Friday, October 07, 2005 - 02:06 pm, by: Carl Johnson(Carlos)
Hi, Im new to the forum..first time actually. I have my EMV ready to go to take inputs for a DVD player & or other A/V. This got me thinking why put one in at all if I can put in a laptop hard drive......say 80Gig or something like that. Has anyone out there done this or thought of doing this? Any advise would be much appreciated.
Friday, October 07, 2005 - 07:11 pm, by: Steve Nolan(Hiddenvision)
There is a unit called "Twin-Tv" Old soloution but they worked.
Look around for any media players that take a standard laptop drive.
The big thing you have to look for is something that will playback its video content with the sound and picture in sync. Some of that will depending on the encoding used but older units have sync issues.
Not bad for MP3 playback but movies is more critical.
Also look for a unit that remembers current settings and play location on power down. That will make your experience better
The twintv units or something simular should be about $100-150 + harddrive. There was a thing talked about on the old forum called MG-25 I think http://www.airlinktek.com/
As long as they have a NTSC video out then you can plug an play.
I have a couple of twintv units with 80g drives in each . Full of Music and Full of movies.
Great. Super,, have not plugged them in for over 6 months.
The issue you also have is controlling them. Another remote to lose as they can't be controlled by the touch screen at this time.
Friday, October 07, 2005 - 08:51 pm, by: Ollie Ernst(Oli_g)
Steve........I've got that MG-25 in my Soarer. Had a few issues with it but sorted now. Apart from the hiccups I had it's a good unit. Just need to get it all wired in properly but for the moment I'm running power via the car adapter and cigarette lighter and displaying on the EMV. I've got an 80Gb laptop HDD so it holds plenty of DVD video as well as heaps of MP3s. Very cool.
Friday, October 07, 2005 - 09:01 pm, by: Ollie Ernst(Oli_g)
Haven't noticed any problems with sync so far. Still a couple of things I'd like to get sorted though. Have to have a look at adjusting the colour hues because on some shows the flesh tones have a bit too much red. There's also a very slight "pulsing" in the video that only appears when playing through the EMV. It's not there when you plug it into a normal TV. Don't know if the RCA cable run is too long or what but I'm going to have a chat with Mark Paddick when he and I have some time and see if he has any idea what it could be. It's not a big issue but I want everything spot on.
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 09:20 am, by: Carl Johnson(Carlos)
Hey, let me start by saying you're all very switched on & I should have been a member here 7 yrs ago when I 1st got my car......I would have saved a lot of money. }}
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 09:37 am, by: Carl Johnson(Carlos)
Yeah Greg, Neil did the job. I drove the car all the way from the Sunshine Coast QLD to him & left it for approx 5 weeks (ouch) Neil did an excellent job, I did have a problem with the starter motor (you remember that shrieking sound the old XA/XB & XC fords used to make?)which didn't surface til I was 1/2 way back to QLD other than that no complaints.
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 11:55 am, by: Carl Johnson(Carlos)
Ollie, Mark mentioned your hard drive set up when he did the EMV work for me. I'm glad you & Steve have both commented on this as your chat is "Gold" for me. I think I will go with pretty much what you have done. They say hindsight is a wonderful thing.....if you were doing it again is there any element of your set up that you'd no differently? If not I'll pretty much do what you've done.
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 01:23 pm, by: Ollie Ernst(Oli_g)
Carl.......As mentioned, there were a few hassles along the way. The initial unit I bought was fine for mp3s and other music file formats like WMA etc but the inbuilt DVD decoding software wasn't ideal for playing the DVD VOB files and the unit kept locking up, with the only way to reboot it being by unplugging the power. The unit wouldn't respond at all to commands from the remote. I returned the unit and the suppliers sent me a replacement with a new mainboard and with a new piece of software called DVD Manager installed and it worked flawlessly except that the printed circuit board hadn't been cut out correctly and the back wouldn't fit on the unit. After much arguing with the suppliers it was returned and a 3rd unit supplied which now seems to work fine.
As I said there's been some dicking around along the way but all's well that ends well. The unit is currently in my house as I haven't had time to permanently install it yet (got to pull the center console out to run cabling and that takes time) but I'm hoping to do that in the next few weeks.
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 06:12 pm, by: Ollie Ernst(Oli_g)
The MG25 doesn't have a memory once power is disconnected (ie ignition is turned off). When you return power by turning ignition to "on" or "acc" the unit powers up to standby mode and you need to actually press the "power" button on the remote to start it up and take you to the menu screen.
The unit does have a memory as long as power is maintained so for example in home use if you keep it plugged in to the wall with the power on you can power the unit down with the remote and it'll remember where it was up to.
Remember this unit, as with many like it, is not designed specifically for car use although it CAN be used in a car using the 12V adaptor. It, and it's bigger brother (MG-35 I think it's called) are designed primarily for 240V use but they obviously realised there was a market for the MG25 for a car given it's compact size.
Monday, October 10, 2005 - 09:22 pm, by: Carl Johnson(Carlos)
Umm further food for thought....thanks Ollie
Steve the "twinTV" option you referred to does that have these capabilities? I note it has the same 80Gb capacity. Why have you got a couple that havent been used in 6months, are you selling them?
Tuesday, October 11, 2005 - 12:47 am, by: Steve Nolan(Hiddenvision)
I could sell you one. I forget what the cost..!! But to disapoint they also do not have memory on power down. To be honest I would think the MG25 would be the better option. I was never hapy with the movie sync on these TTv.
Saturday, October 29, 2005 - 10:12 am, by: Stephen Hille(9zero)
If I didnt want to watch tv / dvds etc... Just wanted to have MP3's playing and not use the stacker, which one of these would be the best? Also how difficult would it be to fit the entire unit perhaps in place of the stacker?
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Carl, ULTRA impressive car you've got there...........NICE! 
