I finally bought a car stereo:
Pioneer AVH-P4200DVD In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver Yes it’s expensive but it is totally awesome. First off it sounds great even with the factory speakers so as of right now I don’t think I’ll need to upgrade them. The thing I like the most about it is the interface, and it also looks cool. Even my aging eyes can use every function w/o putting on my reading glasses. The function buttons are pretty intuitive taking less than10 minutes to learn everything on the demo unit in the store. When the installer took me out to show me how to work it I zipped through all the functions w/o any help and even showed him a feature he didn’t know.
It accepts input from CD/DVD including -R -RW but not dual layer (no head units I saw did), USB, iPod, SD card and of course AM/FM. Some other units accepted +R +RW but since most of my DVD rips (95% +) are on dual layer which they didn’t accept I’ll just have to rip things to -RW to take with me. I does read several media formats including mp3 off both CD and DVD. No FLAC but it does do WMA but for driving purposes I thing 320 bit mp3 sounds just fine.
It has all the standard head unit features plus some nice extras. The screen is easily visible even in the brightest light (important for Phoenix). Only direct light reflecting off it dulls the image somewhat but the screen tilts to it can be angled out of the reflection. A track progress slider allows you to queue the song/video up to any point by dragging it with your finger, even giving a time hack so you know exactly where you are.
One drawback, all the units I was looking at suffered this problem, is that it only sorts tracks by mp3 tags when hooked up to an “i” device, however one review I read said it worked with a Cowen S9 I think. OTOH the screen is so large that navigating files/folders is actually still quite easy since it lists about 10 on the screen at a time. You can also scroll through them with a flick of a finger.
Another drawback, legal one, is that DVD players can project an image from the front dash while driving so a DVDs video won’t display unless the parking break is on. However, you can still play a DVD hearing the audio and having full control over playback functions. So concert DVDs will play fine even when driving.
Since I spend about a total of 1 hour in the car each day I drive to and from work I wanted something I could really enjoy and most importantly learning from my last head unit was easy to use while driving. So I figured it was worth the extra money since I plan to keep the new car I bought to go with it for at least 5 years.
P.S. leaning heavily toward a Cowen J3 as a portable media player.
