Sometimes the 'City' that you have to input is not what you expect, it's more like the general area. For one of the addresses that you can't find, try using the destination input map to go to the rough area, then try selecting the road name. Not ideal I know, but I've found it often works.

OK... let me try. Just pm me a couple of the street names with the postcodes. If I can find them with a simple search then it may be something else giving you a problem.

Remember the nav system has defined village and city areas, that don't always match up with what you might think the area is called. This is often a reflection of poorly understood boundries - ie: boundries clearly defined by the countries maps, but poorly understood by the people that live there.

New Zealand is a great example, - I live in what I call Mt Eden, but my mapping system puts me in Balmoral. The city council says my street is Mt Eden and the next street is Balmoral, my map system disagrees and says both are Balmoral.

So instead of searching for my street by village, I go up one or two heirarchal levels and search by City (all streets in all suburbs/villages shown) or by Country (all streets in all suburbs/villages, and in all cities shown)

Thanks for the replies.

Kiwi - I'll try as you say tomorrow
AdiHH - just PM'd.

What gets me as that a simple system such as tomtom can find these addresses no problem. Also, they appear fine in both MSN & Google maps.

Also, I was looking as I was driving around today, and noticed numerous roads are not showing as road names, but there A/B name! e.g. one main road in Sheffield is just showing as the A6135 on the position screen.

Very disappointing.

It's a matter of what data was used to make the maps, the main difference between nav systems lies in the data source used for the map info - it can vary hugely from one system to another.

If you don't have the latest map disc, you might consider upgrading to the newest version, as mapoping companies continuously refine their map data and correct errors and add more streets.

You are luckier than I as you can get newer versions. In my country, the most recent version published by BMW is January 2005, now 2.25 years old....

The whole thing was degraded in the latest OS releases (since V28) where villages & suburbs are no longer available (particularly on the RH route window when in split screen). The mapping is now worse than in 2005 as my street was correctly named. Now from 2006 and 2007 DVD's, the data for my street is wrong, it cannot be searched on and many houses numbers are missing.

Even contacting Navteq rarely seems to provoke a fix. I contacted them from the 2006-1 cycle about our street (and several others in my town) being wrong, they have yet to fix the issue.

It seems that Navteq mapping is quite shoddy, particularly for the price. Hell, you can get a cheapo stand-alone GPS Nav system less than the cost of the so-called 'latest' update from BMW or Navteq. Charging upwards of £200, the bloody thing should be top notch and kick the Tom-Tom et al GPS maps into touch. Its actually quite embarrasing when someone says "oh just put in our postcode and house number" and you have to tell them you also need (at least) the street name too!

Come on BMW and Navteq, get your act together!

</rant>

edit: Oh, don't get me going on user-defined POI's and POI notification ......

Well, the big 2 content providers are Teleatlas and Navteq. I'm sure you could find problems with both of them... just in these cases, it's problems with Navteq. If you take a look on the web though, there are also people complaining about Teleatlas.
These days as well as asking for the street name I also tend to ask for the nearest connecting street, just in case.

Sorry to hear your problems mate.

I agree, the system integration is great, the implementation however, could be better.

I too have the 2007-1 DVD and have never had a problem with the PCS (postcode search), its always got me to the right place.

Then again, I don't use it that often and I always get a full address (just in case).

I have found the following.

Tom-Toms and the like work with a full UK PSC DB, (for which they pay the licence for) BMW do not, which is why we only get a 5 digit search, BMW’s argument is that the full postcode DB won’t fit on the disc, this is crap, it will (there is almost 1/2 a Gbyte spare on the 2007-1 dvd map disc).

As for the A/B/M names, it depends on several things,

When the map display is in 3d mode you won't get many (if any) street names, only the A/B/M names, as the display can't render quick enough.

When in flat mode (2D) you do however get some street names.

Also if the scale is set to high, then some/all street names may not be displayed.

The UK map DB's are held by the disc maker (Navteq, Teleatlas, Siemens etc) and are not from the UK ordinance survey (they may have been at one time, but they don’t seem to get updated very often).


My 2 pence worth...

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Sept 03, M3, Silver Grey. Retro-fits: Modded Mk4 DVD Drive, OEM Bluetooth, VR Control, Rainbow Speaker Upgrade, Sony SOT Amp, HK Sub, CCFL, Intravee II, NightMode.

Mmm - thats interesting to note mate - thanks - I'll see if its any better in 2D mode.

All in all, a pretty poor system for the money for UK buyers then.