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Had some bonding time with son #1.
We decided to tackle physically installing the tv tuner.
Please note:
Since the digital tv conversion, the USA uses ATSC, (which absolutely can not work in motion due to the technical specs,)
and this tuner is old school analog NTSC/PAL. It will not give you actual tv, thus I'm not installing antennas (yet, see post #2 for what I did for actual tv.)
I'm going to be using it solely as a video switcher. In the rest of the world they use different digital tv specs
and there are retrofit boards by PeteAU and tuners by Buson which combined will update the tuner to work
with your current digital tv service if you aren't in North America. (Update: see post 2 & 3 for ATSC digital tuner mods to get tv when parked)
Parts needed:
BMW Tv tuner retrofit harness
Source: eBay seller "euromarts"
Cost: $144.95 shipped
P/N: 61120144096
BMW 16:9 Analog TV tuner
Source: eBay (Latvian seller)
Cost: ~$75 shipped
P/N: 65506911221
Optional:
Some RCA connectors (Radio Shack, etc) and the appropriate BMW pins to add them
to the sockets.
When I had to buy a replacement MK4 drive, it came with the plugs and a few inches of
harness, so I cannibalized mine from there.
BMW has instructions for sedans, but not Tourings.
http://www.bmwmotorsports.org/BMW_docs/EBADoc11514-TV.pdf
This is mostly about the physical install as it differs greatly.
Here is how we did it.
1: remove the trunk floor, nav cover, drop the seat backs & just for convenience move the cargo cover.
2: remove the trunk underfloor and bin, leaving just the spare in place.
3: you may have to remove a couple plastic nuts (10mm) in each corner to access the radio bin, mine were long gone and I'm fine with that. It just flips up.
4: remove the Jack tools etc from side bin, remove two more plastic nuts,
5: remove the hold down from side cover (t30) and remove the Phillips holding the upper corner near the nav drive.
6: remove nav drive, unclip the blue connector and find the retrofit cable end that has a blue female and male.
7: feed that end back around the drive mount, and connect each end to old blue or nav socket as appropriate. put the drive back in.
8: lift the corner of the side cover up and out so you can lift the Jack tray corner and feed the harness thru/under it where the other wiring already is.
9: remove the 2 8mm bolts from the black bracket so you can lift it up.
10: place the tuner module in place.
11: Place bracket back atop it. No, the mounting ear actually DOESNT connect to anything. Tighten bolts on bracket.
12: Remove large radio plug. Remove white connector in the radio plug. Remove the white connector shell, and finally attach the flying leads ( from the other end of the retro harness) blue w/ yellow to 12 and the yellow to 11. Reassemble and reinstall to radio.
13: connect the blue and white connectors to the appropriate terminals on the tv module.
14: tuck the cable against the side of the radio, and follow the path of the radio cables, tucking it tightly against it. Space is limited here.
15: pull any excess back thru the Jack bin towards the nav cubby (about a foots worth).
16: now you can finally bolt everything back down on the side cover and Jack bin.
17: carefully close the lid on the radio cover. There is a protruding foot that fits over a protruding bolt, make sure your wiring goes to the left of this and everything is tucked as tightly against the radio as possible, perhaps even open and close it a few times to make sure everything is out of the way.
18: try it out, before you bother dropping the trunk underfloor floor, etc. back in.
I hope this one pic I managed to snap is clear enough as to where it goes and how it mounts.
The job is easy, just lifting out and occasionally unbolting or unscrewing something.
![]()
And here is the famous tv tuner pinout, with my hand written notes on what pins to add for the video inputs.
![]()
Pic of my handmade $2 video inputs
![]()
Nav with new option displayed:
![]()
Remember getting this on your old TV when you didn't have a station tuned?
![]()
I hope this was helpful to fellow Nav+ Touring owners who were thinking about retrofitting rearview camera, pibus, tv, a DVD player, etc.
We decided to tackle physically installing the tv tuner.
Please note:
Since the digital tv conversion, the USA uses ATSC, (which absolutely can not work in motion due to the technical specs,)
and this tuner is old school analog NTSC/PAL. It will not give you actual tv, thus I'm not installing antennas (yet, see post #2 for what I did for actual tv.)
I'm going to be using it solely as a video switcher. In the rest of the world they use different digital tv specs
and there are retrofit boards by PeteAU and tuners by Buson which combined will update the tuner to work
with your current digital tv service if you aren't in North America. (Update: see post 2 & 3 for ATSC digital tuner mods to get tv when parked)
Parts needed:
BMW Tv tuner retrofit harness
Source: eBay seller "euromarts"
Cost: $144.95 shipped
P/N: 61120144096
BMW 16:9 Analog TV tuner
Source: eBay (Latvian seller)
Cost: ~$75 shipped
P/N: 65506911221
Optional:
Some RCA connectors (Radio Shack, etc) and the appropriate BMW pins to add them
to the sockets.
When I had to buy a replacement MK4 drive, it came with the plugs and a few inches of
harness, so I cannibalized mine from there.
BMW has instructions for sedans, but not Tourings.
http://www.bmwmotorsports.org/BMW_docs/EBADoc11514-TV.pdf
This is mostly about the physical install as it differs greatly.
Here is how we did it.
1: remove the trunk floor, nav cover, drop the seat backs & just for convenience move the cargo cover.
2: remove the trunk underfloor and bin, leaving just the spare in place.
3: you may have to remove a couple plastic nuts (10mm) in each corner to access the radio bin, mine were long gone and I'm fine with that. It just flips up.
4: remove the Jack tools etc from side bin, remove two more plastic nuts,
5: remove the hold down from side cover (t30) and remove the Phillips holding the upper corner near the nav drive.
6: remove nav drive, unclip the blue connector and find the retrofit cable end that has a blue female and male.
7: feed that end back around the drive mount, and connect each end to old blue or nav socket as appropriate. put the drive back in.
8: lift the corner of the side cover up and out so you can lift the Jack tray corner and feed the harness thru/under it where the other wiring already is.
9: remove the 2 8mm bolts from the black bracket so you can lift it up.
10: place the tuner module in place.
11: Place bracket back atop it. No, the mounting ear actually DOESNT connect to anything. Tighten bolts on bracket.
12: Remove large radio plug. Remove white connector in the radio plug. Remove the white connector shell, and finally attach the flying leads ( from the other end of the retro harness) blue w/ yellow to 12 and the yellow to 11. Reassemble and reinstall to radio.
13: connect the blue and white connectors to the appropriate terminals on the tv module.
14: tuck the cable against the side of the radio, and follow the path of the radio cables, tucking it tightly against it. Space is limited here.
15: pull any excess back thru the Jack bin towards the nav cubby (about a foots worth).
16: now you can finally bolt everything back down on the side cover and Jack bin.
17: carefully close the lid on the radio cover. There is a protruding foot that fits over a protruding bolt, make sure your wiring goes to the left of this and everything is tucked as tightly against the radio as possible, perhaps even open and close it a few times to make sure everything is out of the way.
18: try it out, before you bother dropping the trunk underfloor floor, etc. back in.
I hope this one pic I managed to snap is clear enough as to where it goes and how it mounts.
The job is easy, just lifting out and occasionally unbolting or unscrewing something.
And here is the famous tv tuner pinout, with my hand written notes on what pins to add for the video inputs.
Pic of my handmade $2 video inputs
Nav with new option displayed:
Remember getting this on your old TV when you didn't have a station tuned?
I hope this was helpful to fellow Nav+ Touring owners who were thinking about retrofitting rearview camera, pibus, tv, a DVD player, etc.
