Customer Reviews

Harman Kardon The Bridge Docking Station for iPod

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Ignore the review below, you CAN shuffle with the bridge, there is just a little trick to get it working. You have to hit a different input other than the bridges DMP (such as Am/Fm) on the remote so the iPods own menu starts up. Then manually hit shuffle in the iPod menu itself. Then switch back to the bridge and when you hit play on the controller, it will start the shuffled list.

If you happen to have a Harman Kardon that is bridge compatible, and an iPod, don't sleep on this product it would be blasphemy. While the iPod is playing, the album name, song name, and artist name scrolls on the AVR's screen. It also shows the time of the track, and how much time is left. The sound quality is superb, which is the most important thing. I was afraid that using an mp3 player would basically ruin the purpose of having the superior H/K sound, but it sounds awesome. Getting the shuffle to work is easy, just would be very hard to figure out if I didn't ask H/K tech support. You can still select playlists or select by genre, by artist, by album, by song with the controller and without having to use the ipod manually. This is a slight inconvenience but all in all it's helluva lot better than using an RCA hook-up with more limited sound quality.

Love the sound. The AVR240 is my third HK since college. The bridge gives me a 501 CD changer in 3 square inches of space. I have used the "Genre" slot on my ipod to break my CD collection into alphabetical listing, since I find the whole genre category pointless anyway. Just enter A,B...XYZ in genre for each CD. Then you only have to go through the Z's to get to ZZtop, not the other 499 titles.

While your iPod looks and sounds great when plugged into The Bridge and using one of harman/kardon's AVR x40 receivers, you must switch back and forth between The Bridge button and AVR button to be able to alternately switch tracks and control the volume. Worse, you won't be able to access your artists, songs, or albums unless you have a half an hour to kill to get to the one you want. After testing it out and speaking with harman/kardon customer service, it's official: there's absolutely no way to fast scroll through the menus. When scrolling, you must sit there and punch the "forward" button each time you want to advance to the next artist, song, or album. If you have 870 artists on your iPod like I do, you have to punch the "forward" button 855 times to get to Yo La Tengo, and 870 times to get to Zappa. There's no way around it except to create playlists beforehand. Awful design flaw. The service rep was very agreeable and told me that h/k appreciates customer comments and forwards them to their engineers, and that maybe a future model will incorporate that change. Until then, don't bother with this one unless this issue doesn't bother you.

UPDATE: While it's true that you can navigate thru your artists by alphebetizing them by genre, i still have about 56 "B" artists and 46 "S" artists...the point is, you shouldn't have to do this. There are plenty of similar products for the iPod that allow you to navigate thru your collection using a separate remote (such as the DLO HomeDock Deluxe and the Kensington StereoDock). The downside is, they don't provide a direct digital output -- someday, they will. A week after writing this review, my brand new AVR 240 receiver wouldn't turn on. Since it was already outside the store's return period, I packed it up, spent $40 to send it to H/K, and they sent me a refurbished one that wouldn't charge my iPod through the Bridge and wouldn't allow me to navigate my music at all. So "Shanley", with all due respect, H/K has severely disappointed me...I reserve the right to rant.

ANOTHER UPDATE: After upgrading to the latest iPod firmware, as of November 2006, my 5G video iPod will no longer work with The Bridge. I get an error message saying my iPod "is not compatible with this accessory."

I'd try to sell my Bridge on eBay, but my moral fiber prevents me from burdening someone else with this thing.

The interface is pathetic. If you have a large library you won't be able to scroll even remotely quickly. I have about 20 GB of songs, and it takes me literally five minutes to scroll all the way through to the end. Works if you only want to play one of a few playlists, but you would be better served to get a charging cradle and a mini/rca out to connect to one of the other inputs, then use the iPod's controls to play the music.

First let me say The Bridge is great! It allows you to listen to your music via the AVR and use the AVR remote to select music. As Stated, the AVR display will show title/album/etc. along with the time/time left for tracks playing. There are a few issues although. First, when you use the AVR remote, you have to switch between the bridge and AVR mode to select functions for listening (i.e. volume, etc) Second, the AVR is able to display this information on the tv/video source you have connected, ALTHOUGH it will only work on composite or svideo (blah!) So if you want this info on your tv and only use component video like all people that want good quality, you'll have to add an additional svideo or composite to your tv. Sadly this will ONLY display the same two lines you see on the AVR. No video or picture slide show.

Very good sound quality - connected to my HK AVR 340/Bose speakers. The 2 remotes supplied with the AVR 340 allow volume changes on one remote and scrolling with the other.

Creating many "playlists" and/or alphabetizing "artists" using the "Genres" category improves the speed of navigation greatly. No doubt HK will address scolling inadequacies (associated with a large collection of music, etc.) in future versions. Meanwhile I would would readily buy a remote which works with this receiver, emulating actual iPod scrolling. (Anyone know of anything out there???)

Previously, we used an Apple dock, which we connected into our A/V receiver input for audio and into an AC outlet for power, using the supplied Apple adapter. It worked fine, but had it's obvious limitations, such as using the iPod in it's dock for music selections or removing it, selecting what you wanted, pausing it, then re-inserting into the dock for playback. Nice, but not ideal. During a power outage and then subsequent surge, our iPod got zapped and needed to be repaired, which we then had performed.

Having just purchased the Harmon Kardon AVR 247 receiver, we became aware of 'The Bridge' iPod dock. We did some research and could see that it would not only replace our Apple dock, but actually had additional capabilities, which were attractive.

We bought 'The Bridge' docking station and installed it easily into AVR 247 by connecting one cable. That connection allows power and charging and provides a signal path as well. No AC outlet or other audio connections are required. Easy! The audio is very good, but the best part is the iPod is fully integrated into the receiver. The iPod LCD screen information is displayed on the face of the receiver and on your television screen, providing the same info to either (or both) without any additional setup or changes. You can use the receiver's remote to control everything that you would using the iPod click wheel as well as controlling the receiver's volume and the particular audio setup as well. The AVR 247 has the software included to perform all of these functions. The downside is, the dock only works with selected HK receivers and not other brands, but this is the perfect marriage between an iPod and home audio. It's a great product that is easy to use and is also inexpensive. I would highly recommend this product.

This is a great way to connect your iPod to your H/K receiver. Plus it's really cool looking, with its blue light underneath the base. But this unit has a drawback or two. I personally have The Bridge connected to an H/K AVR-445 receiver. I'm not bashing The Bridge here, but I've just learned a few things a prospective buyer might want to know.

When I was first researching a receiver, I was torn between Onkyo & H/K. What I discovered was that Onkyo's iPod dock was much more expensive, and there's a reason... it has the ability to connect video to the television (and maybe even all the song artwork- who knows), where The Bridge doesn't (at least there's no means of direct Bridge-to-TV connect-ability). I thought an S-Video connection between the Receiver & the TV would provide the artwork on the television, but alas, no such luck as far as I can tell. I'm going to verify all this with the H/K support team eventually.

Another thing that disappointed me was that when the iPod is docked in The Bridge, you can't control the iPod by hand. All navigation is done through the receiver (mainly via the remote). Once you get the hang of its remote control, all is well; but you must devote some time to learning exactly how to deal with the rather complicated (but capable) H/K remotes. In addition, if the iPod is separated from The Bridge and is playing (or paused on) a song, that you now want to hear on the stereo, docking the iPod into The Bridge reverts to the main menu & you lose your place, forcing you to re-navigate to the song again.

All in all, I'm glad I have it. I used to use a cable, adapting the iPod's 1/8" headphone jack into L/R RCA jacks to connect to the receiver. At least then, I could navigate the iPod by hand. On the other hand, it gave me no charging capacity & the iPod looked lousy just laying there on its back. In the end, Harmon Kardon should have addressed these issues during its development (they seem like obvious "wants" for most people), but if you have an H/K receiver and are remote control-savvy, it's a must for your iPod!

Realize that this product is little more than a plastic base and a connecting cable, so its specific behavior and performance depends on which Ipod and which HK receiver you are using. It works great with recent stuff-- I use a Nano and AVR-247. Yes you can turn on shuffle with the remote.
I was worried about Mr. Dooling's ticking noise, but there is no evidence of that in my system.
Some reviewers have complained about having to switch between AVR and Bridge on the remote to alternately use the volume and FF controls. There is a fix for that described in the receiver manual FAQs. Just program a volume punch-through into the remote for Bridge mode.

There are a total of 5 iPod base snap-ins to provide a good fit for most iPods, but the smallest it gets is for the Mini. If you've got a Nano, forget about it, you'll have to dock it using one of the snap-ins for a larger iPod. Not worrysome, but that would put all of the stress on the connector if it was bumped or hit.

Seems like The Bridge was designed and manufactured before the Nano came out.