garmin alpha and birdseye

[Jim Woods]

Just wondering how may people added birdseye to their alpha and if it is worth the extra money. Also, how hard is it to install. Thanks.

[C.HILLIS]

I have it on an astro it is well worth the money. Its not hard to install but it does a while to do it.

[Budd]

My birdseye is very blurry.

[Smoke'n Mack]

My birdseye is very blurry.

You need to either zoom out or download a higher quality image (which makes them bigger and requires more memory and time to d/l)

[Mo. Beagler 5000]

My birdseye is very blurry.

You need to either zoom out or download a higher quality image (which makes them bigger and requires more memory and time to d/l)

Which is total bs. In this day and ate the fact that they slow the download speeds and area sizes annoy the living bajeezus out of me. If you pay for the service then you should get free access to that without them screwing the speeds

[Jim Woods]

Thanks for the replies.

[Smoke'n Mack]

My birdseye is very blurry.

You need to either zoom out or download a higher quality image (which makes them bigger and requires more memory and time to d/l)

Which is total bs. In this day and ate the fact that they slow the download speeds and area sizes annoy the living bajeezus out of me. If you pay for the service then you should get free access to that without them screwing the speeds

Oh I completely agree. Then again, can you imagine the pipes Garmin would have to have coming out of their network that holds the download server? If everyone tried to pull high resolution photos of an entire state, the amount of bandwidth that would be needed would cost an astronomical amount. Bandwidth isn't free, or cheap.

What they need to do is somehow make and agreement with Google, that way their maps would update and change when Google's change...which is pretty regular.

[Budd]

It pulled up image's that were at least 5 years old, and I re-uploaded on highest resolution a 28 square mile area and it is still way blurry when I zoom into my normal running setting.

[Dark Holler Beagles]

My experience is the Birdseye Maps are 5 yrs old or more. They are not as good as google earth. Wish we could use google maps. They down load slow. They Are relatively easy to load after the first time.. All this being said they are worth it to me! I highly reccomend them in my case. Prefer them 10 to 1 over the 100k topography.

[Mo. Beagler 5000]

What I am surprised isn't happening, and I am thinking about doing it, is getting a whole state on an sd card and selling it. They don't update it for several years anyways.

Garmin does not host Birds eye, they use a separate company for it. For an entire state on high quality you are looking at max 40 gigs or so (I Have half of missouri and am only at about 10-12 gigs) but even if it were a hundred gigs, any server of a billion dollar company should be able to handle that... you have to figure the amount of people downloading isn't very high and even if they scaled back to 2-3 gigs an hour it would not tack on to their servers too much.

[barnold1]

I started taking MO down at the highest setting, a block at a time. I estimate it'll take about 185 GB at the highest setting. Has anybody compared high versus highest setting downloads? I use it for bowhunting too, so the details are appreciated. How much is lost for anybody that's compared?

[steve w]

I think it is well worth the money. As far as download time it seemed reasonable sometimes and other times slow, I thought it was my internet provider more than Garmin but I may be wrong.There are better maps out but quality varies on them all so I would not let that stop me. I know this , I bought a subscription to Birdseye for 30.00, a map card off eBay for 15.00 and the 99.00 download 24k topo from Garmin and all I use is Birdseye.Second choice would be the ebay card. If I do go someplace that I don't have Birdseye I will before I go back.

[Mo. Beagler 5000]

I started taking MO down at the highest setting, a block at a time. I estimate it'll take about 185 GB at the highest setting. Has anybody compared high versus highest setting downloads? I use it for bowhunting too, so the details are appreciated. How much is lost for anybody that's compared?

Really? that seems astronomical. I haven't downloaded anything on it in a year but I have a 16gb card and have nearly everything south of 70 and about 20 full size blocks above it or more on the highest setting and my card is no where near full.

[cris axtell/coal hill ken]

I love my birds eye. I have most of western PA and most of eastern OH on a 32 gig card. Now I want to put the map card over it.

[oef10]

I have 3/4 of michigan and the entire U.P. on a 32 gig card. I downloaded the 24k topo onto my 320 for the road info. I love it, get detailed maps and road info.