I read the sound system has a hard drive to download MP3s

Is this true?
If so, I think its a great feature as it eliminates the need for CDs & you could store heaps of music

Nope. Not true.

In the european Prius, the navigation system is HDD based. This HDD has 10 Gb for music storage, but you can't copy mp3 files that you already have. The system can rip an audio cd to store it in the disk.

The OEM HDD navigation systems available for the Japanese Prius offers 11GB of storage. I believe that it also allows you to copy your own MP3s from a CD or SD card (not from an iPod or other mp3 player though.)

Specifications are different in different markets throughout the world.

The Australian cars definetly have the DVD-based navigation and CD sound system...whereas the UK, European and Japanese markets get the HDD-based system.
There are also many other specification differences in equipment and trim levels chosen by the Toyota distributors in each region/country.

It's kinda true. In the UK you get a single CD drive and a 10GB Hard Disk BUT you can't copy mp3 files to it. You have to RIP CD Audio discs from the head end to the internal drive. No SD or USB connection.

Completely pants and useless. I phoned up Toyota and complained, as the concept is absolute rubbish!!!

It's true, I've got one in my new Prius - it arrived yesterday and I've done 250 miles so far (at 51 mpg).
The music system is a bit of a mystery - it rips CDs no problem and the CD and track database seems OK too but how on earth do you get MP3s into it?? Do I really have to burn CDs just to get the MP3s in? I wonder if it will read a CR-RW?? Or is there a way to use Bluetooth from a PC?

It just rips CDs but doesn't copy track names. Pretty pointless. They could have saved money on a useless feature and spent them on a proper iPod integration or navigation software. The same applies to IPA. Pretty pointless. I can park in half the time it takes me to tell the software where I want to park.

Generally CDs do not contain track names. The track names are added by the ripping software, but as the Prius is not connected to the Internet, this option is not possible.

Tom

Well I'm not THAT bothered by the lack of track names but it is a real wasted feature. At least CDRW work so I can shuffle some music off my PC into the Prius. I am very disappointed that the HD in the Prius isn't capable of taking an MP3 input - all it needs is a USB cable input so you can pour in your MP3s.

>> all it needs is a USB cable input so you can pour in your MP3s. <<

That's not all there is to it. This isn't a Windows PC. It also needs a mass storage class driver. And it needs support for reading NTFS drives. And the ability to navigate and traverse it's filesystem, and determine which files are and aren't music, and which mp3 files are encoded in a format it understands, and it needs to read the mp3 tags and so on and so on. Just because you can do these things with a Windows PC, it doesn't mean an embedded systems developer can wave a magic wand and do the same.

Hi, here are some hard facts about the HDD system. I have a European Prius 2010 with 40 GB HDD. 10 GB is reserved for ripping music. You have to insert a normal CD and push the REC button, to rip. So far I have ripped about 20 CD’s and used 10 – 12 % of the reserved space. It looks that I can rip 150 + CD’s. So far all my CD’s have album and track names, thanks to the internal Gracenote CDDB (Compact Disk Data Base) that contains information on almost every music CD that is produced. If the album / track names are not listed, you normally can search in the Data Base to find your artist / album. On CD’s newer than the CDDB, you probably wont get artist, album and track names. But I have not tested that yet. If I like to listen to MP3’s – I burn them to a DVD and plays the MP3’s directly from the DVD. The system has a limit; you can only have 255 files/folders (8 bit counter) on the DVD. If you have more they are not listed and can therefore not be played.

Another advantage with the European nav. is that you can operate the nav. system even when your Prius is driving – without any hacks. I am very pleased with the system overall.

I ripped an AC/DC genuine CD and it populated all the track names from the CD database for the album

Out of interest have you created any 'Playlists' from your ripped music? I managed to rip a few CD's and as you advise all track names were populated. However when I created a playlist from a few album tracks I could not find the playlist after creation? Strange .. have you managed to create / play the playlist feature?