Retrofit Discover Media from Composition media

[trimapa]

Hi all , I'm a new member living in Spain and hoping to find an answer to my question here .

I own a 2014 Golf 7 and retrofitted a Discover Media main unit and control panel from the standard composition color that came with the car . My local ( fairly useless in general ) dealer removed the component protection on the unit but left me with just the radio and media SD cards working . I have no longer the bluetooth for the phone or music streaming working , let alone the navigation .
They claim that VW HQ does not allow ( hence can not ) to activate these function because my car was not originally fitted with the Discover Media unit .
My question here is : Has anyone found a way around this ?

Many thanks in advance for any valuable answers or tips

BTW I have read some great topics here ! Great forum 

[fredgroves]

No, no way of solving it.

One guy here even had his car delivered with the WRONG unit and all the dealer could do was to order a whole replacement car!

[Sootchucker]

Isn't this just ludicrous. I can understand they want to prevent theft and illegally obtained units flooding Ebay and the like, but if someone purchases a unit directly from the manufacturer (or the dealer), or as Fred says, if a car was delivered by accident with the incorrect system fitted, then so long as the right channels are adhered to, and VW factory are in the loop the whole way, why can't these be retrofitted ?

Surely It's just a bit of coding from the factory that's preventing this, and so long as they take this attitude, the smart people out there will find a way to crack the protection and there will be a flood of cracked units on the web ?

I'm sure there's a few people that would pay a good chunk of money to either have Nav retrofitted (the original owner might not have specified it at time of order), or some people might want the MIB II units to have the mirrorlink function so that things like googlemaps and on-line services become available. Surely this would generate additional revenue for the dealerships ?

[trimapa]

Thank you for the answers so far , obviously it was not what I was hoping to hear , but then again the truth very often hurts .
It would seem that VW itself is the one preventing the retrofits and yes , me too I'm all in favour that VW implements draconian security measures to ensure that stolen units can not be used .
However , going as far as locking all possibility to upgrade or even downgrade existing and legally obtained units could be considered as abusive monopoly style practise . Such practises in the past have found themselves in legal battles and losing them .
Not sure this is commercially motivated practice by VW , I blunt it is s winning one .
Guess more people will hold it against VW then actually buy another vehicle because they found themselves in the situation of needing a GPS system at a later stage after buying their vehicle .

[Diehammer]

What would happen if the unit had a hardware issue surely they would need to replace it under warranty. They aren't going to give you a new car because of a faulty head unit so they could find themselves in a legal knot.

[AndyG]

I don't know if this is available in Spain but over here if you want sat nav you can have your existing composite media upgraded to run a kenwood sat nav.It costs £500 for this and is an add on item that uses existing system.

[JoeGTI]

What would happen if the unit had a hardware issue surely they would need to replace it under warranty. They aren't going to give you a new car because of a faulty head unit so they could find themselves in a legal knot.

I suppose in that case, they'd simply be replacing NAV in a car that already has NAV. It's not retrofitting Nav to a car that didn't have it in the first place.

[Rhyso]

What would happen if the unit had a hardware issue surely they would need to replace it under warranty. They aren't going to give you a new car because of a faulty head unit so they could find themselves in a legal knot.

I suppose in that case, they'd simply be replacing NAV in a car that already has NAV. It's not retrofitting Nav to a car that didn't have it in the first place.

But if the new units are hard coded to the car then surely some form of coding needs to take place to fit the new unit    a bit like when you fit a new ecu; you have to code it to the car

[trimapa]

I don't know if this is available in Spain but over here if you want sat nav you can have your existing composite media upgraded to run a kenwood sat nav.It costs £500 for this and is an add on item that uses existing system.

There are a couple of interfaces available and one of them ( Dynavin )I had fitted in my car but where it did function properly I never liked the layout and operation manners of it . The reason I bought the original discover Media .
I'm somewhere convinced that someone will " crack " the activation codes for these units .
I'm willing to spend the extra money to buy a Ross Tech VAGCOM unit if need be

[topher]

What would happen if the unit had a hardware issue surely they would need to replace it under warranty. They aren't going to give you a new car because of a faulty head unit so they could find themselves in a legal knot.

I suppose in that case, they'd simply be replacing NAV in a car that already has NAV. It's not retrofitting Nav to a car that didn't have it in the first place.

But if the new units are hard coded to the car then surely some form of coding needs to take place to fit the new unit    a bit like when you fit a new ecu; you have to code it to the car

thats the component protection side of things which isn't the sticking point, coding of retrofit stuff on the mqb platform is unlike any of the previous models. Autologic couldn't even code cruise control for me on an 8V A3. VCDS may crack it at some point but afaik there isn't enough info in the public domain yet.