OK, What will it fit?

After a bit more searching it would seem this unit will only fit BMW's sold in Japan Can anyone confirm?

Yup, AFAIK that's the sat nav system for Japanese market E39s only - apparently it's totally incompatible with European BMWs as it uses different connectors / functionality / protocols etc and will not play European map DVDs. In short it's useless for European E39s. RealOEM lists it for E39s but mentions it's for the Japanese market.

I actually saw this sat nav (or one exactly like it) on eBay recently and I e-mailed the seller to tell him it wouldn't work with European E39s as he'd got it listed as compatible with all E39s as well as other BMWs. He then changed his listing to basically say "check for yourself regarding compatability" and that he wouldn't accept refunds or responsibility, but made no mention of the info I'd given him about it not working in Europe and it being for for the Japanese market only. A somewhat misleading and unfair sale I thought...

Thanks
Anyone from Japan looking for a new DVD sat nav
£170 it cost me, research first then buy from now on

Yup, too good to be true in this case - sorry you've been caught out...

I think you'd have a valid claim though if you were to try to get your money back from the eBay seller as he knew perfectly well it wouldn't work in Euro cars after I'd told him but made no mention of that in the ad - if he won't play ball, eBay/Paypal should be sympathetic if you go through the resolution centre and force a refund. PM me if I can help more on that.

Alternatively I guess, try to flog it to someone in Japan - you can sell to Japan on the UK eBay site but you'd have more success if you used the Japanese version - but it only uses Japanese script so you might need to find someone who knows Kanji first...