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97 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best car stereo I've owned, April 16, 2009
This review is from: Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD 5.8-Inch In-Dash Touchscreen Double-Din DVD Multimedia A/V Receiver (Electronics)
Edit 2/2/10: After several months of use, I am revising my review to give this radio 4 stars. I still think it is the best out there today, but am subtracting a star to account for some poor design flaws on it with the way they integrate with the Bluetooth and Sirius units.
The Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD is a touch-screen Double DIN aftermarket car stereo. It has a 5.8" full color widescreen face, front auxiliary port for connecting an IPod or other device, a front USB port for connecting a USB flash drive, and it can play DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, DivX, MP3, WMA and AAC files. The Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD 7-Inch In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver with Widescreen Display is the same exact radio, except it adds a bigger screen (7") by removing the physical buttons to the side, and it adds a subwoofer preamp output.
INSTALLATION AND DVD BYPASS: Double DIN means that it is roughly twice the size of a conventional car stereo, so before ordering, you need to make sure it will fit in your car. The best way to do this is to go to Crutchfield's web site and determine if it will work on your vehicle. The unit itself comes with the receiver, mounting screws, manual, a stylus pen, front mounting cover, and a power cable. I found it fairly easy to install. The power cable it comes with just has bare wires coming out of it. In addition to the radio, you will want to buy a mounting harness and mounting bracket for your vehicle. The harness looks just like the one that comes with the stereo, but it is designed to clip into the factory harness that's in your vehicle, to make it easy to remove the stereo. If you don't have one, you'll have to connect all of the wires by hand, and disconnect each one to remove. The mounting bracket is designed to make sure you radio fits correctly in your specific vehicle. I purchased both the harness and bracket from Crutchfield. My only problem with installation, is that it comes with a long green wire that is supposed to be connected to your emergency brake wire. This is necessary, because the unit has a safety feature that requires the emergency brake to be applied in order to play DVDs. My emergency brake wire was extremely hard to get to, and once I was able to finally remove the center console and find it, it was buried and almost impossible to access. I don't suggest doing this, but if you have the same problem and want to get around this issue, or if you want to be able to watch DVDs without having to engage the brake, then you need to connect this wire to an auto relay switch. Go to Radio Shack and buy a momentary push button switch, part number 275-1548. Cut the green wire coming out of the radio harness from the receiver, close to the end of it, maybe 5 inches away from that red clip. Strip the wire, and run it through one of the holes on the relay switch. You can solder it or just wrap it with electrical tape. Buy a standard 16 gauge wire from Radio Shack and connect it to the other hole on the switch, then connect the other end of it to a grounded connection on your vehicle. I just wrapped mine around one of the mounting screws for the radio. I stuffed this wire out of site under the dash and pull it out when I need it. Alternatively, you can just cut the green wire directly in half, and use the half you cut instead of having to buy more wire at Radio Shack, but I wanted an extra long wire in case I ever want to move it. Now, when you play a DVD, the warning screen will come on. Just press the button on the switch and it will go away, since it tricks the receiver into thinking you have engaged the parking brake. Be sure to check with your local laws, as having the DVD player on while driving or bypassing this may be illegal in your area. It may also void insurance claims. I definitely do not recommend ever watching a DVD while driving.
FORM FACTOR: The radio itself is beautiful. It fit flush with my dash and looks gorgeous. There are only a few buttons on the left hand side, and I didn't even realize they were buttons until I looked at them closely. They control volume, forward/backward, source, mute, and power. I like having these physical buttons, especially for volume and mute. If I get a phone call or need to hear something, I want to be able to instantly mute the radio without having to fool around with a touchscreen. It's very nice to have a radio that doesn't have 15 buttons all over it and looks cluttered. Customization is easy with the radio. You can select from several different colors, which will change the LED colors on these physical buttons and on the touchscreen menu buttons, so that it matches your car's LED colors. You can also choose from seven factory background screens, three of which are animated videos. The animation on the videos is very subtle and doesn't distract you. Plus, when you change the LED color, it actually changes the color of the background videos to match it, which is really cool. If you don't like these, you can use your own image from a CDR or USB drive. The screen contains a dimmer option, so when you turn on your lights, it automatically dims. This is pretty nice, but can also be annoying. I like to use my lights during the day, and while the screen is still readable, it can be hard to see. Fortunately, you can completely adjust the dimmer options through the settings.
TOUCHSCREEN: The touchscreen is very easy to navigate and done very well. The menu system is very intuitive and set up a lot like a computer. There is a back button and an escape button to get you through the menus. Seeking through a song can be done in three ways. You can hold down the physical forward/backward buttons on the unit, you can do the same with the touchscreen forward/backward buttons, or you can use your finger to slide a progress bar back and forth, the same as you would do with a video file on your computer or with an IPod. This is great because a 30 minute song can start, and I can just press the end of the progress bar with my finger and it will immediately skip to the end of the song (or whatever position I press on the bar). From what I can tell, it will scroll exactly like a computer and stop at the exact position you touch. A lot of touchscreens would have "segments" or 5-10 seconds, and stop on whichever segment you came close to. But with the AVH-P3100, it is segmented into 2 second increments, so you can have much more accurate scrolling. This is the only instance where I can see the stylus being of any use, but I have fairly large fingers and don't have any problem with the scroll bar. My main gripe with the touchscreen navigation, is with the up/down scrolling. This is used when navigating radio/satellite stations, song tracks on a CD, or file folders on a USB/IPod. There is no page up/down feature, so if five folders are displayed and you press the down arrow on the scroll bar, or if you press anywhere below the current position on the scroll bar, it will move the list down by one, instead of down by five. This is a major oversight in my opinion, and will affect the way you setup your folders. I have one folder on my USB with 80 subfolders. That means if I want to scroll through every folder in the list, I have to press the down button 75 times. Now you can put your finger on it and simply drag the arrow down to move quickly, but it goes kind of fast, and paging through the list would be so much more convenient. Also, since it only displays five lines at a time, it means you have to scroll one time to view all six of your radio presets.
USB: USB is the main reason I purchased this radio, and works well, with a few faults. First, it takes about 10 seconds when I start the car or select the USB source, for it to "read format." This is possibly because I am using a 8Gb drive with over 1000 songs on it, so it's acceptable to me. My main problem with the USB feature, is the way it organizes the folders. They do not appear alphabetically. I am not sure what method it uses, but like a lot of MP3 audio devices, it just seems to throw them up in the folder list in whatever order it wants. It will use the same order every time, but you can't trick it by copying a folder you want to appear at the top first, or adding "01, 02, 03, etc" in front of your folders/file names." There is probably a workaround for this, but I have no idea what it is. I think it would make more sense if it just listed the folders alphabetically. It does read ID3 information very well, however it cuts off anything after a certain character limit. It would be nice if it scrolled sideways through long song titles/artists to show you the full ID3 information, but for about 95% of people's music, this won't be a problem, and for the other 5% you should have enough of the title to figure out what it is. However if you don't have ID3 tags on your music, it can be a problem. For example, if you have a folder with 10 songs in it labeled "DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince - Greatest Hits - Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble," and there are no ID3 tags, it is only going to display the first part of the filename until it reaches the character limit. So your list on the screen will have 10 songs on it that all say something like "DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fr." Additionally, the USB drive is going to stick out 3" or so from the unit, so unless you remove it every time, you have to be aware of it and careful not to break it off. It doesn't bother me at all though. (Edit - I recently purchased elago Mobile Nano II USB 2.0 microSDHC Flash Memory Card Reader (Black) for it, which only sticks out about 3mm from the unit and is awesome. Get this and a ...
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Awesome Head Unit, April 10, 2009
This review is from: Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD 5.8-Inch In-Dash Touchscreen Double-Din DVD Multimedia A/V Receiver (Electronics)
This head unit is by far the best I've encountered. I do installs for audio/video/lighting and other accessories on the side and out of all the head units I've come across this one is very versatile. I have a 98' accord and the stock head unit went so I decided to treat myself to a nice double din touch screen unit. The Main thing i wanted was a nice stock look, and with the ability to change the illumination colors I was able to achieve that. This is a feature that is not common on aftermarket head units. The other thing I liked about this head unit is that it was flush with the rest of my dash. There arent any ugly knobs with a ring of light protruding or cheesy looking buttons, its slick and clean with very responsive controls. The only Negative aspect of this product is the fact that in order to get full potential you need the add ons such as the bluetooth adaptor. I was budgeting for a nice head unit so I went the direction, however I feel something like the bluetooth or HD radio should be integrated like other single din receivers. Overall however, I still have to say this is an awesome product. The iPod can be connected and charged using a standard fire-wire cable, the screen resolution is superb, the personalization features are great, and the sleek look is unbeatable. 4 out of 5 stars just due to the lack of bluetooth and/or HD radio.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
3100 new for 09, March 25, 2009
This review is from: Pioneer AVH-P3100DVD 5.8-Inch In-Dash Touchscreen Double-Din DVD Multimedia A/V Receiver (Electronics)
This was ordered from Amazon, and as usual it arrived intact and quickly. I was replacing a Clarion Max385 and wanted a deck that didn't have to take so long to change sources (the clarion practically had to reboot everytime...) and that had a nice picture. The 3100 met both of those requirements and installed easy with the Scosche adapter I ordered from Crutchfield. No remote is included with the receiver, but they are available cheap here on Amazon. This new deck now offers a FRONT USB jack, as well as a front mini-jack for plugging in a key drive or your MP3 player, IPOD takes a separate adapter sold separately. Same for Bluetooth and Serius Radio.
The touch screen works well, the sound is nice, as is the option to use your own photos as the screen background, There are lots of color combinations built in to help match your dash lights coloring if you wish, and the top slot means no opening and closing the unit to insert and remove disks, a major pain with the Clarion... Several stereo shops told me this would not/could not fit my 2005 Tucson, but the Scosche adapter lets it fit easily with no cutting, And it sits flush with the dash when done.
5 stars for the nice screen, DIVX ability, USB port, and sound.
Only negative: no built-in bluetooth/ipod/Serius, all are add-ons.
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