Car Stereos: 2004 Ford Explorer Rear Entertainment, rear seat entertainment system, kenwood kvt

Question
I have 2004 Ford Explorer and installed a kenwood KVT-719 dvd unit. I also have a rear entertainment system. I can not get the rear entertainment system to turn on. Will that let the rear entertainment system work independent? Thanks for your help.

Answer
Hi,

I wasn't able to find a lot of information on this particular system, but from what I can tell, you should be able to activate the factory rear seat entertainment system by powering a wire in the radio harness.  It may be a green/black wire, in the middle plug behind the radio; you'd activate it by connecting it to the new head unit's blue/white remote output wire.  If you still have the factory radio available, your best bet is probably to plug it back in, then use a voltmeter to test the wires in the factory harness to see if one shows voltage when the radio is turned on.

Some newer Ford systems use a data signal to activate the RSE system, which means you'd have to keep the factory deck wired into the system and relocate it elsewhere in the vehicle.  However, I don't think the 04 Explorer uses the data system--you should just be able to find a wire in the radio harness, and power it to activate the rear system.  If you can get the rear unit to power up, the stock DVD and headphone outputs should still work.  However, if you want to get the rear audio to play through the head unit, you'd need to locate the audio signal wires in the radio harness, and adapt them to the KVT-719's auxiliary input jacks.

Sorry I can't be more helpful with this one.  Good luck!

Brian