabled features are things you can do with a $200 portable Garmin stuck to your windshield. If it's legal for Garmin, then it's legal for Nissan.
Third, the 9GB musicbox lets you copy your music onto the car's hard drive and never bring the CD into the car again - that's GREAT!! The sound quality is great. I haven't discovered voice commands for the music system, but I will admit there are many features I have yet to figured out. When you push the Voice button, no options for the music system appear on the screen - only Phone, Navigation, Information, and Help.
I have two friends with Toyotas - one with an Avalon and one with a Sequoia. Both complain about how Toyota has disabled their nav systems when driving. Neither has the features we have in the Murano.
My recommendation is to test each part of the system while driving (not just while the car is sitting still in DRIVE). You won't be able to test the music box album list because there won't be any loaded at the dealership. I didn't discover that part until I started loading my CDs and tried to change the one playing while driving down to the mall.
As for the Murano itself, I love it and really enjoy driving it. It's really well designed. My only dissatisfaction is with the amount of disabled features in the nav/tech package.
1. You can voice-dial up to 40 numbers to which you have assigned a voice tag. Can you only assign 40 numbers? Can you dial an extension number when the vehicle is in motion? I assume if you have assined 500 voice tags to your phone, you can pick up the phone, hit the command button and say the voice-tag, which will then transfer the audio through the blutooth system.
2. On the navi, you can only use 5 POI's while the vehicle is in motion. Are they by voice or can you touch the screen? I understand you indicate it will only display (for example), the closest 5 restaurants, regardless of catergory. Can you enter a restaurant name by screen or voice while the vehicle is in motion?
3. Are you aware of any third party hardware that will fix the issue such as is available for Toyota's and Lexus? Since the system is an HDD, I wonder if there can be a downloadable software fix?
4. Have you tried to enter a new address by voice when the vehicle is in motion? Can it be done by touch screen?
5. Have you tried any of these problematic issues on the MDX? I'd like to know the answer to that before I commit.
Thanks for your continuing responses. :confuse:
Re 4. I tried entering an address via voice while on a test drive. It worked fine.
I hope that I can scroll through all of the menus of all of my iPod songs and podcasts while driving.
The MDX has no restrictions while driving and the Acura nav is great. I have an Acura RL and the nav is one of my favorite features.
The MDX seems to be quite a bit bigger than the Murano. I would have thought the RDX was more like the Murano in terms of size.
#2: For those 5 POIs, you can select either by voice or touching the screen and the system will return the 5 closest results for each. No further commands are allowed.
#3. No
#4. Yes, and as fredbloggs states, it works by voice.
#5. No, never even considered the MDX. After the auto show, we narrowed our choices to the RL, the M35x, while the Murano was a kind of afterthought for fun. We went to the Acura dealership to test drive the RL, but they had no RL inventory at all. So, we then compared the M35x to the fully loaded Murano LE. I guess the idea of something more fun to drive won out over the higher end luxury. The Murano was a complete change for us in type of car. I made inaccurate assumptions about how the nav package would work based on how my portable Garmin works.
Went out today for about an hour with a handfull of CDs to load into the music box. I still think I have a fun car to drive.
1. Do you lose functionality on Ipod interface while driving? Can you use touchscreen or voice to change Playlist/Albums/Artists ...or are you stuck with one list until you park?
2. On the SL, is there an easy way to transfer your IPod library to the Musicbox without copying everything to CD and then copying CDs to the Musicbox?
3. The only reason I'm considering the LE is for the integrated Ipod. The navi would be nice to have too. Would it be better to buy an SL and have an aftermarket Ipod/Navi put in?
Anything you can elaborate on would help. The car salesmen must all still be listening to their music on record players....and I really don't know what to do. Thanks.
Today I found a way to burn an Audio CD from MP3 files I keep in iTunes so that when the burned disc is recorded onto the 9 Gigabyte hard drive the album title and song titles automatically appear in the Murano's user interface (otherwise you'll have to enter them manually which is a REAL pain).
1. From the iTunes menu bar, select "iTunes/Preferences/Advanced" and then make sure the "Burning" tab is highlighted. For "Disc Format" choose "Audio CD". Now make sure "Include CD Text" is checked (this is the key to saving the album titles to the Audio CD) and for good measure also check "Use Sound Check" (this tells iTunes to even out the volume levels of all the songs on the CD you'll burn). I left the "gap between songs" to be 1 second, but you can change this as you desire. Now you can close the Preferences window.
2. Now create a new playlist in iTunes (click on the + button in the lower left of iTunes) with the TITLE of the album/CD you want shown in your Bose sound system.
3. Drag up to about 20 songs from your iTunes library onto the new playlist you just made. Then click on the playlist name to see the songs in that playlist. You can rename or reorder your songs as desired. This will be the way they will be stored on the Audio CD and in your Bose sound system for this particular album.
4. When you have everything in your playlist the way you want, right-click on the playlist name and choose "Burn Playlist to Disc". iTunes will tell you if they won't all fit on a single CD.
5. You will be prompted to insert a blank CD. Once that's done, iTunes will convert and burn the MP3 files and generate an Audio CD you can play in your Murano's sound system or any other modern CD audio player.
6. Now all you need to do is pop the freshly baked Audio CD into your Murano's Bose sound system and after about 4 songs the whole CD will be copied onto the hard drive, song titles and all.
Just a note that I updated the settings in the Bose sound system so that my Audio CDs are ripped to the hard drive at 132kps (the highest setting) so I get the best quality. I also told it to automatically rip any new CD I place in the slot.
So that's it. As long as iTunes is set up this way, the Audio CDs we burn will have the playlist (album) title and song track titles automatically copied over onto the hard drive along with the song tracks themselves. No need to manually enter album or song titles!
some of my wife's cds- nora jones and juno load with no descriptions- all the music and tracks are there and play fine. i can't figure out what the manual is saying about retrieving the text. anyone have this problem solved.
http://www.nissanusa.com/gracenote/
Anyone?
http://www.nissanusa.com/apps/contactus
You do know that the auxilary port is in the back where the audio visual ports are behind the aremrest right?
GP
CJ
I am very excited with my new Murano 2009 SL AWD with Premium, Tech, NAV and dual moonroof. (bought 03/29/08).
But the fact that we can only rip mp3's from audio cd is very weird and so backward in technology.
I don't understand if they can be so advanced to provide a hard disk and CF slot in a car, but what is the use of it if you can copy only 12-15 songs at one time by ripping the CDs. Why they couldn't give us the option of copying the songs from CF slot or an MP3 cds ? To fill the whole 9 GB in the music box, its going to take approx 100-110 Audio CDs to rip it. Its just so annoying and pain in the [non-permissible content removed].
Is there going to be a modification in this software ? Can we all request this feature ? Is there some work around ?
Also, sometimes my voice recog screen doesn't come if I press the voice recog button on my steering....I suppose the screen was coming much less often in the beginning than its coming now (its only 1 month old). Did this happen to everyone ?
Thanks for reading my queries.
http://www.nissanmurano.org/downloads/2009-Nissan-Murano.pdf
I turned this on and now I have an expanded list of voice commands I can use when I press the Voice button on the steering wheel. Among those extra commands are some extra Audio functions I can control via voice. There's more commands for Navigation and Phone as well. Check it out.
Thanks to YOU. Steve
This search query (for 2009 nissan murano navigation manual):
http://www.google.com/search?q=2009%20nissan%20murano%20navigation%20manual
Yielded this excellent, but slightly dated, resource for Nissan manuals:
http://www.courtesyparts.com/nissan-manual/index.html
And there I found a 2006 Murano navigation manual:
http://www.courtesyparts.com/nissan-manual/pdf/2006-Nissan-All-Model-Navi.pdf
Let's all remember to search first and ask questions after. Enjoy!
http://www.zenrin.com/nissanSystem.asp
They say there will be a navigation update for the 2009 Murano in the Fall/Winter of 2008:
http://www.zenrin.com/nissan/HDD8/index.asp?modelYear=2009
http://www.nissan-techinfo.com/
I selected Nissan publications and was taken to this page:
http://www.nissan-techinfo.com/find.aspx?dept_id=10
Then I dialed in what I was looking for and found a URL to the navigation manual PDF file:
http://www.nissan-techinfo.com/refgh0v/og/murano/2009-Nissan-Murano-Navi.pdf
Isn't technology wonderful? :-)
I also heard there is a tutorial DVD video that comes with a new 2009 Murano. Did anyone get one?
All I got was the owner's manual, a quick reference guide, and the zippered binder.
When the salesman gave us an overview of the car and how to use the nav system he did it all manually. When I asked him how do you do it by voice command he said the car doesn't have that feature. Yet the manual (quick reference guide) gives detailed instructions on how to do it by voice but when I push the talk button which is suppose to start the process, NOTHING HAPPENS. Right now I have no bluetooth program set up...is that needed to activate the voice system by voice ? When I set the nav system manually the voice gives me instructions. Shouldn't I be able to give the nav system an address by voice?
You can control some of the navigation features with voice commands. Bluetooth is just used for pairing the car with your Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone so it's not a requirement for navigation.
It would be difficult for me or anyone to walk you through how to use voice commands to control the navigation here in this forum. I would suggest you return to your dealer and find someone else there more educated in setting up and using the navigation system.
Be sure to have them show you the default voice commands as well as the alternate voice commands. The latter is a more advanced setting you can change the navigation system so you can speak more commands and get less audible feedback to speed you through using the system.
The owner's manual:
http://www.nissanmurano.org/downloads/2009-Nissan-Murano.pdf
And navigation manual:
http://www.nissan-techinfo.com:80/refgh0v/og/murano/2009-Nissan-Murano-Navi.pdf
Both describe how to set up and use the navigation system via voice commands as well.
I didn't get a DVD tutorial disc or a paper version of the above Navigation Manual with my Murano. If you did, you might watch the DVD to see if it explains how to use the voice commands with the navigation system.
So are you saying that it can be set up where you say where you want to go and where the system will ask you where , whats the address is and then take you there? Rather than doing everything manually?
I had a 2005 Murano and just turned it in yesterday and got this beautiful new car. I love the car it just seems there's so much to learn and then they tell you that it doesn't do what the book says it can do it's just so frustrating.
I did the online customer service input about 2 months ago, and got the automated response. I also wrote a letter to Mr Castignetti (sp?), GM for Nissan North America at the end of March. This is nearing the middle of May, and neither customer service nor the executive suite has even acknowledged receiving my letter.
I wholeheartedly agree with your recommendation that people write. I'm just losing confidence that Nissan cares enough to talk to the folks that have bought their cars.
DavidV