let me start by saying pioneer was of absolutely no help, their quick and abrupt response was "a european version must be purchased for operation in europe"

which ironically is a similiar response to when people started asking about bypassing the N and D series some years ago " vehicle must be parked for video operation".. we all know where that lead up to.. lol.. 

anyway..  heres my dilemma

i have a Z150BH in an Audi A4 cabrio,  its the driving force of a $5k custom install so i dont want to pull it, BUT, the car is being exported to greece later this spring.. 

what are my options here?

i know the euro version is the F50BT, and after lengthy research on whatever parts i was able to find, which were mostly main boards, etc..  they both share most, if not all internal parts, the region coding on the dvd player is software based, and NOT hardware based, so im thinking this unit can be changed over to a euro version by a simple software update..

firmware update, map install etc.. 

but.. 

knowing something about PC software, im thinking the unit has to be formatted before a region change like this happens

how would i go about this? i know my way around the unit.. but not that way around.. 

any help would be greatly appreciated

any ideas on this guys? im still trying to work this out before dumping another 1k into a european head unit

I'm reluctant to guess since the older models are different than the Z150. But ignoring the DVD region issue, you might be able to pull off installing the EU firmware/maps (the F50BT version) by just replacing the CARDINFO.CIF file on the EU update SD with one for a US Z150. Here's CARDINFO for Z150 from the 2016 update - the year shouldn't matter. Courtesy of nezfotnemom. 

I don't see any F50BT update images posted. I guess you could by one, but there's no guarantee it will work.

CARDINFO.CIF