Okay, so I got a new 2023 Toyota Sienna, and I gotta say, I was pretty stoked about the entertainment system. I mean, we waited over a year for this van, and with kids, you know how it is on those long road trips. But man, figuring out how to actually use the thing? That was a whole other story. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy, but this had me stumped for hours.
First off, I tried the HDMI route. I figured, “Hey, this should be easy, right?” I grabbed an HDMI cable and plugged in my old laptop. I connected the other end into the port on the side of the display in the van. Nothing. Screen’s just sitting there, mocking me. I messed around with the settings on the laptop, made sure the display was mirrored and everything. Still nothing.
Next, I thought I’d give Miracast a shot. I have an Android phone, so I figured this would work. I went through the steps in the manual, checked if my phone was compatible, and followed all the instructions to the letter. I started the connection process, but guess what? My phone could find the van, but the van couldn’t seem to find my phone. I tried this probably a dozen times, restarting my phone, turning the van’s system on and off. No dice.
Feeling pretty defeated at this point, I decided to try something called DLNA. I’d never even heard of this before. I found an app that supports it as a server and installed it on my phone. I went back to the van, grabbed the remote, and pressed the “DLNA” button. A Wi-Fi network popped up on my phone, and I connected to it, no problem. But then what? How do I actually get my videos to play? I fumbled around in the app, but it wasn’t exactly user-friendly. I couldn’t find my files that I wanted to play.
- I started with HDMI, but it failed.
- Then I tried Miracast. My phone found the car, but the car didn’t find my phone.
- Finally, I tried DLNA. I connected my phone to the Wi-Fi, but I couldn’t find the right button to play the videos.
Finally, after hours of messing around, I stumbled upon the solution. Turns out, you need a specific type of media player app on your phone to make DLNA work. I downloaded a couple, and finally, one of them worked! I could see my phone’s files on the van’s screen, and I could finally play a movie. Thank goodness, because I was on the verge of buying a portable DVD player, can you believe it?
Key Steps to Make DLNA Work
Here’s a little cheat sheet for anyone else struggling with this:
- Download a DLNA-compatible media player app. There are several available on the app store, so just search for “DLNA player.”
- Press the “DLNA” button on the van’s remote.
- Connect your phone to the Wi-Fi network that the van creates.
- Open the media player app on your phone and select the video you want to play.
- Look for a “cast” or “share” button within the app and select the Sienna’s entertainment system as the destination.
It was a pain to figure out, but at least now I know how to use the entertainment system. Hopefully, this little guide will save someone else the headache I went through. It’s a cool feature once you get it working, but Toyota could definitely make it a bit more intuitive. Anyone else have a similar experience?
