Run Factory Dvd Player Signal To 3rd Party Screen

[Jabo]

2001 LX470 with Nav.

OK, I did the override to enable the ability to have a DVD displayed on the Nav screen while moving: http://forums.vmag.com/suvlc0199/messages/2488.html

Nice but basically useless since I don't really care to watch a DVD while driving. The main reason I did it was to be able to use the Nav system while moving. Unfortunately the October 2003 nav update apparently eliminated the ability to override the nav motion lockout.

So here I am with a third-party overhead screen for the backseat that I wanted to be able to feed a DVD signal (1.5 year old twins that keep amazingly quiet when fed a dose of "baby crack" or more accurately Baby Einstein) while running the sound through the audio system since they’re too young to use the wireless headphones.

I consulted my trusty Mitchell - Online for the wiring diagram. I found the wire that moves the video signal from the DVD changer to the screen. In this case it's a red wire with gray spots on it. It is in the second connector from the right on the top of the unit.

These are the steps:

1) Take a regular RCA cable, cut off the connector on one end.

2) Separate the longitudinal braided wrap (aka outside conductor) from the center.

3) Run the outside conductor to a ground

4) Connect the center conductor to a wire tap connecting it to the red spotted video cable on the back of the unit.

5) Run the cable to the video screen.

That’s it.

[bill_und]

Hey Jabo,

Great post on how to get the DVD video out. I too am in need of some Baby Crack :D for my son. Couple of questions:

1. How do I remove my DVD changer to access the video wire?

2. Does the video send out anything that is on the front screen?

If you could get back to me when you have a chance, me and my son would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks so much,

Bill

[aedgington]

Couldn't get this to work, not sure why. I used the top set of connections, 2nd to the right molex. If you have a chance, would you mind taking a picture for me?

[SD-470]

I have a 2003 LX-470 and I just had a rear flip-down monitor installed. The nav unit has 4 connectors on the top of the nav unit. From another thread, I was told that the red wire with gray spots (no line on it either) was on the right most connector when facing the front of the nav unit, i.e., closest to the passenger side. I gave this information to the installer so I did not personally see it. The installer found it no problem, but he also added a video amplifier at the location of the rear screen. He claimed without the amplifier, the signal was weak.

I did the DVD Bypass myself with instructions from this forum and that worked great. I did it without installing an extra switch. I also installed the Soundgate LexPD which works great. The LexPD has an Aux input which my rear DVD player was hardwired into. It sounds great, although the instructions to enable the Aux input on the LexPD were a little funky (described in the LexPD instruction manual).

One other note on the "red wire with gray spots". When I am playing a movie on the factory 6-disc DVD player and I change screens on the front nav screen, e.g., to look at the map or climate control, the video to the rear monitor is disabled. Audio is still on, so I get a cranky kid in the back seat until I return the front to the "Picture". Not exactly what I expected. Is there anything that can be done so that the video feed to the rear monitor is not disabled while the using the front screen for non-DVD viewing purposes???

[aedgington]

awesome that helped. I was looking at the 2nd molex to the right, not the far right molex. worked great. i might try amplifying the signal, but it looks pretty good as is.

as far as ipod integration, i used a hard wired powered fm modulator w/ rca inputs & it works great as well. it wires into the antenna (antenna->mod->head unit) so there are no weak signal issues.

Your news about the video cutting out is agreeably irritating. I had hoped to play a movie on the headrests & have the factory screen show nav.

[bill_und]

Hey All,

I too have been working on a solution to get the DVD video to a rear screen while still having the nav map on the front lcd. I believe the solution is to splice into the video lead that directly comes out of the DVD changer. To do this however we must determine two things:

1. How do we remove the DVD changer to access the wires?

2. Which wire is the video wire to the front lcd head unit?

We know that the DVD continues to run when you have the nav map up because the audio continues to play. I believe that pressing the map button switches to the nav video wire on the back of the lcd and pressing the disc button switches to the DVD video.

If we access the video wire at the source, it should continue to have video no matter what button you press on the headunit.

Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Bill

[madkow70]

pretty interesting idea.

i'm not sure if it'll work though...

the very wire that i tapped to get the video signal to feed to the headrest monitors are the wire that sits between the changer and the head unit.

it basically is the wire that feeds into the nav unit. instead of tapping at the location just outside of the changer, we are tapping on it at the other end of the cable... and when i select Map from nav, the screen on the headrests go blank. i actually think the changer stops feeding video out of the box once you hit map. it still feeds out sounds, but no video.

if you can pull it off somehow, i'd love to hear about it.

right now i have a overhead monitor with built in player (single DVD) that feeds itself and two headrest monitors. that would free up my nav screen if i need it.

or i can switch the monitors to aux-1 (all three monitors) and it'll get the signal from the changer (six DVDs).

D.J.

.

Hey All,

I too have been working on a solution to get the DVD video to a rear screen while still having the nav map on the front lcd. I believe the solution is to splice into the video lead that directly comes out of the DVD changer. To do this however we must determine two things:

1. How do we remove the DVD changer to access the wires?

2. Which wire is the video wire to the front lcd head unit?

We know that the DVD continues to run when you have the nav map up because the audio continues to play. I believe that pressing the map button switches to the nav video wire on the back of the lcd and pressing the disc button switches to the DVD video.

If we access the video wire at the source, it should continue to have video no matter what button you press on the headunit.

Any thoughts, suggestions, ideas?

Bill

[bill_und]

Ok. I think the bottom line issue we need to resolve is whether the actual DVD changer puts out video when the map screen is on. If the changer itself is designed internally to turn off the video when the map is displayed, I believe we are out of luck for map on one screen and video on the other. So if anyone out there can technically look into this or if anyone knows for sure off hand, please by all means post.

Thanks,

Bill

[inahaz]

Ok. I think the bottom line issue we need to resolve is whether the actual DVD changer puts out video when the map screen is on. If the changer itself is designed internally to turn off the video when the map is displayed, I believe we are out of luck for map on one screen and video on the other. So if anyone out there can technically look into this or if anyone knows for sure off hand, please by all means post.

Thanks,

Bill

It's been a few months since there has been discussion on this modification. Has anyone successfully linked the front NAV system playing a DVD to a back monitor without the back monitor going blank when the map or other button is selected in the front?

[crkelly]

Hi All,

I just stumbled across this thread from an ih8mud link and decided chime in with some thoughts. It seems the problem people are having is that when the front screen turns to Nav, it deactivates the rear screen. I have a few questions:

1) The rear (headrest or other) screen(s) go blank when this happens, right? They don't start displaying Nav content?

2) Does the Nav output feed through the DVD? Or do they both go straight to the head unit? Do they have separate inputs on the back of the head unit?

Just thinking out loud here, comments welcome...

I was thinking that maybe, if the Nav fed through the DVD changer, then there might be only one video input to the back of the head unit, with the DVD changer making the determination of what source to pass forward to the head unit. If this is the case, then there would be no way (that I can think of) to display the DVD video on the rear screens as long as the Nav is displaying on the front. However, also if this was the case, I would also expect that the Nav video *would* be shown on the rear screens, rather than them just going blank. It doesn't sound like this is what's happening, though (which may be a good thing).

Alternately, if the DVD and Nav video signals are fed separately into the head unit, then something in the head unit is causing the switch over between DVD and Nav. There *could* be a circuit in the head unit that says if there is a signal on the DVD input, always display it, otherwise, show the Nav. (I don't know why they simply wouldn't have a switch feature that allows you to select one or the other by choice, but this could also explain how they deactivate the DVD video signal when the vehicle is moving - rather than switching things to Nav in the head unit, turn off the DVD video output and have it switch over automatically.) This would mean the head unit would have to be feeding a signal back to the DVD changer telling it to activate the video output or not. In that case, if you could find that signal line, you might be able to interrupt it or falsify the signal to cause the DVD video to not turn off. But then, if the head unit uses the presence of that video signal to determine when to display Nav and when to show DVD, causing it to be always on would remove your ability to switch over to Nav. *That* would then require another switch of some sort to interupt the DVD video input into the head unit.

But, assuming my assumptions are correct, that could be a solution. Find a way to override the signal from head to changer to keep it outputting the video, then install a switch to cut of the video signal into the head unit, after the point where you splice off from that signal to go to rear screens.

Colin

[ghitos73]

Hi everyone,

I am new to the Lexus forum, but have been active on another (www.benzworld.org) when I owned a Mercedes M-Class. Anyhow, I am into modding as you all are, which is why I am here.

This weekend, I spent several hours on my 2005 LX470 trying to install third party (Vizualogic) headrest monitors to the OEM DVD player. I was unsuccessful seeing that I was not able to figure out the video-out connection/wire. I was able to examine the DVD player for outputs by removing the center console and unbolting the player. There were no outputs. I did notice two unused connectors (below the cup holder) adjacent to the main wire harness. Does anyone know what these are used for? Are these RGB connectors used by the OEM headrest monitors? If so, is it possible to tap into it? or possible convert RGB to Video-out (RCA)?

I have yet to try tapping into the wire mention at the beginning of this thread. I think I will do that tomorrow.

Anyhow, I would be willing to take some photos if you guys need them for identification of the unused connectors. Let me know. I would greatly appreciate getting this to work.

Thanks

PS: I've included a wire diagram I found while searching this forum on the same topic. Hope this helps bring light to a solution.

Lexus_Wire_Diagram_RES.pdf

[ghitos73]

I've been doing more research. If the unused connectors are in fact RGB, then I think we would be able to convert the signal from RGB to composite video by simply installing an "RGB to component video transcoder". See attach photo for details. From this point, it's just a matter of connecting your monitor via composite video or S-Video.

Or you can purchase one of these: Pac vci-x Universal video Interface for Factory Nav

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...bayphotohosting

What do you guys think?

[kmammas]

Hi,

The best thing to do is what I did. I had a directed high definition 10 in screen intalled overhead for the rear seat so that my son could watch movies. The DVD player is built right into the unit and it is removable. You can actually take it out and bring it with you into a hotel room and connect it to the TV with the wires supplies. It can work with wireless headphones or it connects to the stereo system through the fm radio. I think this is really the best option than to try to get the DVD player from the factory to work in a rear screen.

[ghitos73]

I've given up on trying to connect the headrest monitors to the OEM DVD changer. I took the easier route by installing a third party portable DVD player instead. I prefer this solution because it didn't require making any modifications to the existing wiring and the kids can control what they are watching since I have mounted the player behind the passenger seat.

The only complaint the kids are having is that the headphones hurt their ears after a while. So, I have to install an FM modulator eventually to send the sound to the ML sound system.

Anyhow, just thought I would share my thoughts ... thanks

[dclee]

Found this thread a bit late! Has anyone thought about actually cutting the output wire so that there is no signal from the DVD player to the head unit? I wonder if that would fool the head unit to believe the DVD player is never on, and that would allow one to run video to a rear monitor with impunity. I realize you'd never be able to listen to CDs again, but who cares in this iPod world? The only question is if this would also disable the feed from the Nav DVD player...

[go_lakers]

Found this thread a bit late! Has anyone thought about actually cutting the output wire so that there is no signal from the DVD player to the head unit? I wonder if that would fool the head unit to believe the DVD player is never on, and that would allow one to run video to a rear monitor with impunity. I realize you'd never be able to listen to CDs again, but who cares in this iPod world? The only question is if this would also disable the feed from the Nav DVD player...

If you cut the wire (TX+, TX-) that senses the DVD player, you may get a "No External Device Connected" message. I think you need the signal from the head unit to enable the DVD player to continue playing the DVD.

It may be more advantageous to prevent the video mute signal from activating. This signal is internal to the Pioneer XDV-M8106 that is in my 2002 LX470.

[go_lakers]

Below is the block diagram (or if it doesn't display, the link) of the electronics for the Pioneer Changer:

http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/ss248/G...nual_img_11.jpg

[pkathee]

I've been doing more research. If the unused connectors are in fact RGB, then I think we would be able to convert the signal from RGB to composite video by simply installing an "RGB to component video transcoder". See attach photo for details. From this point, it's just a matter of connecting your monitor via composite video or S-Video.

Or you can purchase one of these: Pac vci-x Universal video Interface for Factory Nav

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...bayphotohosting

What do you guys think?

Ghitos73,

I just came across your post regarding OEM DVD changer video wire tap for headrest monitors. I have a 2006 LX470 and I am too unable to locate this red with gray spots wire feed as opposed to other people. I think the reason why is simply because the '05 &'06 LX have the 5th generation navigation and the wiring schematic was a little bit modified. Also, I opened up my center console and I located this RGB connector. How far did you try getting this to work? I am really curious. Please let me know. Thanks.