>> It's almost like those companies that sell you a printer for £20 and 
>> then charge you £80 for the ink...
> 
> Exactly.  The ones who don't charge 80 for their ink have to sell their 
> printers for 40 to make any profit.  Then nobody buys it because it's 
> double the price of the competition.  In both cases they rely on the 
> fact that people only consider the "initial" or "base" price displayed 
> in big flashy font.

Personally, when *I* buy a printer, I tend to look for one that looks 
like it isn't going to break after 3 uses, which usually rules out all 
the £20 printers. But apparently that's just me...

>> My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace.
> 
> Yes I understand that, most cars are like that now.  It doesn't mean you 
> can't take it out though.

I'm sure you can take it out. The problem is that you can't put anything 
else in its place, because it won't be the right shape and won't have 
the custom Renault-specific connectors. (They're probably different on 
every model of Renault too, just to stop you taking the stereo from an 
expensive car and putting it into a cheap car.)

>>> My point is the electrical connection is probably right there behind 
>>> *your* head unit, you just need to connect three wires to it.
>>
>> I severely doubt it.
> 
> So it would be more than a 12p audio socket then?

I mean they've probably got all the connections in one of those big 
block terminals to prevent you from knowing which connection is which. 
(That's assuming there even *is* an input to the amplifier other than 
the tuner and CD DAC inside the head unit itself...)

>> If their intention is to force you to expend money, they will 
>> presumably have made this is difficult as humanly possible to prevent 
>> you not expending money.
> 
> They wouldn't put much effort in to it, believe me.  Heck you can even 
> spend a few hundred pounds to modify the ECU to get the same performance 
> as the next model up, they could easily prevent that if they could be 
> bothered.  In reality not enough people do anything like this to make it 
> worth their while working on it.

Just courious now, but... Does a Renault Megane actually *have* an ECU?

>> As far as I can tell, none of the 4 available models has an audio socket.
> 
> Ah ok, so it probably doesn't exist then.  Sorry I misunderstood, I 
> thought it was an option to have one installed.

Fair enough.

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