I have a 2004 X-Type and have purchased the rear seat headrests, I am not keen on the fact that sound comes only through headphones, i knew this going in so not complaining about the purchase but i wondering if anybody had any ideas to get around this. I have two young kids and i would like to be able to talk to them I don't want them wearing headphones. I don't know if there is some way I can hack the system to get sound out of it and then install a speaker or maybe use an input device that has it's own speaker. I am not concerned about great quality at this point and they don't need independent inputs, they can watch the same movie or whatever.
I have the stock radio/cd in the car and can fade the speakers to the front so they can have their own sound at the back - but how to achieve that, any ideas?
It is not installed yet so if anybody has a more elegant solution, I am all ears but will appreciate any all suggestions - thanks

 

if its a standard headphone jack, you can pick up any aftermarket speakers themselves and only plug them in when they want to listen to it. My friend just got a beautiful set of portable speakers that plug into a jack. Run off of batteries but its rechargeable, and have great and fairly loud sound and look very nice. I'll have to see what the exact brand of them were if you want to go that route.

 

No they are wireless headphones. Wonder if you could get some wireless speakers that could match the frequency?
Any electronics experts out there?

 

I added the same headrests to my car recently. But in my case I have gutted the entire factory sound system (base model) and so my head unit provides the audio and video to the headrests. I wish there was a way to connect the RCA from the head unit back to the factory headrests without having the cable come out of the tunnel and plug back in to the panel behind the armrest... but it works. And the kids still have one input open if they want to plug in a game or other device.

So the headphones only give them sound when they use the alternate input. It's not the solution you're looking for, but I will say that if you're considering cutting in to the wiring to hook up speakers in the back panel just bear in mind that the RCA puts out ~2 watts (2.5 I think?) and won't run a speaker loud enough for the kids to use. Installing an earphone jack is an option as was mentioned, but ultimately I think replacing the headunit with something that provides RCA input/outpout is the better solution.