Headrest Monitors
 

fancied doing this for a while, some very cheap kit around on ebay which will do the job, so with that in mind i went down to my local supplier to take a look (well, buy if possible) these headrests come in 3 shades Black, beige and grey, and while im happy with the tech, specially the 9" detachable touchscreen version, the "grey" colour is a few shades darker than my platinum interior.

choices are

a) Get someone to dye it (or do it myself) to the required colour (but the facia of the actual monitor will still be darker

b) go slightly different and do it in this style

Attachment 2986

the actual style im considering for this is one of these

Attachment 2987

its growing on me,

Just tried out one of these units, very good quality picture, responsive touchscreen, AVI, DivX among others and built in dvd

theres an attachment available which does the job of holding it to the headrest poles, and they unclip quickly and can be used elsewhere, wiring can still be mostly hidden, not quite as good as going down the centre of the poles but should be unoticable on the A8

what do you think , traditional or new style?

If you do not already have a rear entertainment pack, how much additional work is there to link in the power source?

I like the ones inside the headrest, but some are a bit of a pain if the people in the front tilt the headrest too far forwards.

I saw some that sat on a bracket from Audi, but as they were removeable they looked like a bit of an afterthought with a black casng and silver slide-in DVD monitors. I think they list it on the Q5 as an option if I remember rightly.

Power is simple, bring down through the seat and in to the centre console, take the power from the back of the cigar lighter.

change of plan, didnt buy the big ones, realised that they would be more difficult to cover and that the main user is a 13 month old baby who probably wont care if barney is shown in 7" or 9" so, today picked up 2 x 7" screens, they are a lot closer to the same size as the original a8 headrests and the "leather" part comes of.

I hope to change the outer part and replace it with the leather from my originals, not sure if this will work yet but if it does - it at least garantees the same colour.

the plan was/is to take the power leads out the bottom of the seat neatly up in to the centre console and grab 12V from the back of the cigar lighter.

had a quick check with my fingers earlier and a look inside from the rear cigar socket plate, its pretty tight at the sides, elsawin shows some kind of floor covering position rods holding it in place

damm these things are well built

have to explore it tommorow with a few tools and a torch

you pop off the 'wood' cover then there's a couple of torx screws to take the panel out.

You can also get decent access to the cables by popping out the tray above. Just remember that the lighter is permanent live, so you could short it, or potentially run the battery down if you forget to turn the screens off.

yes with the tray out and the wood plate off i can unscrew the lighter and quite easily get to the power theres a spade and a connector to unlug the lighter so i can do it safely

its more getting the wires in from the side in to the console so it cant be seen (much) i was thinking of,

looks like the black is positive so need to check that out to be sure.

its not permanant live though, when testing the units at the vendors this afternoon i had to put the key in the ignition to get it to work, taking the key out leaves power for about 5 minutes, suprised me i thought it was always live

Interesting.. maybe it's just the front one that is then :)

The carpet splits under the seats, so you could maybe run it up into the console that way.

my front one has never worked since ive had it. another thing to add to the list

will give it a try tomorow, be easier with the right tools and putting the seat forward - elsa says "Unclip floor covering rods from centre console", and shows four rods running from back to front, looks like it sticks the console to the carpet, hopefully should be able to get through without dismantalling the console.

these monitors will work "as is" they have a dvd integrated plus a sd card and a usb, so just need a hybrid tv linked up and a media player and im happy.

Well fitted them, didnt get a lot of time today so have fitted them in with wires coming out of seat, havent done the power yet, but tried them via the cigar lighter adapter.

cant say im over awed, not sure if its the colour shade not being right thats p**ssing me of or not. so will give them a test for a week or two, if i cant live with them they will go back on ebay and il have to rethink it.

now the hybrid tuner is in, im turning attention back to the headrest monitors, ive had them in a good few weeks and they were invaluable on the 13 hour trips to france and back, kept the baby quiet all the way there though i had barney and freinds in my ear instead. all in all im quite happy with them functionally.

on the way back i massacred a set of headphones and installed them in the babys car seat so now i cant hear it.

first thing is the colour, despite her indoors claiming that it wasnt noticable, it is very noticable, the headrests are much darker than my light grey, so ordered a light grey dye and tried it out today on one of the flaps, and the color match looks very good, so there is some hope. tommorow i will take the headrests covers of and dye them and see how they look in situ.

Psyche , the cigar lighter in the rear does cut of after a few minutes with the MMI, but there is a 3rd wire on the back of the socket that i presume does this. i have wired it up to the other 2 and so its always live. so have to remember to turn them off. i was also right about the polarity it is switched, the blue wire is positive rather than the red.

only thing i would say in retrospect (and i still want to do this) is the audi headrests have very long legs that clip in to position and are held there with a clip. these headrests legs are quite short so a couple of leghts of 14mm tubing is required with a cut in the place where the end position is. this stops them coming out or moving. (this may be different on cars with elec headrests (i havent) but i think its the same but you would need to leave some slack cable to allow movement. dont get me wrong they dont move much but it would be better.

So wiring plan is to stick the outs from the headrests in to aux 1 and aux 2 of the tuner, meaning i can watch either at the front and make it easier to control the systems with the remote. the out from the tuner which also got put in today will then feed both headrests so they can watch tv , seperate independant dvds, sd cards and usb's etc.