How “iPod Your BMW” Turned Into a Major iPain

The fall of 2004 was an exciting time in my life—I was a Bostonian living in Manhattan, and the Red Sox were about to win their first World Series in 86 years. I was a Sox fan, transplanted into the middle of Yankeeville, and thoroughly enjoyed watching the Red Sox pull off their stunning comeback against the Yankees.  I was lucky enough to attend one playoff game that fall at Yankee stadium, but the rest were watched from my studio apartment in Murray Hill. It was also in the fall of 2004 that BMW and Apple launched their huge “iPod your BMW” marketing campaign.With my eyes glued to the TV watching baseball for a month straight, I was constantly inundated with the commercial of the 20-something guy walking into his silver BMW in a parking garage and plugging in his iPod while the narrator announces that “BMW introduces the first seamless integration of iPod an automobile”  (Watch the commercial here).

At the time I remember thinking this was a big deal.  Like everyone else living in New York City, I had an iPod.  You need an iPod if you are going to live in New York City.  Subways, sirens, honking horns from cabs—drown them out with your own portable music collection.  Unlike most living in New York though, I had a car—actually, a BMW.  Most days my 325i sedan would sit silently in the parking garage on 1^st Avenue.  Every other weekend however, I got to spend some alone time with my E46 when I would drive back to Boston to see friends and family.  The eight-plus hours in the car were often maddening as I’d drive in and out the radio reception zones.  I was once so annoyed that I printed out a list of all radio stations in Connecticut so I could find something decent to listen to while stuck in the middle of nowhere on the Merritt Parkway.

I called my local dealer soon after seeing the commercials and inquired about the iPod feature, hoping that it could somehow be retrofit to my car.   Unfortunately, the dealer informed me that it was not compatible with pre-2003 cars.   It was then that I turned to the Internet for help.  I discovered BMW forums where enthusiasts met to discuss anything and everything about their beloved cars.  Soon afterward, I became well versed in all things iPod and BMW.  The BMW kit could in fact be fit to a 3-series as old as a 1999 by swapping out the radio.  Doing so didn’t make a lot of sense though.  The BMW iPod kit had many limitations. The song names would not appear on the radio screen, and you could not browse the iPod while driving—either on the iPod itself or via the radio controls.   Furthermore, all songs had to be put into playlists entitled “BMW1,” “BMW2″.

Fortunately, there was an aftermarket solution available.  A product called the IceLink Plus promised to solve all my BMW iPod needs.  ID3 tags would be displayed on the radio screen, I could browse by Artist and Song, all from my radio controls!  I was thrilled and immediately dropped $200 for a kit.   Being a city kid at the time, and afraid of damaging anything in my new BMW, I had the IceLink installed at a top stereo shop—$300 for the install.  Now into the “iPod Your BMW” experience for $500, I was hoping to get my money’s worth on my next drive home.   Regrettably, the IceLink turned out to be an unreliable companion.   I was unable to use the car’s Bluetooth system properly while the IceLink was playing, the searching was painfully slow, and worse, the IceLink would just stop working from time to time.  I sent the IceLink back and forth to California (paying shipping both ways) to have it “updated” and exchanged a number of times.   A year or so went by and I eventually just stopped using my iPod in the car altogether as the warranty expired on my IceLink and I refused to pay repair costs for something that never truly worked properly.   By this time, I had moved back to Boston, wasn’t driving as much, and had lost the love of my iPod—at one point I even took it out of the car completely and threw it in a desk drawer.  I installed BMW’s Sirius satellite radio as a solution and was happy enough with that for long drives.

I had renewed interest in the iPod however, when a new device called the DICE came out later that year.  Being sold by the same company where I’d purchased the IceLink, I was told that the DICE was a major upgrade over the IceLink Plus.  I shelled out another $200 for the kit, and threw my old IceLink in the garbage.   The new Dice however, did not turn out to be much more reliable than my old IceLink had been.  There were a number of bugs with it—compounded by the manufacturer’s refusal to acknowledge them—despite hundreds of posts in online forums about the devices instability.  When the Dice actually worked, it only worked OK.  You could browse the iPod by Album or Playlist (no Artist!?) and the song names would scroll across the screen.   Despite having “support” for use in conjunction with BMW’s Sirius unit, the DICE  didn’t function properly when both were connected, and an annoying alternator whine could be heard while driving and listening to the iPod.   Furthermore, the DICE would consistently lose communication with the car and iPod though and need to be reset.  What is the proper resetting mechanism? Unplug the Dice from the car, unplug the car’s battery for 5 minutes, reset the iPod, and reconnect everything.   What a pain.  The shop that installed my original IceLink (which used the same wiring as the DICE) had tucked the module neatly behind the glove compartment, which made “unplugging” the DICE was a 30 minute job.

Again, I fell out of love with my iPod.  And again, I learned to use Sirius as the primary form of in-car entertainment.   I could no longer handle the aggravation of unhooking my car’s battery (not something easy to do when you live in the city) every time it failed.  The tipping point came when after 14 months my DICE went completely dead.  Having already sent it back for exchange two times while under warranty in the 1^st year I owned it, I was denied an exchange this time since the device was now more than a year old.  Blah.   If you’re keeping track of the math, I’m now out at least $700 on the iPod project, not counting the $20 in round-trip shipping each time I exchanged a broken unit.

If this story isn’t depressing enough already, I once again fell victim to another poorly-designed iPod module.  The new “Dice Silverline” and its sister, the rebadged “Neo,” hit the market from the same manufacturer.  Refusing to give any more money to the company where I’d purchased the original IceLink and Dice, I found a local shop that sold the Neo and had that installed.  Not wanting to take a chance reusing the old wiring, I paid to have the old wiring ripped out and all new wiring installed.  Sadly, and after spending another $500 ($300 install + $200 for the Neo) I was greeted with all too familiar results.  The alternator whine noise when slaved off BMW’s Sirius module did not go away despite the new wiring.  The inability to browse by Artist in the old Dice had been corrected (a big selling point of the Silverline / Neo), but this version introduced new issues.  About the only thing that had consistently worked in the old units was the song name scrolling across my radio.  Amazingly, this stopped working with my Neo after about 15 minutes.   Calls to Neo tech support told me that this was “normal operation”.   Apparently text display was turned off when there was “heavy ibus communication.”  Ugh.  This time I’d really had enough.  I ripped the unit out of my car and tossed it in a drawer.

Now obsessed with finding a usable solution for iPoding my BMW, I turned back to Internet forums.  It was then that I discovered true BMW-iPod harmony.  About a year ago, I’d heard rumblings about a product out of the UK called the Intravee II (IV2 for the rest of this review) and had anxiously awaited its release. By the time it came out, I had already invested too much into the DICE that I didn’t want to incur additional expenses of a whole new setup. In hindsight, I would have saved a ton of money had I just invested in the IV2 then.

The Intravee II is expensive.  $270 shipped for the unit from BimmerNav plus $100 for an Alpine KCA-420i iPod adapter.  At almost $400, it is not a cheap solution but compared to $1200 spent on iPod-BMW products that did not work—it’s a great deal.

The IV2 is a BMW ibus to Alpine AI-Net converter.  Instead of trying to do the iPod manipulation itself, the IV2 allows Alpine’s rock-solid KCA-420i to do the dirty work.  The IV2 acts as a converter between the Alpine controller and the BMW.  I’ve been using the product for about a month now and don’t have a single complaint.  There is even a customer support forum for the IV2 and the developers are active there helping customers.  The firmware is customer upgradable, so you don’t need to worry about shipping charges back and forth for simple software fixes.

While I was first a bit bummed that the length of the Alpine cables (about 3′) would not allow me to store the iPod in the glove box, it turns out leaving the iPod in the trunk is just fine—the IV2 search is so good (and quick!) that you’ll never need to touch it except to remove it from the car to load new songs.

The Intravee II will work with any of the BMW ibus radios, but is at its best when paired up with BMW ’s navigation screen. Utilizing the entire screen, the IV2 effortlessly moves throughout its menu subsystem.  The fast Alpine processor handles the interaction with the iPod and the IV2 makes sure your Navigation screen can properly interpret the data.  Furthermore, the IV2 works flawlessly with BMW’s Sirius—a simple jumper change enables the IV2’s noise canceling feature which allows it to be slaved off the Sirius unit without the hated alternator whine.   In addition, there is also a serial port on the IV2 which is used for upgrading firmware (a major release, v.6, is due out soon that will support other Alpine Ai-Net devices).

After more than four years of searching I feel that I have finally properly achieved “iPod Your BMW” bliss. The Intravee II is truly all that it is advertised to be—and everything the competitor’s products claim to be.

For some more detailed visual demos of the Intravee II’s capabilities check out the YouTube videos linked off the Bimmernav order page.

This article was written by Steve Aschettino for carguydad.com.  In addition to being fanatical about his family’s BMWs, Steve is the Information Technology Director for a software company in Waltham, MA.  He lives in Brookline, MA with his wife and two children.

Note: Neither Bimmernav or Intervention Co. of UK, supplied the author with the Intravee II unit. The unit was bought and installed independently.