Customer Reviews

Audiovox Sirius SCV1 Backseat TV Audio/Video Tuner (Black)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love this thing. I can listen to my radio in the front speakers on the van, and my girls can watch tv in the back using the sound from the speakers on the screens or through headphones. Or, if you feel like giving them a theater experience, you can also put it through the vehicle speakers.

The "tv" has its own remote, so you don't have to always change the thing over to change it for them. Plus, it runs off of "RCA" connection cables, so you can split the signal to as many "TVs" as you have available in the vehicle.

My girls love this thing. I used to have to remember to bring DVDs so they could watch on trips, but now, if I forget it is not big deal.

The channels are: Cartoon Network Mobile, Nickelodean Mobile, and Disney Mobile. They run the same programs, and have some commercials, but they run off their own separate schedule from their real TV versions.

My only qualm with this thing is the lack of channels. I would like to see a couple more channels, maybe even a few adult channels (no, not porn, but maybe a movie channel or a few news channels; i.e. Weather Channel would be a plus). This is why I only give it a 4 star rating. Other than that, it is great.

It costs roughly $20 a month for everything that Surius offers for radio and the 3 channels. Not a bad price.

Instead of redoing the wheel, what follows is the feedback email I sent to Sirius about my experience with this unit. Like others, I was excited to find it on Amazon for a mere $37. Installation was a bit pricey and dicey as noted below, but still much cheaper than a factory option. The picture quality is pretty good (now that I have it working) particularly considering the price of the subscription is a mere $7.98/month. The problem that brings my rating down to a 2 is the very poor customer service -- including what I believe was a dishonest CSR attempting to milk a few extra dollars for the company -- that you must use in order to activate the product.

My letter to Sirius follows and serves as the remainder of my review (for those unfamiliar with satellite radio "SID" is the unique identification number all of these radios have and is used by Sirius/XM to activate or cancel service):

I am writing to inform you of what was probably the most irritating customer service experience I have had in recent memory -- and it was with your company. I have been a Sirius subscriber for about two years and have been an XM subscriber for about 4. I have had add-on units and built-in units.

Recently, I purchased two new cars. The car I bought for myself had an XM radio built in and I had no problems turning off my old Roady II radio. I haven't had to activate my new radio because I am still in my complimentary period.

The brand new 2010 Dodge Grand Caravan I purchased for my wife was a different matter altogether. It has a Sirius radio in it that comes with a one-year complimentary service. It worked straight from the dealer.

I called Sirius to cancel the radio on my old van (a Chrysler Town & Country) about three days after buying the new van. The representative told me the account could not be closed until about the third week of February (I believe he said the 20th) and that I would receive a refund of about $27 (this is my recollection of the conversation and I may be off by a few dollars).

The new van did not come with Backseat TV as a factory option. I purchased an SCV1 kit from Amazon and took the unit to Best Buy in Montgomery, Alabama for installation. Installation cost me right at $160.00. I was a bit concerned because the installer said he had never put one in before.

I asked that it be mounted like it would be at the factory if at all possible. He said he would try. In the end, he wound up installing it so that a wire comes out of the small gap at the bottom of the Mygig REN/RBZ radio and plugs in to the auxillary jack on the radio. It is not aesthetically pleasing, but I can live with it. However, I'm not sure that the installer did this because he had to or because it was the easiest thing to do.

After installation on February 6th, I brought the van home and called Sirius to activate the Backseat TV. This is where the problems really began. It appears that your activation service is based in either India or Pakistan as all three of the CSRs I spoke with had that type of accent.

The first CSR, a woman, got me to give her the SID for my new van. Why, I have no idea. I explained to her from the beginning that I was simply looking to activate the Backseat TV. Nonetheless, I gave it to her. She then asked for and received the SID on the SCV1. I was then placed on hold.

I am uncertain of how long I was on hold, but it may have been as long as 10 or 15 minutes. When she came back, she told me that she could not activate the Backseat TV and that she had created a "trouble ticket". She said I would have to call back tomorrow (meaning February 7th).

She also told me that I had an active radio on the account on my old van. I told her that I had cancelled that account.

I called back tonight (the evening of February 7th) as instructed. I spoke to another female CSR -- it may have been the same one, but I do not know. This woman also told me I still had an active quarterly account.

I told her what I had been instructed to do and she asked me for the SCV1's SID again. I asked why she needed that when a trouble ticket had been created. She said there was no trouble ticket in the system.

Irritated, I put on my coat and went out to the van in 40 degree weather. I gave her the SID of the SCV1. She put me on hold. After what had to be 20 minutes of sitting out in the weather and finally deciding to start the van to stay warm, the line went dead without her ever having come back on the line.

Angry now, I went back inside and initially resolved to write a letter demanding that you take back the radio and refund me the price of the radio, the installation, and whatever it cost to remove the thing from my van. After cooling down a bit, I decided to give you one more try.

I called back and was immediately informed by your automated system that you were experiencing "technical difficulties". My initial impulse was to hang up and write the letter, but I was immediately connected to my third CSR.

This time I spoke to a male. He also told me I had an active quarterly account. I stopped him right there and told him I had cancelled that account. He stated that his system was showing an active account, but that he would transfer me to the correct department when he was done assisting me.

I explained to him what had happened with my two previous attempts to activate the Backseat TV. He promised he would not put me on hold (a promise he lived up to). He also asked me for the SID of the SCV1. So, again, I went back out into the cold to get the number. I gave him the number. He informed me that the radio had a free 3 month subscription and within a few minutes had sent a signal to the radio and it was working. He then transferred me to the cancellation department.

This time I spoke with an American-sounding woman whose name, I believe, was Allysa. Her tone was that of someone who had been interrupted doing something very interesting by a person she was forced to tolerate. Nonetheless, she was highly competent as she was able to immediately cancel the old van's service (something the first cancellation rep indicated couldn't be done) and said I would be receiving a larger refund than the one originally promised.

So now we have the radio and the Backseat TV, but I am not happy about it. It was way too much work on my part as a customer to add a new service. Of the five CSRs that I dealt with, three were either incompetent or dishonest; one who was competent had all the charm and grace of a terminal disease; and the last, the male Pakistani/Indian sounding fellow, was both professional and competent. One out of five is VERY bad in my book. However, his excellent work is the sole reason you are getting only feedback instead of an irate demand for reimbursement (I must report that even providing this feedback was irritating as the feedback form only allows 4000 characters and I was forced to switch to email to inform you of how bad your service has been).

You have a lot of work to do cleaning up your customer service department if you intend to keep me as a customer. There are other providers out there (FLO comes to mind), and if I experience anything like I just went through over the last two days again, you will have an ex-customer and hang the expense of switching.

EDITED TO ADD: Apparently FLOTV is going out of business. If you are looking for mobile TV don't look to them. They will cease broadcasting in March 2011.

I just installed Sirius Backseat TV a few months ago. I have been wanting to install this system for years, I just couldn't justify the cost of the equipment, about 3 years ago equipment costs were around $700 plus for all the needed equipment. I was looking around a few months ago and noticed the Amazon price of $36 for the SCV1 (WOW) so I ordered the unit and headrest monitor for $77. Install was very easy, if you have done any car audio installs before. I had the SCV1 and the monitor installed in about 2 hours. It works great, activation with Sirius took about 20 minutes.

Yes, I know there are only 3 TV channels, but these are the channels my son watches most of the time at home, so he was thrilled when we surprised him with them in the car :) I know these video channels are not HD quality, but it has the video quality of a video stream from the internet, just no buffering in the middle of the video. I would not try to view these video channels on a monitor larger then 10" I could really see heavy pixelation of the video when I tested the SCV1 on my 19" computer monitor.

I know there are other video products out there, but they need a 3G internet connection for them to work while traveling along the road and they offer more channels and better video quality, but the other reason I chose Sirius backseat TV is our routes of travel to see family and take vacation. We travel along roads in the mountains and cellphone coverage is spotty at best for miles. The only time we lost Sirius service is travelling through the tunnels cut through the mountians.

For the cost, this is our most realilable mobile TV service I could find. I did look at the Direct TV option, but that things antenna is huge and I noticed a LOT of drop outs while traveling along the demo route in town and the cost of equipment is HIGH.

I know Backseat TV has about 3 to 4 year life limit with my son. I know he will out grow these TV channels, but for now it is perfect for us.

I have emailed Sirius to ask them to offer more channels, that's why I can only give this product a 4 out of 5 stars. I know Sirius is not really in the business of TV programming, but they really should look at this product as another point of revenue if they add a larger verity of programming. I could see truck drivers buying this product if Sirius could offer more channels. I know Sirius has limited amount of bandwidth, but since they also have XM's channels they need to look at cutting back the simulcasting of audio channels on both bands and give up some bandwidth for more TV channels. I can only hope Sirius has some future improvement plans in the future for Sirius Backseat TV.

this is a must have for anyone with kids. adding this to the tv with a dvd player was one of the best things ive ever done. my daughter absolutely loves watching the disney channel and all the other kids who have been in my car love it too. best way to keep the little ones quiet in the car. if youre on the fence about this dont be. just go to best buy and pay $300 plus tax and have them install it.

I LOVE this thing. I don't have to mess with DVD's anymore. I take the kids 4 days a week to sports (25 min one way) and travel is so much smoother without having to try and swap out DVD's on the road. The picture quality could be better IMO but small price to pay for what you really are getting.

I'm a big fan of Sirius satellite radio and I still had a hard time finding out about this product. That's sad because I don't think Sirius understands exactly what they have here and the potential it has.

3 channels of children's programming. That's all folks. Video quality is good. Sound is good. Being a media guy I can understand that as kids programs have very little full screen movement so they work well in limited bandwith situations like this. (No PBS is disappointing though and probably would have made sense.)

The hardware is pretty good but it's discontinued. Good news is you can find it real cheap. Bad news is what's the long term outlook for this product? Very easy install if you know how to run wires to your fuse box (we are talking simple stuff). The biggest plus is that compared to other satellite TV products the antenna(s) are real small. Like 2square inches small. You need to install 2 (nothing but if you do a little research the only other options are HUGE dishes that sit on the roof. This things antenna is smaller than regular satellite radio.

The subscription at $8/month (on top of $13/month for radio) is really cheap compared to the $100 or so for dish network. Yeah it's only 3 channels compared to about 100 for dish but unless you are really traveling the world on a regular basis you only need simple distraction to get the job done and this provides it.

Biggest issue is that I don't think Sirius understands the wasted potential they have with this. If they can manage to squeeze another 3 channels or so into their bandwidth by dumping some of their more questionable radio content (spice channel and other nonsense that is unlistenable) then this would be not only a most wanted product but a must have. The hardware is great, the tiny antennas are perfect. Add PBS and Howard TV (for the adults), try actually advertising the product and we'd have a winner.

As for now, find this for under $100 and you are a winner. I was able to get this and 2 headrest monitors for under $300 and it's more than gets the job done.

Absolutely love this thing, and I know my kids do too. To be able to have 3 channels in the car is so much more handy then having to constantly change out DVDs. Worked great on our long trips. I did chose to have this professional installed despite review that it was easy. I'm glad I made that choice because the device is hidden within the dash, so no one can see it, steal it or break it. I did have to buy a different FM modulator but considering The reasonable price for this device it was no big deal. FYI this does require a subscription.