Took delivery yesterday. I did the upgraded HK system. I was going to add a Sirius tuner, but the HK display is absolutely disappointing. I will be installing my previous car stereo and tuner. I'm going to try to find a kit that will allow me to keep the functionality of the MFSW. At least I was able to get the 8 speakers and upgraded amp. I will integrate those into my replacement system.

 

tc4653, what led you to believe the display would be any different? The H/K upgrade uses the same head unit as the non-H/K. Additional functions are just enabled (such as the DSP modes), and it uses different speakers and external amplifier.

Most German car engineers tend to design their cars based upon function, not form... and one key factor is that drivers should be keeping their eyes on the road, not on the car. Fancy screens on stereos take away from that.

Sorry to hear you are disappointed - I'm sure you will find aftermarket kits that let you do what you want to with an another head unit. A good place to start is NewMINIStuff - they have a number of adapters for this purpose. They are based in the UK (prices are in pounds) but they ship to the US without a problem.

 

You'll need an HKenabler to get aftermarket stereo to work with the HK amp and speakers - NewMINIstuff is the only place you can get one of them

 

I have to ask you exactly what you expected, and exactly what is wrong with the display.

Personally I spend most of my time looking at the road, not the stereo, and when I do look at it, it is capable of telling me what I need to know - the station (XM/FM/AM) and on some stations the artists/title. On CD it tells me the track number. If my iPod is plugged in it says AUX.....

As I said elsewhere, its looks are not that important, its all about the sound....

 

As GBMINI pointed out, the HK system is a little more than just plugging in a new HU, AMP, or Speakers. If you want to use a different HU, you will need the enabler that he is speaking of. If you want to change speakers, you will have to find 2 Ohm speakers and the amp can't be removed without re-wiring the system.

I personally like the stock HU as I think that it does a pretty good job. BMW / MINI is about driving, not fancy screens.

 

tc4653, sorry you are disappointed with the HK. I love mine!

 

Since Nascar is going to Sirius, I was gonna go back to dealer and get the upgrade. Was wondering if the display will scroll with the sirius unit.
I have the XM in now, it works but as you know you have to hit info to scroll thru Title-Aritist, etc.

 

A functional upgrade that would give me something equivalent to an after market system. The display scrolls about 10 letters at a time (I'm guessing, I didn't count), this doesn't include the fixed display items.

I have to admit I'm hooked on the available info when using satellite radio. When I'm switching between NFL games, I want to be able to see the score on the screen immediately and not to wait and watch the scroll.

But.....if it were only about driving, we would not have upgraded stereos, bluetooth kits, etc......

I had actually shown a similar thread to the installer and he was certain that he could do it without the HK Enabler. If he can't, then that may very well change the direction I'm going with the system. Thanks for all the input.

 

If your installer doesn't use the HKenabler, he has two choices:
1 - keep the original HU mounted in the car, or
2 - remove the HK amp.

If 2, then he also has to remove / replace all the speakers, or severely compromise the final system quality.
The HK speakers are 2 x 2ohm dual voice coils in the rear (so you need an amp to drive 1 ohm speakers, or you lose power wired in series to drive 4 ohm); in the front, they are again 2 ohm but additionally there is no crossover (it's filtered in the HK amp), so you have to invent a suitable one.


As the creator of the HKenabler, you can trust that having gone this same road, I know the technical details

 

For a very similar reason, my wife has a $50 Roady XT in her BMW hooked up to the AUX input.

Me, I went for the $200 XM Direct installation because the additional information is more of a distraction than it is interesting.

I would take a look at other solutions before hitting the headache of trying to replace the HK system.....

 

GB Mini, let me ask a ?. I have the HK head unit, but did not get the Sirius when ordering. I put in Blitz safe and XM direct. Now I want to go back to Sirius. So when I order the 3 things needed to hook it up, will the auto scroll work on the Sirius input just like it does on the FM radio?
And again for my dumb brain, what are the 3 parts I need to order?

 

Sorry, I don't have factory Sirius so I don't know how it works.
But I've read that it only displays info when you press a button and it doesn't scroll so much as "flash" new lines of text one after the other.

Curious, what "auto scroll" do you have on the FM radio you have now?

 

Thanks for all the info, I trust your judgement. I will make the necessary changes in my stereophonic plans.

After all the great input, that's what I'm doing. I will need to track down a compatible tuner, etc. The best move I made was making the post on NAM!

 

well in the FM mode is srolls through the whole title aritist. but with XM blitz safe you only get the first 10 digits or so, and even that you have to push the info button to get that.

 

PS tc,
For a scary "what the installer claimed" story, see this post on an older thread:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...1&postcount=19

 

That's certainly NOT what I'm looking for!

 

Sirius works the same way. Normally the H/U displays the channel "name." Push the INFO button to see the artist name and push it again to see song title.

There is a SCROLL ON/OFF function accessed by pushing and holding the INFO button for a couple of seconds. This does not enable the type of scrolling you are talking about. If the artist name or song title (displayed as mentioned above) is longer than 10 characters it will scroll left to allow more of the text to be displayed. After a few seconds the display will return to the channel "name."

Since the Sirius receiver is a separate device and must communicate the data to the H/U over a communication bus shared by many of the other electronics in the MINI, I would think the engineers probably limited the full scroll function just to keep communication traffic down on the bus. FWIW, I believe the XM Direct unit via Blitzsafe works exactly the same way.

 

If I was going to sort out my Satellite (XM) installation combined with the HK unit here is what I would do....

First off I would keep the HK unit, it is extremely integrated and expensive, I hate the idea of losing functionality and integration, not to mention the cost of the unit/upgrade in the first place.

for XM/Sirrius, despite having the XM-Direct and Blitz-Safe unit I would probably go for a portable unit that records / saves and allows me to use it in the gym, along with giving me additional information.

There are a number of them on the market, in XM land the Pionner Inno is probably the one to get along with a car-dock, this could live where my phone/pda currently lives and I would be more than happy with the location, sound and information access.

If however you want an in-car only one, I have seen a couple of people mount the Starmate Replay (ST2 ?) under the visor so that it is in line of sight.

 

TC - quick side note... instead of posting replies to multiple posts back to back (in separate posts), why not take advantage of the new Multiquoting feature of vBulletin (the software that NAM uses).

For a quick tutorial on how, check out this post I made on it: Multiquoting

Also, I have taken the liberty of merging your back-to-back posts above... no edits though. Combining them into a single post makes the thread easier to follow and more compact.

 

Cheers! I guess old dogs can learn new tricks!

 

As for factory sirius unit questions, I don't recommend it.

Can it show more than one screen of text? Technically, yes.
But it flashes each portion of the text, it doesn't scroll sideways.
And in order to enable scrolling, you need to hold down the scroll button. EACH time you start the car.
And the delay is so long before you see the second half of the name, you would have long ago run into a tree.
Furthermore, after a few seconds, it goes back to displaying the channel name. You can't get it to stay on artist or song.
The display is also uppercase only with no support for extended characters.
But really who cares, my big issue with the unit is because of its old hardware (first or second gen decoder?) the sound quality is horrible compared to the newer $50 units.
All this for $700!
Get an Aux connector ($40) and an aftermarket sirius tuner with scores, multiple lines, recording, and great sound quality for $50.

 

I don't know what you're talking about jwardell... my OEM SIRIUS displays both upper and lower case characters just fine... unless I got a newer "revision" of the receiver than you did?

As for the sound quality, it sounds pretty good to me!

I guess, just like everything else, opinions will vary. I love the "built-in" feel of my SIRIUS setup - no external mess. It's worth the sacrifice of more screen space and the additional cost to me!