This is my first post so my apologies for any newbie-ness. Anyway, I'm considering getting the AVIC-D3 for my BMW 330Ci because I love how it looks very OEM and I can change the color of the button lights to match my interior. Plus, the price is very aggressive and jsut about how much I would want to spend.

With that said, I don't particularly like the idea of having to swap the navigation disk out if I want to place an Audio CD or a Movie DVD into the slot at the top of the unit. Has anyone entertained the idea of installing an external DVD unit and placing the navigation disk in there permanently? Would the D3 then be able to read the navigation information from there? I'm assuming some sort of hack would be needed and that you couldn't simply use a DVD changer such as the and somehow hacking the D3 to read navigation data. I would imagine you would need something a bit different than the XDV-P6. Perhaps the drive from one of the older stand-alone DVD systems like the AVIC-80DVD. Basically, I think it would be awesome if we could install a DVD drive in our dash, throw the DVD Nav Disk in there, and have the in-dash slot be empty and available for whatever you want.

So... any thoughts on the thought?

It can't be done. Nav disk has to be in the unit. You could use the XDVP6 for your CDs/Movies or get yourself a video ipod instead

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I figured that was the answer but I still can't help but think that there must be some way with some type of hardware hack to re-route some internal wires. But you know that'd be a fantastic mod/hack to figure out.

I know I'll probably end up just getting an external drive like the one you referred to and keep it in my glove box which is pretty convenient.

/start rant

I'm very anti-iPod and will never own one so that route isn't an option. And no, I dont hate iPods b/c everyone loves them. The interface is garbage, iTunes is arguably the worst mass-adopted program right behind Vista, and they have no actual features (recording, radio, multi-codec, etc).

/end rant

Oh man, not this one again! We tore through a whole thread talking about ways to do this (that and adding RAM?). I think it came down to just not being possible until someone can hack that OS it's running on. :/

And this one's getting locked too. If in the future someone has something productive to add to this I'll unlock it.