RACE U

This Tuesday I am having a Kenwood 9990HD installed in my 08 vert.

For those that have done this head unit upgrade, how difficult was it to add custom Startup and Background screens?

I have seen the 27 page thread on the forum about other Kenwood units, but not the 9990HD. Also, I may have missed it, but I did not see the file format these files needed to be.

Finally, there are some cool backup screens that have been used in the past. Is there a capability for these screens to have active images? For instance, I have seen some screens with flames in them. Is there a way to get these flames to not be a still shot (and move arount)?

Thanks.

ChicagoDave

I saw on a Kenwood board that this "feature" was removed (I think this was never a feature - people just figured out how to make it work). They mentioned it was a warranty issue. They also got rid of 3D buildings. I would love to hear your thoughts on this HU. I was just about to buy one and began reading the Kenwood threads and decided to hold off for a while. Of course, I could be 100% wrong!

JKbride

Can only be better than the less than stellar OEM NAV HU GM put in the Corvette. I will be replacing my NAV with something that is more current and don't feel and look like an Atari 2800.

Kenwood for me is the best choice and love the Garmin Navigation engine it has. Just need to determine which model. My son manages a Car Audio Store and I can get at his cost

RACE U

If thats the case, I should have bought the previous unit (9980hd). From reading, its suppose to be about 3 times slower than the new unit.

I was really looking forward to personalizing the screen.

RACE U

Thats cool on the cost. I was really surprised as to what installation cost (and that takes a lot, as I have almost numb to the fact that most accessories for the vette are way overpriced.

JKbride

Shop around and Negotiate. Some stores make little on the equipment (to get you in the door and soak you on the install), Most these type of stores have some wiggle room on the equipment, but generally more flexibility on the labor.

Generally they do not have any money tied up in the expensive HU's and call their local distributor and order when you select something...they make money (as they should) on the equipment order, but to be competitive....usually not that much....thats why the labor is so much.

RACE U

Update on this per the Kenwood Forum. The start up screen has been locked down by Kenwood, which appears to have a lot of Kenwood owners up in arms. There are plenty of Kenwood users that were going to upgrade to the 9990HD, but are now not going to because of this issue, as well as some other functionality that was eliminated in the new model.

In addition, per the Users Manual, it appears that the background screen can still be modified, with the ability to store 3 user defined background screens in the HU's memory.

Flame Red

I have the 7190 and Kenwood tech support told me that the boot-up screen feature was no longer available. Wrong!

7190 Startup Screen

Now there are a whole lot of other features that are MIA.

1. No more customized car icons for the GPS

2. If you load your own custom POI DB,

* The POI icons no longer show up on the Maps (red light camera, etc.)
* The custom voice warnings are no longer supported, best you can get is a "ding" or a continuous ding.

3. No mini USB connector on the back to allow a laptop to update the files directly

4. The hidden Developer menus are present, but when you look under File Manager, all the devices do not show any files in them so it is not possible to copy and paste between the USB/SD to the disk anymore

chops

I just had a 6190HD installed and was unable to find anything concrete on how to change the startup screen since the unit is so new, but I figured it out. I'm not sure if the physical interface is similar to mine or not, but this is what I did:

Press and hold both the MENU and NAV buttons, and poke the red triangle with a pen. Keep holding the menu and nav buttons as the unit resets. A setup menu should pop that allows you to select an OEM image for the startup screen. Just make sure you have a photo with the right dimensions and color space loaded on a usb thumbdrive that's plugged into the unit.

RACE U

Hmmmmm......what type of file extension or conversion does the picture needs to be?

chops

File should be a .BMP, 800 x 480 (may vary depending on screen resolution of your individual unit), 16 bit.

RACE U

Cool....thank you very much!

harveyjoe

I just finished updating the boot up screen on my 9990HD. Here is the information that I got from another site;
The first steps is to format your image

1) File Type needs to be Bit Map
2) Pixel Size should be 800 * 480, but you need to first set to 921 * 480
3) Picture does need to be crushed during finalization, from 921*480 to 800 *480, as it will get expanded when loaded
4) You need to use a dedicated image processing application such as Photoshop in order to be able to make the right settings and save in the correct format.
5) Save as 16 bit Full Color BMP and the setting of RGB of R5,G6,B5 is very important
6) Windows Applications like Paint cannot be used to make the BMP as the settings for the RGB and picture crushing cannot be done with that application.


Note: Step 5 above is absolutely crucial to accomplish this task. If its not in this format it may not show or it may not load


Before entering the setup mode, save your settings from the SETUP MEMORY option. Select TOOLS, SYSTEM, SETUP MEMORY. Select YES, MEMORY and confirm that you want to write to the memory. This is also detailed on page 84 of the owners manual. Once the start up screen proceeder is complete, recall your settings from the above options. (I didnt bother with this step)

To enter setup Mode, Press and hold VOLUME DOWN & MENU buttons, then press RESET button (red triangle). (I had to us a pen to press in the red triangle my fingers r too big, funny my wife never complained about that, go figure )

• Release reset button, and hold VOLUME DOWN & MENU buttons until illumination activates. (This is the step I missed. Once you preset the red triangle while holding the other 2 bottoms radio will go off. STAY holding the 2 buttons until you see your radio button lights come on then continue)
• Once the startup screen menu loads, connect the USB Thumb drive containing image file. The files must be in the root directory.
• If you want to change the opening image to your own image (i.e., company logo), Press OEM Image.
• Select the image you want. The image does not seem to display (blank window) and two boxes show up even if you only have one image on the thumb drive. Pick the first one if you only have one image on the thumb drive and when you select it it will show the file name.
• If you want to put original KENWOOD opening back, press KENWOOD image.
• When the image is loaded, select Enter. Once the file writing is complete, hit the RESET button again. The unit should now boot with your new screen. Recall your settings and your done

And it did work for me.

TLK

Now if someone would just figure out the procedure for the 6990HD...

RACE U

I am kind of a newbie....I can't get the image into the correct format...could you help if I sent you the file?????

fwrogg

I followed these instructions and it worked just fine to changing the startup screen. http://www.avrdistributing.com/tech_...-7_Startup.pdf

Had to use photoshop as in these instructions to change the wallpaper from the avic thread and it worked great.

studiovette

The background screen on my 7160'was very easy to change. The startup was nearly impossible it took me about a year going back n forth to figure it out and get the format right. Good luck

TLK

kenwood dnx 6990 hd

harveyjoe

pm me with your email address.