Entertainment centre 'S' class 2006 problem.

[LPGJOE]

hi, have a 06 W221 320 That has a entertainment centre installed, TV/CD/DVD/SatNav, The TV & DVD player have never worked , Had the car for 12mths, this is a ongoing case with the garage i bought it from, Question is can it be repaired ? Would TV still be analogue system ? I have other issues with garage sales (Court Case Pending) according to them all the systems in the car were working, have spent a lot of money putting other thing right this just another thing to sort out.

 

[Blobcat]

Hello and welcome

‘06 will be analogue (unless someone has changed the tuner)

 

[Botus]

what doesn't work....

it is standard at this age the Radio Tuner and its integral amp dies , leaving no sound to anything, and the comand screen showing no radio stations displaying. All the menus can be navigated around and maps / nav work but with no sound.

I believe the std fit TV tuner on all 221s was kombi digital and analogue tuner. It sits inside the inner wing behind the left rear wheel (beside the radio tuner/cars main amp). The TV is hopeless with today's weak signals. So even when working it will struggle with reception. Its quite possible someone took it out and sold for 400 quid on ebay when trading in the car. It blanks out as you drive off, on the front screen and carries on working on the rear screens if they are fitted.

why do you think the car has TV, it was an option, and then the rear screens are another separate option. You can have one without the other.

Put the chassis number in https://www.lastvin.com/ here and see if it was actually built with the first two option codes

Kombi TV tuner
863 TV-TUNER DIGITAL TO ANALOG

Rear screens on the head rests
864 REAR ENTERTAINMENT (2 SCREENS)

it won't have this but can be fitted to the earlier cars (again this separate tuner sits in left rear wing)
537 DIGITAL RADIO STANDARD DAB (DIGI. AUDIO BROADC.)

later NTG3.5 comand (from 2010) had the Option of
867 FRONT PASSENGER ENTERTAINMENT (Split View)

of course any of it can be repaired / retrospectively fitted, but the costs could easily be far more than cars value


new AMP 1k for the small one , 2k for the HK one
new TV tuner £900
DAB tuner £700
Command system £1200
Screen £400 I guess

 

[LPGJOE]

Thanks got quoted by main dealer 4k for replacement unit, not really to botherd if it works or not , its mainly because of the problems im haveing with the garage that sold it and saying everything was working, so its just me being a bit arse'y with them. first time i buy from a garage ( Been driving since 1970) and had nothing but problems, Going through CAB & Small claims court.

 

[LPGJOE]

what doesn't work....

its is standard at this age the Radio Tuner and its integral amp dies , leaving no sound to anything, and the comand screen showing no radio stations displaying. All the menus can be navigated around and maps / nav work but with no sound.

I believe the std fit TV tuner on all 221s was kombi digital and analogue tuner. It sits inside the inner wing behind the left rear wheel (beside the radio tuner/cars main amp). The TV is hopeless with today's weak signals. So even when working it will struggle with reception. Its quite possible someone took it out and sold for 400 quid on ebay when trading in the car. It blanks out as you drive off, on the front screen and carries on working on the rear screens if they are fitted.

why do you think the car has TV, it was an option, and then the rear screens are another separate option. You can have one without the other.

Put the chassis number in https://www.lastvin.com/ here and see if it was actually built with the first two option codes

Kombi TV tuner
863 TV-TUNER DIGITAL TO ANALOG

Screens on rear head rest
864 REAR ENTERTAINMENT (2 SCREENS)

it won't have this but can be fitted to the earlier cars (again this separate tuner sits in left rear wing)
537 DIGITAL RADIO STANDARD DAB (DIGI. AUDIO BROADC.)

later NTG3.5 comand (from 2010) had the Option of
867 FRONT PASSENGER ENTERTAINMENT (Split View)

of course any of it can be repaired / retrospectively fitted, but the costs could easily be far more than cars value


new AMP 1k for the small one , 2k for the HK one
new TV tuner £900
DAB tuner £700
Command system £1200
Screen £400 I guess

Thanks for that just downloaded the list : yes its fitted with TV (863) & DVD (U72)

 

[Botus]

use that tool to see what it was built with,

its takes 5 minutes to turn on the menus suggesting it has lots of toys.... but wiring and individual modules actually being fitted is another story,

as std UK cars I believe got this
527 COMAND DVD APS WITH NAVIGATION
in a S320 that means a radio, a screen, a knob and a single slot DVD player in the dash under a fold out flap beneath the heater controls, and a hardrive with the maps on it for the sat nav inside the bit where you put a DVD.

I suspect UK cars got navigation as std, but not all markets did.

Behind the comand knob, if the flap over the "hand rest" opens to reveal a phone key pad it probably had the option phone system fitted (although some fit the keypad attempting to get a phone system to run) see if you have the UHI socket in the centre arm rest. This is where you plug a phone in.

386 MOBILE PRE.-INSTALLATION (MTUS) no bluetooth at all
388 PHONE MOBILE, MTUS-SYSTEM it has Bluetooth but only to connect a hand set for rear seat passengers, it can not successfully connect a mobile phone to the car

810 PREMIUM SOUND SYSTEM (option HK logic seven system, set up I think £820)
811 ADVANCED SOUND SYSTEM (later cars)
814 DVD CHANGER (option)

 

[Botus]

so what works, have you got any sound at all?

when you go to TV its kind of mental, there is NO tuning steps it continually does it in the background.... if you get in the analogue part, of course its all dead. These broadcasts stopped years ago. I forget how, but if you fumble around in illogical menus it can jump to digital and if in a very strong signal area you should get a few channels of broken sound and pictures..... which should wind you up no end if you have rear screens and children

I think the rear entertainment system can have its own DVD player (behind the arm rest?) and headsets for sound, so it can be independent for kids in the back (that's was a £3000 option) they get a batch of controls in the rear seat arm rest

the antenna for TV is part built in the rear screen and has a module to switch between TV and FM etc. that bit can go wrong and costs £800 for the part and is a nightmare to get at as the headlining has to come out.... the TV tuner has 4 separate Ariel connections all wired up to the tuner and all useless

 

[LPGJOE]

so what works, have you got any sound at all?

when you go to TV its kind of mental, there is NO tuning steps it continually does it in the background.... if you get in the analogue part, of course its all dead. These broadcasts stopped years ago. I forget how, but if you fumble around in illogical menus it can jump to digital and if in a very strong signal area you should get a few channels of broken sound and pictures..... which should wind you up no end if you have rear screens and children

I think the rear entertainment system can have its own DVD player (behind the arm rest?) and headsets for sound, so it can be independent for kids in the back (that's was a £3000 option) they get a batch of controls in the rear seat arm rest

the antenna for TV is part built in the rear screen and has a module to switch between TV and FM etc. that bit can go wrong and costs £800 for the part and is a nightmare to get at as the headlining has to come out.... the TV tuner has 4 separate Ariel connections all wired up to the tuner and all useless

What works ; radio / CD / Sat-nav and phone Bluetooth , got the connection in armrest, (386) and (527) but DVD wont reconise disc

 

[Botus]

DVD where?

front or rear player and what discs are you trying?

of course should do a normal music CD or film DVD they should work (BUT NOT ONES U MAKE)

people forget most disc drives have firmware inside, the first step is to read the inner ring of the disc to understand what the disc is... the car is OLD (same with an old laptop many discs refuse to run because they are far later and the drive doesn't understand them) this is very pertinent if the disc is written via a PC not a disc manufacturer.

If its an original release meeting the original standards it should play.... but its a 14 year old drive so quite possible it no longer works. And trying or consistently playing recorded discs the drive finds hard to read will kill the drive. Best to never try and save its last few hours of use for updating maps, updating firmware on various modules and fixing the clock and date issue.

I don't know any car player that got a firmware update to inform it of later disc materials / types of disc out there. In fact its rare on any drive these days the whole idea has almost been forgotten and most media stopped changing circa 2014 or earlier.... but for sure between 2006 and 2012 plenty of recordable discs by many manufacturer's won't ever play on early disc drives

 

[Botus]

if we are expecting a secondhand car with a rear dvd drive that had a million discs forced it to it (mostly upside down) of which 50% had met the floor and a game of football beforehand. Then had 10 years of solid abuse with jam, chocolate and half the worlds detritus rammed in for good measure, all the while standing outside at -10C then cooking at 60c for 16 years - personally its not a great surprise its not that happy with life...

its is after all a Mercedes, where it was designed to be loved, never used and then die after 3 years and a day

 

[LPGJOE]

if we are expecting a secondhand car with a rear dvd drive that had a million discs forced it to it (mostly upside down) of which 50% had met the floor and a game of football beforehand. Then had 10 years of solid abuse with jam, chocolate and half the worlds detritus rammed in for good measure, all the while standing outside at -10C then cooking at 60c for 16 years - personally its not a great surprise its not that happy with life...

its is after all a Mercedes, where it was designed to be loved, never used and then die after 3 years and a day

Thanks for all the info on the DVD player ! CD works fine, not tried to update the sat-nav ! Was told this had to be done at a Merc main dealer ? Unit I have is the single player mounted in the dash, If i put a DVD into it screen will come on, Then says that it doesnt recognise the format, have tried different DVD disc's all with the same result, I would put some photos up but car has gone into garage with more problems (Engine) this time.

 

[Botus]

…. age of the car

2005 2007 pre facelift cars have an NTG3.0 comand unit.
It can be updated to give 3d mapping (birds eye view) and time of arrival [in USA this update added the traffic message channel and automatic re-routing that for some reason they never got from new], it also puts the menus (not enabled) on the car for DAB and some other stuff no one every said what it does.

The update can turn off the AC compressor leaving you with no AC till you connect back up to STAR (other posh diagnostics) and tick box saying use the earlier AC compressor.

Maps can just be installed at home takes 45 mins via front DVD drive. Always with the engine running or the battery will die. It always does something for 3 mins spit out the disc and says failed, put it back in and try again it should just load (that happens every update).

The update above needs maps newer then 2009 to do 3d mapping. Last versions were 2019 for Europe 2015 for USA

2007 to 2009 was the same kit but came with above as std.

2009 to 2012 had NTG3.5 looks the same but had options of everything a modern car gets, 7 digit post code entry, real BT phone, a socket to plug in for BT music device, with the comand knob and menus on the comand screen doing what it should.

Since 2019 satellite WNRO issue killed the time and date, it can be fixed with a homemade update CD but appears to only install if the early cars had the update I mention above, otherwise the car pretends and does nothing. This takes 10 minutes and fixed the clocks and date instantly.

 

[Botus]

mine played a datawrite titanium blue/pink DVD perfectly ONCE, and then has never managed again,
it has always worked without issue on the 3 DVD map updates I've done 2014 2016 and 2019
and the recordable cd clock update
and a homemade cd I did years ago

the drive is fussy and needed for maintenance.... don't waste on crap, do you have the pcmcia slot near the DVD drive? you can add 16gig of trash mp3 music to a memory card if you have and buy the right adapter

 

[LPGJOE]

mine played a datawrite titanium blue/pink DVD perfectly ONCE, and then has never managed again,
it has always worked without issue on the 3 DVD map updates I've done 2014 2016 and 2019
and the recordable cd clock update
and a homemade cd I did years ago

the drive is fussy and needed for maintenance.... don't waste on crap, do you have the pcmcia slot near the DVD drive? you can add 16gig of trash mp3 music to a memory card if you have and buy the right adapter

Thanks you have extensive knowledge on these systems very informative ! How do you know what version sat-nav map is installed ? ( my car is 06) if i update will it turn off AC ? Where can you purchase & cost of disc ? And finally I do have a SD card adapter fitted below the cd player, Sorry if i sound confused ! This is my first Merc + im 71 so some technology as passed me by but I try my best to understand it.

 

[Botus]

any programming must be done with decent voltage in the hope it writes correctly and functions afterwards

the car even with a brand new 26 kg battery in the boot will kill it inside 30 minutes... it pulls 37 amps with the key in the run position. The correct procedure is with a huge power supply ensuring it never drops below 14.6v, the dealer tool refuses to write unless this is met.

The std procedure is to connect up to the dealer diagnostics, it then says if you want to play hook up the power supply, then you ask if there's an update to the telematics network of the car and it connect home to Germany. If its out of date, on this old car where most software was small, it says that's a lot of data, tell you what rather then clog the phone line up, pop this xxxxxx DVD in the drive. (I suspect you could order this as a spare part from a dealer for 25 quid). When it gets the right disc and its checked it out, you say "go" on the dealer tool and cross your fingers... depending how the sun is shining and what's been broken before 20 to 180 mins later it might be a good day. Or the dealer says your car was broken but we fixed it now give me £2k

however !!! the USA chap Polar Bear who wrote the clock fix update CD (faking the dealer update disc - but with only a clock fix included) found a well hidden secret engineering procedure no one in 15 years had found.... One element in these menus is the ability to trigger an Update. And thus I suspect as a result one could do the update on the comand at home without STAR (although the AC will likely be off afterwards)… it will likely cope with doing it with the engine running but the more you divert from standard and the older the car the bigger the risks.

If you update the mapping to 2019 and go to a main dealer and hand over around 200 quid they should update the comand unit for you and it would be interesting if they bother to fix the clock.... But if that DVD drive is dead / dying this will be problematic ...

as for which map version it has. one might find that in the engineering menu (although I didn't come across it), or you pop in a map dvd and it says the car has x did you want to try and break it to y …..

the PCIMCIA slot is a 1/4 inch by 2.5 inch horizontal slot that does the square root of nothing as std. But you can buy on ebay cheap (15 to 20 quid) things that push in the slot and allow you to put a memory card in to it. You need ones this old car understands. And the size of the memory cards it takes varies.

I have an pcimcia to SD card adaptor….
However some get certain pcimcia SD HC devices to work
But I think pcimcia to compact flash would be better / more likely to get you to 16 gig of space. In the old days this would cost nearly as much as the car but now you'll get for £45. And because compact flash was a standard that was around when the car was made it should cope better

SD cards had a capacity of 2 gig and that's what the car was expected to use (although mine has a fake 4 gig card meeting the old SD spec)
SD HC pushed this to 16 gig and shouldn't work but seems they do
SD XC took that to 32 gig and won't work
SD UC takes it to 128gig and won't work

then you'll need someone to put the music you want on it....

 

[LPGJOE]

any programming must be done with decent voltage in the hope it writes correctly and functions afterwards

the car even with a brand new 26 kg battery in the boot will kill it inside 30 minutes... it pulls 37 amps with the key in the run position. The correct procedure is with a huge power supply ensuring it never drops below 14.6v, the dealer tool refuses to write unless this is met.

The std procedure is to connect up to the dealer diagnostics, it then says if you want to play hook up the power supply, then you ask if there's an update to the telematics network of the car and it connect home to Germany. If its out of date, on this old car where most software was small, it says that's a lot of data, tell you what rather then clog the phone line up, pop this xxxxxx DVD in the drive. (I suspect you could order this as a spare part from a dealer for 25 quid). When it gets the right disc and its checked it out, you say "go" on the dealer tool and cross your fingers... depending how the sun is shining and what's been broken before 20 to 180 mins later it might be a good day. Or the dealer says your car was broken but we fixed it now give me £2k

however !!! the USA chap Polar Bear who wrote the clock fix update CD (faking the dealer update disc - but with only a clock fix included) found a well hidden secret engineering procedure no one in 15 years had found.... One element in these menus is the ability to trigger an Update. And thus I suspect as a result one could do the update on the comand at home without STAR (although the AC will likely be off afterwards)… it will likely cope with doing it with the engine running but the more you divert from standard and the older the car the bigger the risks.

If you update the mapping to 2019 and go to a main dealer and hand over around 200 quid they should update the comand unit for you and it would be interesting if they bother to fix the clock.... But if that DVD drive is dead / dying this will be problematic ...

as for which map version it has. one might find that in the engineering menu (although I didn't come across it), or you pop in a map dvd and it says the car has x did you want to try and break it to y …..

the PCIMCIA slot is a 1/4 inch by 2.5 inch horizontal slot that does the square root of nothing as std. But you can buy on ebay cheap (15 to 20 quid) things that push in the slot and allow you to put a memory card in to it. You need ones this old car understands. And the size of the memory cards it takes varies.

I have an pcimcia to SD card adaptor….
However some get certain pcimcia SD HC devices to work
But I think pcimcia to compact flash would be better / more likely to get you to 16 gig of space. In the old days this would cost nearly as much as the car but now you'll get for £45. And because compact flash was a standard that was around when the car was made it should cope better

SD cards had a capacity of 2 gig and that's what the car was expected to use (although mine has a fake 4 gig card meeting the old SD spec)
SD HC pushed this to 16 gig and shouldn't work but seems they do
SD XC took that to 32 gig and won't work
SD UC takes it to 128gig and won't work

then you'll need someone to put the music you want on it....

Just sounds like to much effort & risk for age of car ! Ill make do with what installed, could be more trouble than its worth, Thanks

 

[Botus]

mine has 50 (but its not in the order here... I get headlamps ) but I don't have 54, 55 or 56

 

[LPGJOE]

Thats very intresting, is that showing all the modules ? where did you find this ? is there a list to tell you what each one is ?

 

[Botus]

added the table

wiz kid on USA forum konigstiger…. he is very good at leaking all the issues Merc would rather they didn't want us to know about

 

[ssjay]

what doesn't work....

"it is standard at this age the Radio Tuner and its integral amp dies , leaving no sound to anything, and the comand screen showing no radio stations displaying. All the menus can be navigated around and maps / nav work but with no sound."

Heaps of awesome information in here!

Just on this, I've got this issue with my 2006 W221 S350. Is it as simple as replacing the TV-Kombi-Tuner or is it the MR1510 amp I need to replace?

I'm not worried about TV, I'm just sick of running a bluetooth speaker in an S-Class haha