Vehicle entertainment system having built-in test environment server

Line or shop replaceable units (LRUs or SRUs) of a vehicle entertainment system are programmed as microservers to receive and carry out requests for testing the LRUs/SRUs from a browser connected to the LRUs/SRUs over a communications network of the vehicle entertainment system. Test results are transmitted back to the browser for display. The browser may be part of the vehicle entertainment system or remotely connected to the communications network of the vehicle entertainment system. Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is used as the protocol for transporting the requests and the execution results over the communications network, and so, the programming of the LRUs and the SRUs may be achieved with a standard HTTP server program and the browser may be any HTTP-compliant browser such as Netscape Navigator(TM) and Internet Explorer(TM).