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I finally got the Alpine DVD system working in my car - it turned out that the cables were half cut through inside both of the front seats.

However, there is something strange with the system. The screens can't show the same thing at the same time. Each video output (tuner, DVD, playstation) has a splitter on it going to the inputs of both screens.

eg. Alpine TV tuner output goes to 'Y' splitter then to input 1 of screen1 and input 1 of screen2. It's obviously just a cable splitter, no electronics of any kind in it.

This seems to mean that I can watch the TV on one screen and a DVD on the other, but if I select the same source on both screens, one screen will display it, and the other will just display random lines / interference.

Does this make any sense? It seems unlikely that it is supposed to be this way...

Unfortunately, signals theory is completely lost to me...

A passive splitter can halve the signal strength, hence making it too weak for some screens to display.

When splitting video you should always use an active splitter.

Thanks for that. That's what I thought, but one screen is perfect and the other is just a noisy mess. I thought it might be an impedence problem or something.

If I connect the other screens as slaves then the problem will go away. Just means that the same thing will be on all screens.

Problem resolved by slaving the 2nd screen off the first and RNS-D off the second. Good enough for me. It's all back in now. What a mess when you start pulling the tuners and stuff out!

Downside is that the remote control receiver is on the rear screens so need double jointed elbows!