This thing called Command is stupid

[st13phil]

I know its rude to make a first post on a forum without an intro, but I'll do that next. Honest

I use a portable GPSR (GPS Receiver) extensively for motorcycle touring, a Garmin StreetPilot 2720, but still gave serious consideration to speccing COMAND on the W204 I have on order. Frankly I'd love to have integrated nav in the car purely from a convenience factor and the integration with the car's other systems is a big plus, but...

At best part of £2k as an option on the W204 it's hugely expensive and with the deficiencies noted by others i.e. no 7-digit postcode support & no capability for proximity alerts plus the relatively high price of cartography updates it was a non-starter for me, especially as I have a portable GPSR already. I don't know whether the W204's COMAND does text-to-speech for directions (I'd already written it off as an option by that stage of my research!) but my SP2720 does and that's a really useful feature.

BTW, does anyone know who provides the cartography for the MB COMAND system? Is it Navteq or TeleAtlas? Not really that important as both have their stronger and weaker areas wrt mapping accuracy, but Navteq tends to have better geographical coverage than TeleAtlas, most notably for Eastern Europe and the Republic of Ireland.

 

[television]

I know its rude to make a first post on a forum without an intro, but I'll do that next. Honest

BTW, does anyone know who provides the cartography for the MB COMAND system? Is it Navteq or TeleAtlas? Not really that important as both have their stronger and weaker areas wrt mapping accuracy, but Navteq tends to have better geographical coverage than TeleAtlas, most notably for Eastern Europe and the Republic of Ireland.

Hello and welcome to the forum, the disc are marketed by Teleatlas

 

[glojo]

Lexus DVD satnav - Pukka DVD update earlier this year 159 euro including shipping.

Hi Ted,
I am sure we can all quote foreign acquired prices. I have NO knowledge regarding Lexus so I nipped across to a Lexus forum....

Guess what?

Over £300.00 (thats over $500 for any yanks looking in) for an upgrade disc is appaling, and please dont tell me its cos it has ALL of Europe on it, that would make no difference to the cost whatsoever and is a meaningless gesture anyway, which serves to reduce Lexus's costs in not producing European Country specific discs, NOT adding any value for its customers. BMW & Merc both charge around £200 for theirs and most tellingly so do Toyota who have the same darn system in it.
Hence Im looking for a better deal than rip-off Lexus UK want to provide.

The DVD is produced by Navteq which is the same as our 211 system and it looks like prices are the same? The link was from the lexus owners club and I have no idea of current factual prices.

John

 

[glojo]

Hello and welcome to the forum, the disc are marketed by Teleatlas

Hello and welcome to the forum. Different models have different map data, one lot is by TeleAtlas, the other by NaTeq regarding the very latest S-class it has a hard-drive driven system and we need to hear from an owner regarding who supplies the information?

John

 

[television]

Hi Ted,
I am sure we can all quote foreign acquired prices. I have NO knowledge regarding Lexus so I nipped across to a Lexus forum....

Guess what?

Over £300.00 (thats over $500 for any yanks looking in) for an upgrade disc is appaling, and please dont tell me its cos it has ALL of Europe on it, that would make no difference to the cost whatsoever and is a meaningless gesture anyway, which serves to reduce Lexus's costs in not producing European Country specific discs, NOT adding any value for its customers. BMW & Merc both charge around £200 for theirs and most tellingly so do Toyota who have the same darn system in it.
Hence Im looking for a better deal than rip-off Lexus UK want to provide.

The DVD is produced by Navteq which is the same as our 211 system and it looks like prices are the same? The link was from the lexus owners club and I have no idea of current factual prices.

John

I bought mine from Teleatlas direct for the continent, is it different for the non CD based systems

 

[glojo]

I bought mine from Teleatlas direct for the continent, is it different for the non CD based systems

DVD based systems have one DVD that covers the whole of Europe including the UK. The 211 and other simlar Navteq based systems have a dedicated DVD player that is dedicated to the navigation system. The navigation DVD stays in the player and a DVD containing films, Mp3's etc can be played in the COMAND player. I have NO knowledge of the very latest S-class system.

Regards
John

Edit:
As far as I am aware we Navteq owners cannot buy the DVD direct from Navteq, they merely supply the mapping data to Mercedes-Benz

 

[Ted]

Hi John
the site is http://www.lexus-mapupdates.eu/ - recommended from a lexus owners club.
Complete with all packaging, and instruction manual. - full mapping for all of Europe.

 

[st13phil]

<< snip >> and please dont tell me its cos it has ALL of Europe on it, that would make no difference to the cost whatsoever << snip >>

I know that this is a quote from someone else on another forum, but while this is a commonly held belief it simply isn't true.

Both Navteq and Teleatlas "buy in" (i.e. licence) as much digital cartography as they can as this makes it possible to reduce their time to market and their own costs. Each and every country for which they include mapping has a different copyright owner for the digital cartography they use - e.g. in the UK it's Ordnance Survey - and they have to pay a royalty to the copyright owner for each licenced copy of the cartography they distribute. So the general rule is the more countries included = more royalties payable = higher price to the consumer. The main exceptions to this are large parts of the USA where digital cartography is in the public domain and hence no royalties are payable and places like Eire where the copyright owners wanted such prohibitively high royalies that Navteq did their own digital mapping survey. Obviously in the first case this becomes a freebie, but in the second Navteq have to recover their costs so the consumer still pays.

This "buying in" of digital cartography also explains why the mapping quality is sometimes much poorer in some countries than it is in others. The Navteq cartography of rural France has many more errors than that for rural England, for example. FWIW, in my experience Spain is one of the worst places for cartography accuracy amongst the established western-european countries. I was told by a very knowledgable Spaniard who I worked with that this is a legacy of the Franco regime who treated accurate cartography as a military secret and thus the standard of civilian cartography for that country is historically relatively poor.

Where the rip-off seems to occur is with the motor manufacturers. The bottom line is that with a built-in nav system like COMAND you are tied to them as a supplier so they charge a premium price for cartography upgrades. By comparison, Garmin charge circa £75 for an upgrade to their City Navigator Europe cartography which in general has wider geographic coverage than the motor manufacturer's offerings.

 

[BTB 500]

TomTom charge £44.95 for a new UK and Europe map (Tele Atlas) for my 910. They periodically have special offers which can reduce the price further, if you time it right.

Software upgrades for the unit itself are free.

 

[hawk20]

I think with this question a lot depends on who is paying and what the car is used for. If business pays for the car, COMAND satnav costs are not much of a problem. If it's from the private pocket then TomTOm and Garmin look tasty.

If you travel a lot with work, as I used to, Satnav built in and safe and easily accessible, must be appealing. But if most of your motoring is private and the satnav is only for occassional trips into the unknown then a portable is little problem.

APART that is from the huge advantages of Garmin and TomTom in having fast and easy and cheap updates, seven digit postcodes, and fixed and mobile speed camera warnings. Having had these plusses, I would hesitate to go back to COMAND much as I love its built in advantages.

 

[BTB 500]

Satnav built in and safe and easily accessible

I agree about it always being there, but having watched my in-laws have several near-misses while looking down at the COMAND console in their R Class I reckon a screen mounted unit is better from the safety POV.

Unless you meant safe as in less likely to be stolen?

 

[glojo]

I agree about it always being there, but having watched my in-laws have several near-misses while looking down at the COMAND console in their R Class I reckon a screen mounted unit is better from the safety POV.

Unless you meant safe as in less likely to be stolen?

In fairness to all good drivers there is no need to look down at the pretty pictures, you have a voice telling you where to go and an arrow on the speedo thingie . I always smile when I read posts about not having 3D or birds eye view etc, because like you have rightly suggested, looking at the COMAND screen whilst driving can be\is dangerous. On the newer vehicles (the new C and S-class) the screen location has been raised to conform to new legislation, but I am still of the opinion it might be an unecessary danger for the driver?

Regards
John

 

[glojo]

Where the rip-off seems to occur is with the motor manufacturers.

I have a Pioneer DVD system in our Sprinter and contary to what is being suggested the DVD upgrades are slightly more expensive than the motor manufacturer; in fact I can no longer get upgrades for it. The quote you edited was from a Lexus owner objecting to paying £300 for an upgrade DVD for his system, and I am politely suggesting that Pioneer who are not a motor manufacturer also sell their navigational DVD upgrades for a similar price.

I have no idea if Tom Tom is a CD or DVD based system but I accept that they, and a few other manufacturers make excellent navigation systems for LESS than the cost of a DVD upgrade This to me is disgusting and like everyone else I want to complain, but first off we are told Lexus sell their upgrades for less than Mercedes; so that information got me ready to complain to Mercedes-Benz UK, but I thought I had best check before putting pen to paper. Then we are told that it is only car manufacturers that put the mark-up onto the DVD's but again this is not correct, the Pioneer DVD was slightly more expensive.

I am not condoning the shocking price of the DVD, but is it right to blame someone who is not selling the item for any more than anyone else? I do believe the DVD's for our E-class have now been reduced in price, but has anyone got a DVD based system where the DVD's are much cheaper than what is being discussed.

John

 

[crockers]

I got a new dvd in Blockbusters..................great film about a roadtrip across America......








DAmn they got lost too.................

 

[MBManInKen]

Where the rip-off seems to occur is with the motor manufacturers. The bottom line is that with a built-in nav system like COMAND you are tied to them as a supplier so they charge a premium price for cartography upgrades

That's just not true. I do not need to buy nav discs from Mercedes, I can buy from Teleatlas or their resellers directly.

 

[crockers]

That's just not true. I do not need to buy nav discs from Mercedes, I can buy from Teleatlas or their resellers directly.

I thought Mercedes used Navteq but I stand to be corrected.

 

[MBManInKen]

I thought Mercedes used Navteq but I stand to be corrected.

My COMAND discs are definitely from Teleatlas and I have bought them directly from them in the past.

I think Navteq data is used for the newer systems? I don't know if they sell directly as I haven't used navteq based systems.

 

[Diesel Benz]

I cannot keep up with the discussion, a few notes still:
- the German price for all the different DVDs appears to be 257 euros:
https://www.shop.mercedes-benz.com/pkwcollection/category.htm?category=adKZwHSWTarLJuICjVIK1d-142

- Navteq provides the maps for the W221 navi. If you look at the Navteq web shop, you can buy the map DVD for the W221 for US but not for Europe (have to select the region properly to get the info).

 

[BTB 500]

In fairness to all good drivers there is no need to look down at the pretty pictures, you have a voice telling you where to go and an arrow on the speedo thingie . I always smile when I read posts about not having 3D or birds eye view etc, because like you have rightly suggested, looking at the COMAND screen whilst driving can be\is dangerous.

Simply following directions isn't a problem, it's when you need to revise the route etc. that problems can occur. I'm sure the manual says you mustn't do this when on the move, but human nature being what it is ...

A TomTom or equivalent is still a distraction, but at least it's up on the screen in the driver's eyeline (which of course is why it's not an elegant installation like COMAND!). Data input also seems quicker and easier with the touch screen, although I use the wireless remote for mine

which is mounted in a holder on the dash, right next to the steering wheel. The remote is very simple and can be used with one finger without looking at it at all.

 

[BTB 500]

I have no idea if Tom Tom is a CD or DVD based system

It's neither, you just download whatever you need from the TomTom online store. Some stuff is free, other stuff you have to pay for. The TomTom sits on a USB docking station and updates automatically. You can also plan routes, add favourites, etc. with the TomTom linked to the PC (using the PC screen and keyboard) so it's all ready to go when you power it up in the car.

Many companies now publish POI (point of interest) files on their websites that you can download for free - for example I have Calor Gas stockists loaded on mine, for when we're away in the caravan.