Hi All,

I have a video input installed on my MINI and while it works great, the factory nav display shows videos with a fairly washed out look to the colors on the screen (i.e. things seem overly dull with too much red and blue). For those of you who happen to have a video input in your MINI that uses the factory nav display how do your videos look when played on the nav screen?

I'm trying to figure out if I've got a bad video converter box or if it's simply the OEM display in the MINI being of poor quality. Note that the normal maps and menu screens for the nav look great, However, they don't have very high color definition like a DVD movie has (i.e. there's no comparison). My guess is that it's just the OEM display being of poor quality (since it was never intended to be used to display videos - Although... there is an OEM TV tuner???).

Just wondering what other folks are seeing (as far as video quality goes) with their video inputs.

Thanks!



@rkw,

FYI, I went ahead and completely bypassed the relay setup (and used a better quality video cable) and found the exact same results (i.e. no change in the video display quality). I'm not able to use a different display/monitor since I have no way of routing the video output signal away from the OEM nav screen (since it's being fed to the display via the nav computer). Thanks again for the suggestions though.

 

Hmm... Guess I'm not going to get any responses on this one. No worries as I've actually purchased a completely different (non-OEM) video input unit and so I'll be able to answer the question for myself just as soon as it arrives. I'll post back here if anyone's interested. Otherwise, I'll just let the thread die.

 

Please do.
Alternatively, you can send me a converter box, a video player and the OEM backup camera, and I'll install and report my findings.
Thanks for all your efforts (and result sharing!)

 

Hi All,

Okay, it turns out that it is indeed the OEM video converter box that was the problem (and not the nav display). Apparently, the OEM video converter box isn't of the highest quality and causes the video to not look very good on the built-in nav display. I guess it was only ever intended to display the backup/rear-view image and not really designed to display high quality video (like a DVD movie, etc.).

I went ahead and swapped out the OEM video input setup I created for a different video converter box and now the video looks just great. I managed to find a nice, high quality, video input setup for only $199 and so I went ahead and used that instead. The box I found has two video inputs (one for a rear view camera if you want it), video-in motion, is plug-n-play (although you do still have to run a 12v power and a ground wire to it), and has a brightness control.

It's a real shame that the OEM video converter box that's included with the OEM rear-view camera kit didn't pan out to be a good video input as it would have saved me some money. Ah well, you can't win them all I guess.

 

Glad to hear you got it worked out. Does your new video box also improve the rear camera image (although it's perfectly adequate already)?

 

Actually, because I like the integration of the OEM rear-view camera kit so much, I kept it "as is" and didn't bother trying to route the rear-view camera image over to the new video box (although it would have been quite easy to do). However, I'm absolutely certain that it would indeed have improved the image quality coming from the reverse camera. Seeing as the image is "good enough", I didn't see any reason/need to do so at this point.

 

Sorry I didn't see this post, I have a NAV-TV setup and the Nav screen is as nice as a regular LCD TV. I play movies on it all the time and it looks real good.

 

Hi JPMM,

Thanks for the info. I did indeed figure out that it was the OEM video box that was the problem. Now that I've replaced the video box with a different one, I too am seeing the video in very nice quality.

Thanks!