Plannig on a future upgrade to the stereo, my factory cd player no longer works.I've been looking at some in dash DVD players, with the screen that comes out of the deck.
Some of the ones I've seen say they only play the dvd while vehicle is in park.

Now before you start in on me I'm not stupid, I don't want to watch DVDs while I'm driving. I know you're not supposed to have a video display in the driver'* field of vision, and you could get pulled over for it.

But I was wondering if there is a way to set up an in dash DVD system to play while the vehicle is in gear? I assume I'd have to do the install myself since most install places wouldn't be allowed to set a screen up that way.

just a quick note here....i dont like flip out dvd screens because i have seen too many of them strip out the gears then are useless....

most of the units have to be grounded to make the DVD work, they use inputs from the parking brake to determine if the DVD should by used.....the screen will still function in drive tho...must of the dvd units are touch screen

Wouldnt it be extremely easy to bypass the grounding issue? Just take a ground from anywhere.

99% of units have a wire that just needs ground. From what i've seen the only units (but i could be wrong) that need a special module are Alpine units. They require a special procedure to enable the screen so it needs the module to preform this sequence every time the car is started. The bad thing about that is that the alpine units are some of the best.

You could put in a seperate switch to override the park requirements. That way you could have it correctly wired with an extra wire as well. This way if it was ever tested for any reason it would only work when in park.

To answer your ?, yes u can use a universal ground somewhere and i'll work all the time!!! My HU is a Sony and looks like a regular screen but u can run AUX video and watch DVD'* all day!!!!

ive got the pionneer avic 1, its not hooked up to the gear so it can play while i drive but i dont beacuse i dont want to wreck the bonne, with my unit all i did was get a toggle switch, ground on side, and bring in the gear selecter wire and ground it out, so if the car is running i just flip the toggle back and fourth and on comes the dvd, works good, but some new pionner systems have a built ion gyro meter so it may be tougher to stop the internals.