Customer Reviews

DLO 009-9765 HomeDock Deluxe for iPod

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(22)

 

 

I bought this dock for the "onscreen display" capability as you navigate the iPod menus, to use it with my Ipod Video. Well, it took reading the fine print "note" in the manual to realize that onscreen navigation is only good for the "music" menus, NOT for photos or videos. When I read the box again I noticed the subtle wording difference: you can "navigate" and "select" the songs, but can only "display" and "control" the photos and the videos. In summary, when it comes to photos or videos, what you are getting is nothing more than you get with a $ 39.00 Apple iPod Universal Dock. Hmmm... I think this should have been clearly announced on the box, so that you can make an informed decision, whether you want to pay $ 110.00 extra just to see the song names on your TV screen. I returned mine.

I was very excited about this product after reading all the online hype. Sadly this docking station is not quite as it seems. As a good example of planning not meeting execution, the idea and design are great, but the construction and quality are not. Here are some of my observations:

Pros:
- Great idea to pipe video to a widescreen TV--even a better idea to see song lists and titles on the large screen. Navigation via the included remote/on screen menus is as easy as operating an iPod.
- Great overall `look' of the docking station, cool looking black and shiny remote with rubber backing. This setup was obviously designed with black iPods and Nanos in mind and matches them well.
- Separate RCA jacks for L and R audio (versus headphone audio jacks) make the unit appear like a genuine stereo component.
- S-Video support for video-out.

Cons:
- Price is steep
- `Just OK' sound quality that is tonally in the middle of the spectrum (i.e. no pronounced bass or highs). Even with premium cables (not the cheap ones supplied in the box), a high-end receiver will highlight the mediocre sound quality.
- Poor overall `feel' of the docking station. It is light, thinly built, hollow, and feels as `plasticky' as any sub-$20, low-end Chinese-made piece of electronics. It's light. The weight of my Monster audio/S-video cables pull the unit back towards my cabinet. Only my 60GB iPod itself makes a good ballast to counter the weight of the cables.
- Remote control buttons are not sensitive and require multiple presses at times to work. Again, this is typical of cheap Chinese electronics.
- Poor manufacturing quality and control--there are odd, thin cut marks along the remote control's hole punch-outs. It is obvious these marks are machine made.
- On screen display layout/fonts are far from sexy. They remind me of the graphic quality of a 1980's, 16-color Apple II computer. (Is this some sort of Apple retro statement by DLO?)
- The unit gets very hot to the touch when charging an iPod. Obviously the bad quality control and construction extends to its internal circuit boards. This was very disconcerting to me as I feared damaging my prized iPod, and is the main reason why I returned the item.

Bottom line: The box cover says it best when displaying the song, "Never Satisfied" on its mock TV print layout. Sadly, most owners will not be satisfied until DLO gets it quality control issues worked out. Now where do I find a good iPod stereo dock?

I already own the regular DLO Homedock and love it. I was hoping to get the deluxe so I could pick songs on my plasma, see album art - and I also liked the black and gray case better than the regular Homedock. Unfortunately, here are some of the problems I had in the first 5 minutes:

1. On my HP plasma, the menu image doesn't fill the screen. Its missing 2 inch stripes on both the left and right sides.

2. The remote doesn't work reliably. Buttons don't always press.

3. The interface for picking songs doesn't behave like the iPod. If you want to play all songs at some point in the menu hierarchy (an artist, all music), the instruction manual says to select the category and select "play". That does nothing. The only way to do this is to navigate into all the songs for that category and start playing the first one.

4. Screen flickers when moving from menu item to menu item on teh same screen and when going between screens.

5. Due to limitations in the iPod, you cannot pick photos and videos from the TV interface. You have to switch back and forth between two modes.

Most of these should be fixable by DLO and then the product would be usable. However, I question the value of having songs available on a TV screen. It takes much too long to power on the TV, navigate down with remote compared to just picking the song from the iPod.

This has the potential of being an awesome product. Unfortunately, there are too many glitches in the TV interface for it to be worth $50, much less $150. The problems I found within 5 minutes of plugging it in:

1) The Playlist, Genre, Artist, and Album drill-downs frequently appear blank. One has to keep hitting the forward arrow until one reaches the song-level listings, and then back out one menu at a time before any of these lists populate.

2) In cases where an artist has more albums than can fit on a screen, when I scroll down to see the the next screen the correct album names don't appear... as in 1), you have to proceed to the song level menu and back out of it to correct the problem.

2) Sometimes, the HomeDock performs the wrong function when a button on the remote is pressed. At one point, every time I pressed the down, left, or right arrow it was responding as if I'd pressed the up-arrow.

3) The repeat function simply does not work. I guess the button is included on the remote for show.

4) The track forward button functions intermittently at best.

Plus there are a few more nits: the generally annoying layout of the screen display (a very large product icon takes up the left half the screen, cutting off artist and album titles. Alternatively, this blank space could be used for album art...); Also, the power-on light is exceedingly bright.

I wouldn't mind the nits so much if the interface simply worked properly.

The item itself is pretty convenient - just stick my ipod in and either watch videos or listen to music. I personally don't have too much of an issue with not being able to control videos thru the DLO interface. I can actually still navigate thru the videos with the remote, I just have to look at the ipod screen, which is fine because I never have more than 1-2 videos on it at any time. I can still use the remote to pause, play, FF or RW.
My problem is using the DLO interface for music. It is very buggy. For example, if I have a list of albums for a particular artist, if I scroll to the bext page to see more albums, instead of showing the rest of the albums in the list, it shows the songs for the last album on the previous page. Or if I scroll back to the previous menu item, instead of listing whatever it was supposed be (albums or artists) , it turns up empty.
I am perplexed why they would not have tested and fixed this. Those problems are only obvious. Honestly I was too lazy to take it back to the store, so I kept it. It looks ok and is basically workable. Especially if I just set my ipod to random shuffle. However, knowing what I know now, I would not have paid $150 for it.

I was hesitant to purchase based on some of the early reviews but DLO must have taken the feedback and fixed the problems listed in the earlier reviews. The model I received has S-Video out and has excellent sound quality when I connect it to my A/V Amp. The music menus appear on the TV - which is exactly what I wanted. You have to toggle modes on the remote from "iPod" to "DLO" if you want to display pictures, slideshows or video, but in the "DLO" mode, the music menus are on the TV. I have not played videos or slide shows, but the music menu picture quality is good. Good quality cables (no S-Video cable included) and good product quality. Great product that I would absolutely recommend.

I have only recently embraced the Ipod craze and aquired a 30G video Ipod. The general audio quality of most MP3's just leaves something to be desired on the high and low end. But, now that I have an Ipod, I have to hook it up to my home A/V equip. The Homedock Deluxe handles that job very nicely. The onscreen music navigation works flawlessly for me, and much better than my Showcenter 200 wireless media adapter. I connect through a pretty good Denon AV receiver to an LG LCD tv and I am very satisfied with both the picture and sound. The S-video is a must on my HD tv, but the composite was fine for the 20 inch tube TV I also tested on. Sound quality was on par with other Ipod docks that I have heard. I do wish that video and picture navigation could be controled via the TV screen also, but I am pretty sure that this is Apple's evil doing, and not DLO's fault. The USB port is a nice added bonus too.
All in All I am very pleased.

I was looking for something to use as a "music server" so I wouldn't have to rummage through my cd cabinet whenever I wanted to listen to music on my stereo. The HomeDock Deluxe works fine for that. I can scroll through the list of music on the ipod, select and play the music while sitting 8 feet away on the couch. It even works with my Harmony universal remote. I'm completely satisfied with the way it functions and sounds.

That being said, DLO's customer service is not what we expect these days. I had a problem initially with the way the HomeDock was behaving. I went to their website looking for some way to get an answer. There was no user forum or even a FAQ. All they had was a PDF of the manual. I described the problem in an email and sent it off. I got a reply a week later telling me to call their service department during their business hours. They are in North Carolina and I am on the other side of the world, so that wasn't very likely. I finaly figured out on my own that my ipod's software needed to be updated. I did that and the HomeDock worked fine, no thanks to DLO.

Another minor gripe is that the HomeDock doesn't speak Japanese. For my CD's that I bought in Japan, where the ipod itself displays Japanese characters, the HomeDock only shows question marks on the TV monitor.

All in all, though, I'm quite satisfied with its functionality, especially for the price. I haven't seen any other products out there that do what it does that aren't expensive stereo componants.

The HomeDock Deluxe is a must-have accessory for anyone who owns an iPod Video. I never thought the option of downloading movies and TV shows from iTunes was worthwhile until I realized this wonderful device allows me to watch some of my favorite movies and TV shows on my TV ... for a fraction of the cost of DVDs.

I can buy an entire season of my favorite TV series from iTunes for LESS THAN HALF the price of the DVD box set!!!

I've read the many negative reviews about the HomeDock Deluxe and I almost didn't get it because of those reviews. All I can say is that either these other people didn't know how to setup the HomeDock Deluxe and iPod correctly (you need to read the tiny manual that comes with the HomeDock) or they had a hardware issue with either the iPod or the HomeDock. My HomeDock Deluxe works perfectly. Videos play in DVD quality, audio is perfect.

The one and ONLY "issue" that I have to deal with is that Apple wrote a specific firmware code in the iPod Video that prevents the HomeDock remote from accessing the video menu to play videos ... so you have to select the videos using the iPod and press play on the iPod before you can use the HomeDock Deluxe remote to control the video.

I can't blame DLO for this issue since Apple is responsible for this ... Apple probably plans to release there own version of the HomeDock eventually and they wrote a firmware code in the iPod Videos so that the HomeDock Deluxe cannot start the video via the remote. This is Apple's attempt to stab the competition in the back. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't have their own version of the HomeDock ... so the DLO HomeDock Deluxe is the best (and ONLY) option if you want to connect your iPod to your home entertainment center.

This product is worth EVERY penny and every iPod Video owner needs one of these connected to his TV and surround sound speakers.

I would say the navigation in the audio mode is good and the remote is pretty sensitive. However, I was using Kensington's Stereo Dock before. The sound quality is so much better than this DLO HomeDock Deluxe. I am also disappointed that it does not include the S-VHS cable. In short, it is not worth it.