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Pioneer AVIC-F900BT In-Dash Navigation Audio/Video Receiver with DVD Playback and Advance Voice Controls
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Worst Consumer Electronics Ever?!?
(1 out of 5) by Steven Miller on Jun 3, 2009 (Potomac, MD U.S.A.)I have one of these (I've had it for 11 months), and it might be the worst piece of consumer electronics ever, or at least that I've ever used. And to help you calibrate that statement, I'll point out that I owned two, count 'em, two of the original MSN-TV (or whatever it was called) DISHPlayers -- the previous lead contender for Worst Consumer Electronics Ever.
The interface is unpleasant in one big way and a lot of little ways, much like Windows is compared to, say, a Mac. I blame Windows CE -- this is a WinCE device down underneath.
The biggest problem is that the touchscreen needs to be a lot more responsive. Especially in a device that's meant to be used in a moving vehicle, having to touch the screen multiple times in order to get it to respond is simply not acceptable. Sometimes it's pretty responsive, but often it's not: you hit a preset and it does nothing, so you press the preset more carefully, and it does nothing, so you try to ram your finger through the screen, and it does nothing. (And yeah, I've gone through the screen-calibration part of the setup.) All this time, your eyes aren't where they should be when you're driving: on the damned road!
And even beyond the crazy idea that maybe when you're in your car, you should be focused on the driving, there's another practical issue with the unresponsive touchscreen. C'mon, how often have you hit a preset, only to discover that the station to which you've just changed is playing the worst song *ever*? It's imperative -- imperative, I tell you! -- that you be able to change away quickly. But nope, you can't guarantee that you can do that. Trapped, I say, like a bug! Your best bet is to use the multifunction knob to change up one station or down one station (on XM, at least, not sure about FM or AM), but that won't always work, either (see below).
Other nagging issues include:
- the XM preset display is just not well considered. You want to see your presets? OK... but you can't see the title or the artist. You want to see the title and artist? OK, but you'll have to switch back from the Detail view to the preset view if you want to change to another preset.
- the slow response continues to the do-everything button: under some circumstances, you can't just nudge it right or left to jump to a different station or track, it just ignores the input. I think that one of the times that can happen is if you're in the XM preset view, and you hit Detail, then go back to the preset view, then nudge right or nudge left, but maybe I'm not remembering that correctly.
- in theory, you can mute the system by pressing down on the volume/menu/navigation/station-changer/all-singing/all-dancing button, except for me that seems to work only rarely... though now that I've turned off voice recognition, it mutes the system permanently (like, you have to power the car down in order to reboot to get the sound back).
- oh, voice recognition, did you say?!? I don't think so! If it's enabled, and I connect my iPhone, the nav system will start trying to precompute the voice-recognition signatures for everything on my phone (and there's not a lot there, it's only half full)... and it'll never complete. Or at least if it'll ever complete, it'll take more than an hour to do so, as that's when I gave up. That problem started with the 2.0 firmware side-grade: before that, it had even more issues, but the precomputation thing would "only" take a few minutes, at least.
- XM. Sometimes, the unit will get into a mode where it'll quickly alternate music and static; this isn't the normal XM signal-loss, it's pretty obviously a bug. If it starts to do that, you're doomed: in a few seconds, you'll lose XM, and you'll have to reboot your car in order to get XM back.
- boot time. Come on, booting up isn't rocket science, just do it quickly! And if, say, you left the radio on when you turned the car off, when you turn the car on, the first quasi-useful thing it'll do is "help" you by playing music as soon as it can. But that's a good ten seconds before it'll accept user input. So again, if the station you had been listening to before is now playing something so utterly terrible that it would make your eyes bleed, you are pinned like a deer in the headlights until the unit condescends to accept your input.
For what it's worth, I'm definitely not a technophobe: I'm some combination of software developer and network engineer by profession. I have Read The Fine Manual. I seriously doubt that I'm just doing something dumb. This thing smacks of being designed by committee, one that didn't care about doing anything other than checking off features on some list somewhere.
The interface is unpleasant in one big way and a lot of little ways, much like Windows is compared to, say, a Mac. I blame Windows CE -- this is a WinCE device down underneath.
The biggest problem is that the touchscreen needs to be a lot more responsive. Especially in a device that's meant to be used in a moving vehicle, having to touch the screen multiple times in order to get it to respond is simply not acceptable. Sometimes it's pretty responsive, but often it's not: you hit a preset and it does nothing, so you press the preset more carefully, and it does nothing, so you try to ram your finger through the screen, and it does nothing. (And yeah, I've gone through the screen-calibration part of the setup.) All this time, your eyes aren't where they should be when you're driving: on the damned road!
And even beyond the crazy idea that maybe when you're in your car, you should be focused on the driving, there's another practical issue with the unresponsive touchscreen. C'mon, how often have you hit a preset, only to discover that the station to which you've just changed is playing the worst song *ever*? It's imperative -- imperative, I tell you! -- that you be able to change away quickly. But nope, you can't guarantee that you can do that. Trapped, I say, like a bug! Your best bet is to use the multifunction knob to change up one station or down one station (on XM, at least, not sure about FM or AM), but that won't always work, either (see below).
Other nagging issues include:
- the XM preset display is just not well considered. You want to see your presets? OK... but you can't see the title or the artist. You want to see the title and artist? OK, but you'll have to switch back from the Detail view to the preset view if you want to change to another preset.
- the slow response continues to the do-everything button: under some circumstances, you can't just nudge it right or left to jump to a different station or track, it just ignores the input. I think that one of the times that can happen is if you're in the XM preset view, and you hit Detail, then go back to the preset view, then nudge right or nudge left, but maybe I'm not remembering that correctly.
- in theory, you can mute the system by pressing down on the volume/menu/navigation/station-changer/all-singing/all-dancing button, except for me that seems to work only rarely... though now that I've turned off voice recognition, it mutes the system permanently (like, you have to power the car down in order to reboot to get the sound back).
- oh, voice recognition, did you say?!? I don't think so! If it's enabled, and I connect my iPhone, the nav system will start trying to precompute the voice-recognition signatures for everything on my phone (and there's not a lot there, it's only half full)... and it'll never complete. Or at least if it'll ever complete, it'll take more than an hour to do so, as that's when I gave up. That problem started with the 2.0 firmware side-grade: before that, it had even more issues, but the precomputation thing would "only" take a few minutes, at least.
- XM. Sometimes, the unit will get into a mode where it'll quickly alternate music and static; this isn't the normal XM signal-loss, it's pretty obviously a bug. If it starts to do that, you're doomed: in a few seconds, you'll lose XM, and you'll have to reboot your car in order to get XM back.
- boot time. Come on, booting up isn't rocket science, just do it quickly! And if, say, you left the radio on when you turned the car off, when you turn the car on, the first quasi-useful thing it'll do is "help" you by playing music as soon as it can. But that's a good ten seconds before it'll accept user input. So again, if the station you had been listening to before is now playing something so utterly terrible that it would make your eyes bleed, you are pinned like a deer in the headlights until the unit condescends to accept your input.
For what it's worth, I'm definitely not a technophobe: I'm some combination of software developer and network engineer by profession. I have Read The Fine Manual. I seriously doubt that I'm just doing something dumb. This thing smacks of being designed by committee, one that didn't care about doing anything other than checking off features on some list somewhere.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
GPS
(4 out of 5) by Tyrone Sydnor on Feb 19, 2009 (HAMPTON VA)SO FAR I FIND THIS IN GPS SYSTEM TO BE DOING WHAT I WANT IT TO DO AND EVERYTHING I READ THAT IT DESIGN TO PERFORM IT SOFAR FOR THE ADD ON THAT
I PURCHASE TO GO WITH THIS SYSTEM WORK LIKE I READ I WILL KEEP YOU INFORM WITH ANY NEW AD ON
I PURCHASE TO GO WITH THIS SYSTEM WORK LIKE I READ I WILL KEEP YOU INFORM WITH ANY NEW AD ON