[Onizukachan]

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.

 

[Onizukachan]

Added a digital to analog convertor with USB media playback and PVR to the set up today.

I used a flexible square antenna from Best Buy ( Father's Day gift card from my boys, had to find something worth $40 there)
Link: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/mohu-leaf-30-indoor-hdtv-antenna-black-white/3488024.p?id=1219091717099&skuId=3488024&ref=212&loc=1&ksid=bd7abc58-2d4f-4ce1-bba7-c20eba4e43a8&ksprof_id=16&ksaffcode=pg53514&ksdevice=t&gclid=CIzEwceY4c0CFZKGaQod-d4NjQ

And an ematics tv tuner from Walmart $29.99
Link: http://www.walmart.com/ip/28505040?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&adid=22222222227021752372&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=t&wl3=40330391672&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=60244484011&veh=sem


I first set everything up on a little tv inside to make sure it worked, played around with it for a day or so to make sure it wasn't going to fail on me, before I modded it.
Then I got out my vintage Fluke multimeter (Father's Day present from my amazing gf!) and opened it up.
It runs on 5v dc inside, so I removed the AC cord(unclips) and soldered an old USB cable to the positive lead and the negative went to the ground screw.

Moment of truth, plugged it into a USB power adapter and...

With that working, the gf went out to the car with me and was the light supplier while I accessed the OEM tuner again,
plugged the video and 1audio cable in, (OEM TUNER IS MONO ONLY)
Set the flexible antenna up in the cubby above the battery, ran the coax around the compartment, and then laid it and the AV cable over the below the nav drive and plugged everything in.

Here you can see why we waited till nightfall to do it...

I later went back and disassembled the faceplate and used my DE-soldering iron to remove the IR sensor, used another section of USB cable to create an extension/relocate the IR sensor so it can protrude outside the cubby when closed and I can use the remote from the driver's seat by simply aiming it at the rear gate to control the converter box.

My next plan would be to add an IR extender up to the front, and build coax that goes from an f connector y'd into dual smb so I can hook up the converter to the tuner on channel 3/4 and save the AV inputs for other future uses.

 

[Onizukachan]

And ATSC tuner modules are finally available.

http://m.aliexpress.com/item-desc/32701453351.html


but I'll be doing a pibus first...

http://pibus.info/index.html