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Originally Posted by GPSnV1
I am curious about this as well, My salesperson wanted me to belief that in certain cities that the nav would pick up radio reports and give me infrmation about places to avoid. What I read in the manual didn't clear this up for me and I don't understand how you can have a meaningful radio input without some kind of subscription service.
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In the UK/Europe this is called TMC. It's a traffic broadcast that is transmitted over an RDS radio channel (Classic FM in the UK I think).
The broadcast is free, but the manufacturer (BMW) has to licence their Navigation disks to contain the relevant TMC codes that enable the nav to automatically change your route to avoid the traffic. So essentially you pay for it in the purchase of the Nav system and subsequent disk updates should you be so inclined.
I might add my UK X5 works perfectly with TMC input so I know the BMW implementation in the E70 works as intended. It's saved me from a long wait a few times already and I've only had the vehicle a week!
See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_Message_Channel or for details for UK system or
http://www.rds.org.uk/episode/rdstmcbrochure.htm