Other compatible usb music players

Re: Can you use other Music Players via the USB Port?

I don't think so. I tried my Sansa Fuze with it today, and it didn't work. Tomorrow I'm going to try copying the contents of my Fuze onto a regular USB Thumb drive and see how that works (I suspect that it will).

 

Here is the problem / issue - my main way to listen is through a USB thumb drive (using my free 4 GB one from Microcenter here in Houston). And by the way, an external hard disk (I tried a 750 GB toshiba) will work fine as well with the same issues.

You will have a couple of things to consider:

1. Folders are limited to 255 files
2. It will play the songs in the folders in the physical order they were written to the device which is not necessarily the order you want to play them in and definately not in totally sorted order. Before you put the USB drive in, you must physically order them in the way you want them played. I have a windows PC and I use a free utility called "Drivesort" after I load the music and before I put it in the car. It can sort in various ways and also has a "playlist" mode to manually put the tracks in any order you want.
3. Every time you pull out the drive, it starts from the beginning the next time you put it in. It doesn't remember its location like DVD and Blu-ray drives do.
4. You can not advance a screen at a time in a folder when the car is going over 10 mph. So if you start say at track 1 and the car is moving and you want to go to track 99, you have to hit next track on your steering wheel 98 times or stop the car.

 

I am trying real hard but don't understand the corporate legal mentality of Toyota - they gray out the previous and next screen buttons because they are afraid that perhaps we could get into an accident if we use those buttons, but its OK to hit next or previous track on the steering wheel 98 times or more to get to the same track. Aren't we going to have to look at the screen to see how many times we hit the button on the steering wheel?

I don't want to even to get started with that Toyota doesn't need to me my mother soapbox.

 

Good info. Thanks!