The Rivian R1T pickup and R1S SUV are a number of the finest $70,000+ EVs you may get proper now, however they’re not excellent. They’ve a whole lot of bells and whistles, however even three years after the R1T went into manufacturing, Rivian hasn’t discovered a strategy to get streaming providers like YouTube, Netlifx, or Amazon Prime on the EV’s important display screen.
The function has been “on the roadmap” for about two years, in accordance with a Reddit AMA session with the corporate’s head of software program improvement, nevertheless it hasn’t come to fruition but.
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Hacking Rivian’s video playback system
The Rivian R1S and R1T have no manner of serving video streaming content material on their heart screens. However that hasn’t stopped homeowners from discovering a workaround, albeit a considerably flawed one.
Because it stands right this moment, R1T and R1S homeowners solely have entry to audio streaming providers like Spotify, Tidal, TuneIn, and Amazon Music via the automotive’s infotainment system. Bluetooth connectivity can be supplied as normal, however when was the final time you managed to stream video from a smartphone via Bluetooth? Most likely by no means.
And regardless that this looks as if a first-world downside, issues can get fairly boring when ready for an EV to cost at a public station. That’s in all probability why Tesla has been providing native YouTube and Netflix integrations in its EVs for variety of years. It helps cross the time when ready for the battery to be topped up.
However there’s an answer to this downside for Rivian homeowners, albeit a relatively old style and never precisely excellent one. It seems that you may cheat Rivian’s Gear Guard system–which is analogous to Tesla’s Sentry Mode–and replica video information to the USB stick that’s used to retailer dashcam movies. These can then be performed on the automotive’s heart display screen.
![2022 Rivian R1T](https://cdn.motor1.com/images/static/16x9-tr.png)
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Nevertheless, there are some drawbacks to this technique. First, you possibly can’t playback the movies in fullscreen. Second, the movies may not work in any respect in the event that they’re not encoded accurately. And third, it’s important to obtain these movies from someplace within the first place, which isn’t as handy as merely looking YouTube or different video streaming platforms.
The hack was found by the Reddit person r/lancaja00 who posted directions on the r/Rivian subreddit a few days in the past. In response to his findings, Rivian EVs will routinely create a folder construction on a USB drive when it’s first inserted into the automotive’s USB port. A kind of folders is named “Starred,” and it’s right here the place homeowners can copy their MP4 movies and hopefully get them to play on the Gear Guard part of the infotainment.
The video and audio settings that labored have been as follows: H264-MPEG-4 AVC and a decision of 1920×1080 at 23.97 frames per second for video, and MPEG AAC mp4a for the audio.
It’s price noting that watching Gear Guard movies can solely be completed whereas the automobile is stationary, so there’s no potential for doing silly stuff whereas driving. Additionally, we don’t know if this technique gained’t simply merely disappear when Rivian decides to push a brand new software program replace.
However till that occurs, what’s your tackle this? Tell us within the feedback beneath.