Easy Products Review

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 racks 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/Ipod: Ipod menus look the same as the front of your regular Ipod and navigation is easy. It will also display a picture of the album. 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. The only other problem I’ve noticed with the USB playback, is that the progress bar is off. The bar shows time elapsed and time remaining at the same time. Time remaining is incorrect about 80% of the time. A song will start up and it will show that it has 6:22 remaining, when it is only a 4:00 song. Some songs are accurate, but the majority is off anywhere from :30 to 3:00.

DVD PLAYBACK: DVD playback is superb. The video quality is on par with any portable DVD player you would buy. You cannot tilt the screen, so application is limited, but if you’re parked somewhere you can easily enjoy a movie from any seat in the car. If it’s daylight and sunny, you won’t be able to see much however. The DVD onscreen menus are nice, and the scroll bar works well for skipping quickly through a movie, even better than a traditional DVD player. There’s a HIDE button for quickly removing all onscreen displays, so you don’t have to wait several seconds for the menus to time out.

SOUND: Sound quality is excellent. DVDs sound great. It has three loudness modes which really bring out the sound. I am using factory speakers with no amplifier, and the built-in Pioneer amplifier makes a huge difference. It has several pre-set equalizer settings for different types of music.

Overall, even if you don’t get it at Amazon’s current price (40% off SRP), I think this receiver is worth the money. It really is a beautiful and functional unit, and I always like showing it off to my passengers. It is too bad there doesn’t seem to be a way to update the firmware, because it would be a perfect unit if Pioneer just made a few small changes to the menus. The unit also does not come with built in Bluetooth, HD Radio, Satellite, or steering wheel controls, but you can add all of these from the products below. I realize Pioneer makes more money by adding these separately, and also keeps costs down on the unit from not including them unless someone wants them, but it would be nice to have built in HD Radio and Bluetooth at least. Stay away from the remote though, it’s worthless.

Relate Product: BOSS BASS500 Boss Audio BV8.5TA BOSS CW950 Boss Audio BASS800 Boss CX650

BOSS MR2080W BOSS BV9.2GA BOSS 7HRT Boss BV8850 BOSS 09CW2000M Boss BV7965

So – I bit the bullet and upgraded from a Rev A 1.6GHz 80GB HDD MBA – to a Rev B 1.86GHz 128GB SSD MBA. I wanted to post my observations on what it’s like to upgrade – I know many Rev A owners have – or are thinking about – upgrading to Rev B.

In this review, I refer to “Rev A” and “Rev B”. The Rev A is my older 1.6GHz 80GB HDD MBA. The Rev B is my new 1.86GHz 128GB SSD MBA

Caveat – Unlike some (but not all!) Rev A MBA owners, I love my Rev A MBA. I’ve had zero problems with it. It runs cool and I have not experienced any core shut downs. It would heat up when most laptops normally heat up and the fans would kick. It would cool down quickly when I moved on to something else. With video it never stuttered… Perhaps my Rev A has run so nicely because I don’t ask a lot of it. It is a second Mac to my Mac Pro – I use it primarily for email, word processing, iTunes movies and web surfing – on the couch and on the road. It has REALLY been a great laptop and I have nothing bad to say about it.

So why did I update? I wanted more space. I have my Rev A setup to duel boot (Vista) for business uses from time to time when I travel. That kills a chunk of space. Also – with the Rev A, I compromised – by not having my music, photos and other large files with me. Not a bad tradeoff. But the Rev B’s larger hard drive was enticing – additionally, the Rev A has been so great, I’m willing to make the investment to have the latest/greatest version of the Air because it is such a leap/improvement over the Rev A – both speed and graphics-wise. I won’t spend time on the A’s form factor – those of you that own one already get that – it’s great…

So here are my observations – they are based on the things I can see and observe – not “Xbench scores” – real world use – and hopefully it will give you an idea of the differences between Rev A and Rev B. As I type this, I have my Rev A right next to me – side by side with the Rev B.

My observations:

1) Packaging – The Rev B’s packaging was similar to the Rev A’s in terms of layout, but the Rev A packaging materials were FAR nicer. The Rev B’s packaging is more in-line with the other Apple notebooks – white briefcase with handle. I really liked the packaging of the Rev A – very solid and heavy duty in comparison – it set the original Air apart.

2) Sounds – The first thing I noticed when starting it up: The Rev B (SSD) is, due to form, noiseless. The Rev A’s subtle hum and hard drive noises are (obviously) completely gone. The click and general noises of the Rev A’s hard drive was never something I really noticed – until it was gone… The Rev B is eerily quiet! Upgraders from the Rev A HDD will notice the difference.

3) Trackpad button – The Rev A’s track pad button is comparatively mushy – it takes more travel to make a click. The Rev B’s is very tight – less play. The Rev A’s button never bothered me – interesting that the Rev B’s is tighter – a purposeful improvement?

4) Keyboard – This was a surprise – and I had to double check this. The Rev B keyboard has been improved in a similar way to the trackpad button – the keys are quieter and seem to be more tightly secured. It’s hard to explain, but the improvement has resulted in a typing experience that is quieter – less “rattley”. To see what I mean, run your fingers back/forth lightly over a Rev A keyboard and the keys have more play and make more noise due to the looser keys. The Rev B is tighter when you do this – less play and less noise.

5) Screen – Many complain that the Rev B’s screen has faint lines. I’ve seen them on the Apple store floor models, and they do exist. It was a concerned when buying my Rev B, but I have yet to read about someone who was denied a refund by Apple if they had lines on the MBA screen. Bottom line – Apple stands behind their products – I was not afraid to risk having to make a return.

I’ve looked really hard at my Rev B and, if I get my head in just the right place and the screen tilted just right, I can see some lines – but they’re REALLY hard to find and they are not as bad as what I’ve seen in the Apple store display Rev B airs. Looking at my Rev A, doing the same contortions, I can actually make out similar – albeit even fainter lines. My Rev B is a keeper – I really can’t see the lines during normal use. Side by side, the Rev A and Rev B screens look identical to me. Same brightness, color saturation, etc, etc. I have both setup using the same display profile – the default “Color LCD” profile. I’ve played the same movie and frozen clips on the same frame – the screens look absolutely identical.

6) Display output – the Rev B has the newer Mini DisplayPort display – which replaces the Rev A’s Micro DVI port. Unlike the Rev A, the Rev B does not include the VGA and DVI adapters. They’re yours to purchase separately for an extra $29 each. Typical of Apple to remove extras in the Rev B edition… I never used the Rev A adapters and chose not to buy them for the Rev B until I need them.

7) 4 Finger gestures – I REALLY like these. I was surprised at how well they work and how much I use them. Four fingers up – see the desktop. Four down – Expose (awesome). Four to the right or left – switch applications. Good stuff. I like it.

Graphics – The Nvidia Graphics chip is a huge leap over the earlier Intel chip. I’ve run several games on my Rev B that could not run on the Rev A Air and they are actually very playable! I like this – I play games from time to time when I travel – while I fly… This is a great improvement and I like the ability to use applications that require mid-level graphics abilities.

9) Performance – I saved the best for last. This is the area where I’m really pleasantly surprised. The Rev B’s performance is NOTICEABLY faster. Surprisingly so. In some respects it is faster than my Mac Pro (But not at the heavy lifting – not by a long shot!)

Here are some observations (note that applications start times are after a restart of OSX – I know that applications can be cached and load much more quickly the second time around).

Some of these differences may seem small, but they are huge – look at your watch and tick off 14 seconds… That’s what it takes in additional time for Word to load on my Rev A. You start to really appreciate the SSD drive…

Start from complete shut down – Rev A: 56 Seconds; Rev B: 28 Seconds
Restart – Rev A: 58 Seconds; Rev B: 31 Seconds
Shut Down – Rev A: 3 Seconds; Rev B: 2 Seconds
Start Safari and load page (boston.com) – Rev A: 18 Seconds; Rev B: 7 Seconds
Start Entourage – Rev A: 24 Seconds; Rev B: 8 Seconds
Start iTunes – Rev A: 9 Seconds; Rev B: 4 Seconds
Open MS Word – Rev A: 17 Seconds; Rev B: 3 Seconds

If you’re thinking about upgrading – it’s a nice improvement.

The picture on this TV is amazing. It has a wide array of colors that it can display. The GUI on the TV is well designed and easy to navigate. Consumer reports recommends this TV for the 46″-47″ size range. The only down side to this TV are its speakers. They point down and sound muffled despite playing with the settings. I replaced the speakers with a Denon sound bar and was quite pleased. I was also surprised at how light and thin the TV was right after I opened the box. It is very easy to install and set up as well.

Size is great ! Cost-Benefit is great !
The only lowlight is the quality of the sound throught the embedded speakers it brings. The orientation of the speakers and wats don’t produce a poor sound or at least lower that I expected. Altough it sounds great when connected to an external surround system.

Pros: HD channel picture quality excellent, standard picture quality very good, good deal for what you get, attractive design, easy setup, customizable controls (which i haven’t really played around with much yet), VESA 200×200 mounting pattern (one of the most common), ease of overall use, picture quality very good when watching sports and movies

Cons: like many of the non-top-ofthe-line Samsung TVs this one suffers in the sound department. it isnt horrible, but the quality just isn’t there. there is also an occasional humming noise when you first turn on the tv. i have seen this with other samsung tvs I’ve owned (this is my 3rd), and it goes away after a few minutes of it being on. others have experienced the same issue. i think samsung will fix it if it bothers you or gets worse.

overall, this tv is perfect for a small room. you do not need 1080 for a tv under 46in, so in the 32in size range this is the one to get. i plan on getting another samsung lcd (the ln52a650) as soon as the price drops a bit more, so i recommend the brand as well as the tv.

The television itself is pretty awesome, overall. The picture quality, from my unprofessional perspective, is at least on par with a large number of the plasma sets I looked at. The blacks are as black as I’ve seen on an LCD and there is no perceptible motion blur. The matte surface is excellent at handling the glare from windows opposite the telivision, which has been a blessing for me as I cannot rearrange the room. I will agree with some of the other reviewers, though, that the sound quality from this television leaves MUCH to be desired. The speakers aren’t too bad, actually, but they are aimed downward and this causes significant muffling of the sound. I’m lucky enough to have also purchased a set of speakers and an audio/video receiver, allowing me to avoid using the television’s speakers entirely.

I am a pretty avid gamer and this screen is excellent for gaming. In game mode there is no perceptible input lag and almost no motion blur at all (some can be detected on occasion but still much better than my older LCD television). I do wish that the different modes didn’t gray out most of the configuration options, though. Game mode is required to reduce input lag but the lack of tweaking that can be done to the picture in this mode is irritating. It gives one the option of either enjoying no input lag and putting up with oversaturated colors or putting up with input lag in order to gain control over the color settings.

All in all this is an excellent television and I would purchase it again. The new Samsung models are pretty appetizing, though, and I’d recommend anyone looking at this model to also take a look at their most recent offerings.

Welcome to my critical review of the Samsung A650.

After reading all the positive reviews about this TV, and reading about the other Samsung model (A750) I decided the A650 would be my new living room set. The A750 had some bad reviews about the glare on edges of the screen border. The A650 did not!

This was my first big ticket item I bought from Amazon. The delivery went well. I called CEVA and setup a time with them to bring it out. Two guys from CEVA carried the set in, unpacked it and pluged it in. They were in a hurry but gave me a chance to check it out before I signed off the delivery release.

Overall I’m very pleased with this set but I wanted to post the negitives I’ve had with it. This is nit picking somewhat but I feel others can gain something from this – read below.

Problems encountered: – The firmware needs some work. I did NOT have the problem of the set turing off as some owners did, but I decided to update the firmware anyway. The latest is always best, right? Wrong! After downloading firmware from Samsung, copying to my USB drive and plugging it into the TV the upgrade began. Easy enough. I was watching digital over the air TV as I had not yet got my Sat receiver yet. When watching over the air the TV would suddenly make a LOUD full volume screaming sound out the speekers, then turn off, then back on for about 30 seconds, and crash again, turn off, turn on, crash… You get the idea. Oh great I thought!! Just killed my new tv! I could not back out of the upgrade because Samsung does not post older versions of the firmware. I had to search the internet to find it. When I downgraded the firmware version the problem went away. Pretty scary thinking I killed a $2200 TV set! Samsung needs to get their act together on this. Now that I have my Sat TV receiver hooked up via HDMI I’m able to use the latest firmware without problems. If I were to guess, the firmware has an issue if the over the air TV signal is weak – causing the TV to crash. (note to techies – the TV runs a custom version of Linux!!)

Other negitives:

* When switching inputs from one HDMI source to another, the set will not switch until about 4 seconds have gone by and it has ‘locked’ on the signal AND you’ve pressed enter. A little annoying. Could be fixed in software – (Hint hint Samsung!)

* The remote is just OK, could be better for a set like this.

* When watching the TV and the program suddenly goes from white to black for more then a few seconds, you will see the screen fade from a light white color to black. Its almost like the LCD screen is un-charging. I’m being very critial here and its not that noticeable.

So…. Would I tell my friends to buy this TV. YES! Its well worth the money! I read in the paper that Samsung is losing money for each set sold because they are trying to compete with the bargin brands. Bad for Samsung, good for us customers! Plus Amazon was $400+ cheaper then the retail big box stores in town. Hats off to Amazon and Samsung!

Having had this tv for several months now, I have to say we are very pleased with it. For the high def channels carried by our cable company, the ones that have their act together and broadcast a good signal come out amazing on this tv. Having watched hd channels for a while now it really is true what others say, not all hd sources are created the same.

The touch of color on this set is hardly noticeable. So if your worried about that feature clashing with your decor don’t worry about it.

We also have not seen the power down issues reported in other reviews. Must have been something isolated to earlier models. When we received the tv, there was a sticker on the box that made note of the tv having a firmware upgrade. So the power down issue was probably addressed by that.

The remote is fine. As others have noted the scroll wheel on the remote doesn’t react quickly so it can be a bit frustrating. But there are other keys on the remote that perform the same functions.

Plus after buying the TV from Amazon the price dropped twice within 30 days of purchase. A quick call to Amazon Customer Service and I was refunded the difference. So it pays to keep an eye on the price after purchase, at least for 30 days while the price guarantee is in effect.

This is my 2nd coby dvd player, the reason I got this new one is because the remote died on me from the old player, and without the remote, you cannot control anything from the player itself. This 224 remote has the worse design, it has many buttons that are not useful on it and is not the same as it showed on the picture. The main button like play, fast forward, rewind and pause are on the very bottom of the remote, which are way inconvenience.

Tips: Fast forward and Rewind is the same button as previous and next chapter, you need to hold the button 2 to 3 seconds for it to start fast forwarding (x2, x4, x8, x16, x32), however, it is very sensitive that you always end up skipping to the next chapter.

Overall, the player itself is good, but the remote control sucks!!! I like the previous model remote control better!