Play Video on the HU in Your Toyota Alphard

In this post, I will cover how to operate the DVD video function on the HU.

After you insert a DVD into the unit, the HU will display this screen

It will prompt you a message to remind you to touch the screen to operate the video function. Just press the (了解）button to dismiss the message and it will bring up to the main video display screen

At this point, you can touch anywhere on the screen to bring up the menu screen as shown below

At the top of the screen, it will display the title (タイトル), chapter (チャプター), play back mode (Dolby Digital or Stereo), Channel (3/2.1ch) to indicates if multi-channel is in operation (5.1 channel mode).

To select the menu options, you'll have to bring up the Menu Selection screen by touching the (メニﾕｰ) button.

Touch the arrow buttons to nagivate through the DVD menu options and then touch the (決定) button to select it. The buttons at the bottom from left to right are Move (移動) button to move the menu option to the top, "off" to turn off the menu, and 戻る to return to previous screen.

When you press the (次ページ) button on the Menu Selection screen, it will bring up this screen This screen allow you to configure the video playback functions. At the bottom of the screen, there are buttons to search (サーチ), return (リターン), configure sound (音声), subtitle (字幕) and angle (アングル). I think these configuration only work with HU with multi-channel functions capability. Since my HU doesn't come with the multi-channel functions (that support 5.1 ch playback), these buttons does't work on my HU.

To configure the initial settings for the video function, touch the 設定button at the top and it will bring up this screen

The first three options allow you to configure the prefer language (by default in Japanese (日本語), the next one configure the mutil-angle function (to display or not to display). I am not familiar with the next option so I can't describe it.

Touch the (次ページ) button to get to the 2nd page of the video settings.

This screen allow you to configure the downmix (ダウンミﾂｸｽ), dynamic sound range (ダイナミツクレンジ), and the speaker level control (スビーカーレペル).

To configure the prefer language, touch any of the languge option above to bring up this screen

Select English (英語) if required but I don't see it work on my HU as remain in Japanese.

When you select the speaker level control button, it will bring up this screen.

To configure the sound level for each of the speaker, touch on each of the button (L/C/R/Ls/RS/SW) and use the Up or Down button to increase or decrease the level. Do note that if your unit doesn't have the multi-channel function, you'll not be able to control the sub-woofer speaker level.

Hope this help you to enjoy your videos now.

The HDD Function In Your Toyota Alphard

When you press the DISC button on the HU, you'll either activate the DVD function or the HDD function. The HDD function allow you to play back music tracks that are already stored in the 30GB hard disk. Once you activated the HDD function , it will automatically play the previously selected Playlist as shown in the following photo.


This screen is very similar to the DVD play list with the exception of the "G-SOUND" button, and the "PLAY LIST" buttons. The "G-SOUND" function is not operational here as it required real time communications to contact the G-Book Center (in Japan) to download music into the HU.

The current playlist will have a title with the date and time when this CD were recorrded. You can select the playlist that you want by touching the UP or DOWN button at the bottom right. If you want to get to specific playlist, touch the "PLAY LIST" button at the top right and it will bring you to this screen.


Each track in the selected playlist will be played sequentially and then the next playlist will be selected automatically. If you want to select a specific track in a playlist, "touch" the TRACK button (below the PLAYLIST button) and it will display the Track List as shown below.


You'll noticed that in the above photo, each of the track will be just displayed as Track1, Track2 etc. If the source CD has the track information in the format compatible with the HU, the track list will display the actual track title accordingly. You can get to the details page on this track by "touching" the "曲情報" button (just below the TRACK button) and the following screen will be displayed.




From the top, it will display the playlist title (アルバム), Track title (トラック), Track Read (トラック読み), Artist (アーテｲスト), Artist Read. You can change the value of each line by touching the "編集" button to the right of each item. It will bring you to the Edit screen which I will cover later.

If you touch the "Next Page" (次ページ) button on the screen, it will bring you to the following screen.

From the top, it shows the Genre (ｼﾞｬﾝﾙ), G-Theme (G-テーマ - no idea what is this but probably tied to G-SOUND), recording source (録音ソース), date of recording (録音日). Again if you feel like changing the value of the genre, you can press the "編集" button mentioned previously and it will bring up the text editing screen like below.


You can enter the value in either Japanese or English language. The buttons at the bottom from the left to right are :

Hiragana (かな) as shown in the photo above.

Katagana (カナ) as shown below

Small letter English character (英数字)

if you press the (大文字) button, it will bring up the English character page in capital letter

The default size of the English character is quite large so if you need more letters, you can touch the (半角) button to bring up the half-width English letter screen

Finally you can press the (数記号) button to enter numeral and symbols screen as shown below.

Press the DOWN arrow to move to the next page.

For each of these pages, you just touch the desire character to enter it, use the (スペース) button to insert a space and the Delete/Correction (修正) button to delete the character.

I normally will just change the title of the playlist and leave the rest of the track as it is.

Noticed that even with half width English small letter, only a small portion of the playlist name is displayed in the PlayList screen. You'll need to touch on that playlist to see the details.

Finally, there is also a button called My Record (マイレクト) that you can use to compile a list of records of your preference. I don't use this feature so I won't go into the details. It just uses the same Edit screen to make changes to the play mode.

In the next post, I'll cover the video function of the DVD player.

Listening To Music In A Toyota Alphard

The head unit in the NFL model come with DVD player as well as a 30GB hard disk storage for playing recorded CD tracks.

To access to the DVD player, you'll need to press the "EJECT" button at the bottom left of the head unit. It will display the following screen for you to select which option you need.


When you touch the "DISC" image on the LCD, it will flip open the LCD panel for you to have access to the DVD slot as shown below.


If there is already a disc inside the DVD slot, touching the "DISC" image will eject that disc.

Once you inserted your CD/DVD into the DVD slot, you'll press the same "EJECT" button (now labelled CLOSE when view from the flip-opened position - see red circle) to close the LCD panel.

In this post, I will cover the music playing function of the DVD player while the future post I will cover the video function of the DVD player.

If you inserted a music CD into the DVD player, it will automatically start playing the music as well as automatically store (a configurable option) the CD tracks into the 30GB hard disk (if this CD has not been recorded before). The tracks from the CD are stored into the hard disk in the background while you play the tracks on the CD.

You know that the tracks on the CD are being stored 1st time into the hard disk by looking at the phrase "REC FAST" displayed at the top of the play time of the current track as shown below.


If you touch the "TRACK LIST" button at the top right on the LCD screen, it will take you to the TRACK LIST screen (see photo below) and you'll noticed that each track that has been stored hard disk will have the word "HDD" on the top left of each track title.


Once all the tracks on the CD has been stored, you can play the tracks again from the hard disk directly instead of inserting the same CD. Of course if you choose to, you can still play the CD track directly from the disc. To know whether the track is played from the CD or from the HDD, just looked at the title at the top left corner of the screen whether it is showing DVD or HDD (as shown below)


The time it take to store the tracks varied depending on the contents in your CD. It is advisable to play the CD long enough for the store operation to complete otherwise not all tracks will be stored into the hard disk. However, if you do stop the car while the recording is in progress, the next time when you play the same CD again, it will continue the recording from where it left off.

In the DVD play mode screen (see the 3rd photo from the top), there are a few buttons at the bottom right that you can "touch" to configure how the tracks are played. You can elect to repeat (RPT) a particular track, randomly (RAND) play a track or scan all track (SCAN). You can also control whether the CD tracks will be recorded automatically into the hard disk by touching the "設定" button. It will bring you to the following screen where you can opt to either automatically record (AUTO) or manually (SELECT) record the tracks.


BTW, the button at the top right of each screen is the return/cancel (戻る) button. Touch it to return to the previous screen.

In the next post, I'll describe in further details how to operate the HDD functions.

The Radio Function In a NFL Toyota Alphard

This blog continue from the last post where I cover the operation of the head unit.

To operate the radio, you'll press the "AM FM" button on the head unit and the preset radio channels will be displayed as shown in the photo below.


Press the "AM FM" button again to switch between the AM and FM channels. If your radio channels are pre-set by your dealer, it should be highlighted and it should start to receive the radio signal immediately. To select another channel, just "touch" on one of the box labelled 1 to 6.

Do note that the radio channel frequency in Japan operate up to a maximum of 90MHz while the local radio channel runs up to 107MHz. Therefore, the standard head unit will not be able to receive some of the higher frequency radio channels operating in Malaysia. What most dealers will do (to sweeten the deal) is they will install a frequency booster to increase the reception of the radio unit so that it can receive local radio channels. The one installed by the dealer onto my giant is shown in the photo below.

This unit allow the radio frequency reception to be boosted by increment of 12, 16 or 20 MHz. However do note that even though the frequency reception has been boosted, the displayed frequency on the LCD doesn't show the exact received frequency. Therefore, you might want to make a mental note of which frequency is for which radio channel. To tune the radio frequency to any of your favourite channel, just press the "Up" or "Down" portion of the "TUNE TRACK" button.

You can also use the "AUTO.P" function to try the auto-programming of the radio channels. However, I find that it is not very effective in setting the radio channel frequency correctly. I normally will let it run with the pre-set channel frequency.

To control the sound level of your speakers, you'll pressed the "SOUND" button to bring up this screen.


You can change the treble, mid and bass level by "touching" the "+" or "-" buttons on the screen. You can also fade the sound favouring the front, rear, left or right by "touching" each of these buttons.

Because of the limited capabilities on the standard head unit to control the sound level, I believed many owners who wanted a better sound system will opt to install aftermarket audio equipment to enhance the listening level in their giant. I have done it on my giant and I'll blog about it in future.

To control the automatic sound levelling function, you'll press the "ASL" button to bring up this screen.


The ASL function will increase the volume of the head unit depending on your setting to compensate for the intruding noise from outside as you drive you car. I normally leave it at MID.

There is also a screen on the G-Book function that allow you to tune your FM function automatically but I was not able to get it to work here.

The Head Unit In Your Toyota Alphard

The NFL giant (Toyota Alphard) comes with an 8-inch head unit with touch-screen LCD display. It is a 2-DIN unit that combine many control functions like GPS, audio video, sound system, vehicle information, parking guide monitor, lane monitoring system, sonar sensor, ETC system, and G-Book online service system.

Toyota call it the HDD Navigation System and provided a two volumes manual for the owner references. However, both manuals are in Japanese so I'll attempt to provide the information necessary to help owners to operate the head unit (as I loosely refer to the NFL HDD Navigation System).

Even though some of the buttons on the front of the head unit are in English, the displayed contents are in Japanese. For non-Japanese speaking owner, it will be quite a challenge in operating the head-unit trying to decipher the functions.

There are two options for the desperate owner; one to replace the head unit with an OEM head unit that has the buttons printed in English, however, all the content are still in Japanese so it doesn't help much. Two, to replace the entire head unit with after-market unit with English content but they may lose some functionalities such as front/rear camera line view, bluetooth connection, steering button control etc with come with the original head unit.

This post will attempt to explain some of the more common steps on how to operate the original head unit with photos as a guide.

When you turn on the ignition, the head unit display will also turn on as shown in the photo below



The first thing you'll heard is the voice of a sweet Japanese girl announcing the current date (obviously in Japanese). After that the display will prompt you with the message that you have not inserted the ETC card as shown in the photo below.

ETC is the equivalent of our SmartTAG toll payment gadget we have in this country. The ETC function is integrated into the head unit but it cannot be used in here since it is operating in a different mode from our Touch n Go system. You'll probably find a ETC card unit installed somewhere in your giant but it will not useable here. Many owner use it as card holder for the Touch n Go card instead.

You can turn off the date and ETC announcement if you don't need them. I will cover this in the other post.

After the ETC announcement, you'll operate the head unit by pressing the buttons around the edge of the head unit. Referring to the first photo above, from the top right in clockwise direction, the buttons are:

1. Power button - press it to turn on or off the head unit
2. "TUNE TRACK" button - use to tune the radio channel frequency or to select a particular music track while playing musics from the hard disk
3. "Information" button - use to receive traffic information (only work in Japan)
4. DISC button - this button cycle between the HDD function and the DVD function.
5. AM FM button - this button cycle between the AM radio channel and FM radio channel
5. MD button - this button operate the Mini Disc function.
6. TV button - this button operate the TV function or the Video function. Japanese TV transimission is based on NTSC format while our is PAL so the TV function cannot be use here.
7. 情報G button - this button operate the G-book online services. The G-book online services required registration with the G-Book Center in Japan and it only work in Japan but you can use it to configure some general settings for the head unit
8. "目的地設定" button - This button is used to configure the destination settings for the GPS function. This function is not operational here since the built-in GPS system don't work here
9. "メニユー" button - this button brings up the menu function to configure the GPS settings
10. " 現在地" button - this button allow you to configure the "current locations" settings for the GPS function, again not useable here.
11. "オーデｲｵ" button - this button brings up the audio screen display when you operate the DVD/HDD functions
12. " 画質.消" button - when you press this button, it will either bring up the display or cancel of the display
13. "Eject" button - this button flip open the LCD screen to allow you to access to the DVD/MD slots

In the next few posts I'll cover how to operate the radio, DVD, and HDD functions.