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Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD 7-Inch In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver with Widescreen Display
See it at Amazon.com for $550.00Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
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Close to Perfect, But Tragic Flaws
(2 out of 5) by Farmer Pete on May 19, 2009 (Lansing, MI)I bought this unit because my XM radio subscription was ending, and I decided I wanted to buy a new radio that allowed me to play MP3s easily. I have a double DIN opening, and I was sick and tired of only seeing a 1 line 8 character display. The USB port flexibility, big screen, and cool features of this unit made me happy. I don't like using iPods or any other device for that mater, so having the USB port was the big seller for me. I got it installed and I quickly hooked up a small flash drive with a few MP3's. It was awesome how well it worked. I loved that I could scroll through the song with my finger. I listen to a lot of "podcasts" that are 60 minute long episodes, so being able to scan through at will is nice.
Then the bad started...I pulled out my 16 gig flash drive and copied over my MP3 collection (~10 gigs). I was so excited when I plugged it in to the usb port. Finally, I could take all of my music with me wherever I go! No cd's!!! Awesome. Then I turned my car on and was prompted with "loading"..."Loading"...."Loading" about a minute or so later it finally came up and started playing my music. Okay, so maybe it only does it the first time I hook up the usb flash drive right? Nope. Infact, if you switch from the USB to the radio and back, it waits again. It wouldn't be so bad if it at least played ANY song, but I have to sit there for a minute of silence as it loads all of the music. Most of my driving is 15 minutes or less, so wasting 10% of my time listening to silence is a real downer.
I've tried finding a way to make the device work better with USB drives, and the only recommendation I have is that if you use 4 gigs or less, it seems to be better. With 4 gigs I was waiting around 12 seconds or so. That's still annoying, but at least it's playing by the time I pull out of my driveway. So, I decided the only logical choice was to do what I swore I would NEVER EVER do. I bought an iPod. Looking in the manual, I saw that the iPod has features not available in the normal MP3 player. For example you can easily search by artist name/album/song name. The USB flash drive software only lets you search through your folder structure. That works most of the time, but it would be nice to automate it a bit more. The iPod also has a "Link Play" where you can have it queue up all songs by that "Artist", "Album", or "Genre". Very nice. Now the bad part of the iPod...Well, there is the fact that I HAD TO BUY A !#@$* IPOD!!!! I had to spend $250 to get a feature that was supposed to be included with the radio (I guess I would have had to spend $50 for a 32gb flash drive). Second, the iPod disables the song position scrolling. You can fast forward, you can skip through the file if it has tracks (Luckily my podcasts DO have tracks, so this isn't to bad), but you can't put your finger on the location bar and have it skip to where you pointed to. Losing that feature was very sad. The other annoying thing is that since everything is database driven and not file driven, while it's easy to queue up the album of the song you are listening to, often I find myself wanting to just play "1" song by the same artist I am listening to. With the USB you could just hit the list button, select the song from the folder you are in, and then it would play away. With the iPod I have to load the album, flip through it randomly to get the song I want. It's a little frustrating. I would also love to be able to set, view or use ratings of songs, but the software doesn't support it. Probably just a compatibility issue. On the plus side, the iPod cable they tell you that you MUST have, well you don't need it. As long as you only want to play music, you can use the regular sync cables for your iPod. Video will require the extra cable.
My only other complaint about the unit is it's file format support. While the unit does support MP3, WAV, and AAC format, it doesn't support any Loss Less codecs (WAV doesn't count). FLAC support would be awesome. To get Lossless support, you have to use the iPod with Apple Lossless. No FLAC. I can't complain to much about this though, as I knew this when I purchased it.
Overall this is a good unit. The flaws aren't that bad if you are planning on using an iPod, but if you're like me and wanted to simulate having a in-dash hard disk by using flash drives, you'll be pissed with this. Hopefully there will be a firmware update, but until that time I can't recommend anyone use a USB flash drive over 4GB in size. (FYI, using a DVD with mp3's on it results in the same loading time issues).
On a side note, I did bypass the video cutoff. It's parking brake wire just needs to connect to ground. The trick to it though is that it needs a pulse on the ground line. So you can't just connect the wire to ground permanently. Some people rigged switches that they manually press to get it to work. I rigged up a relay that is triggered by the head unit's amp turn-on line that makes the ground connection. I now have a unit that fully automatically lets me view video at any time. Don't be an idiot and try to watch a video while driving though, I did it for the benefit of passengers.
Then the bad started...I pulled out my 16 gig flash drive and copied over my MP3 collection (~10 gigs). I was so excited when I plugged it in to the usb port. Finally, I could take all of my music with me wherever I go! No cd's!!! Awesome. Then I turned my car on and was prompted with "loading"..."Loading"...."Loading" about a minute or so later it finally came up and started playing my music. Okay, so maybe it only does it the first time I hook up the usb flash drive right? Nope. Infact, if you switch from the USB to the radio and back, it waits again. It wouldn't be so bad if it at least played ANY song, but I have to sit there for a minute of silence as it loads all of the music. Most of my driving is 15 minutes or less, so wasting 10% of my time listening to silence is a real downer.
I've tried finding a way to make the device work better with USB drives, and the only recommendation I have is that if you use 4 gigs or less, it seems to be better. With 4 gigs I was waiting around 12 seconds or so. That's still annoying, but at least it's playing by the time I pull out of my driveway. So, I decided the only logical choice was to do what I swore I would NEVER EVER do. I bought an iPod. Looking in the manual, I saw that the iPod has features not available in the normal MP3 player. For example you can easily search by artist name/album/song name. The USB flash drive software only lets you search through your folder structure. That works most of the time, but it would be nice to automate it a bit more. The iPod also has a "Link Play" where you can have it queue up all songs by that "Artist", "Album", or "Genre". Very nice. Now the bad part of the iPod...Well, there is the fact that I HAD TO BUY A !#@$* IPOD!!!! I had to spend $250 to get a feature that was supposed to be included with the radio (I guess I would have had to spend $50 for a 32gb flash drive). Second, the iPod disables the song position scrolling. You can fast forward, you can skip through the file if it has tracks (Luckily my podcasts DO have tracks, so this isn't to bad), but you can't put your finger on the location bar and have it skip to where you pointed to. Losing that feature was very sad. The other annoying thing is that since everything is database driven and not file driven, while it's easy to queue up the album of the song you are listening to, often I find myself wanting to just play "1" song by the same artist I am listening to. With the USB you could just hit the list button, select the song from the folder you are in, and then it would play away. With the iPod I have to load the album, flip through it randomly to get the song I want. It's a little frustrating. I would also love to be able to set, view or use ratings of songs, but the software doesn't support it. Probably just a compatibility issue. On the plus side, the iPod cable they tell you that you MUST have, well you don't need it. As long as you only want to play music, you can use the regular sync cables for your iPod. Video will require the extra cable.
My only other complaint about the unit is it's file format support. While the unit does support MP3, WAV, and AAC format, it doesn't support any Loss Less codecs (WAV doesn't count). FLAC support would be awesome. To get Lossless support, you have to use the iPod with Apple Lossless. No FLAC. I can't complain to much about this though, as I knew this when I purchased it.
Overall this is a good unit. The flaws aren't that bad if you are planning on using an iPod, but if you're like me and wanted to simulate having a in-dash hard disk by using flash drives, you'll be pissed with this. Hopefully there will be a firmware update, but until that time I can't recommend anyone use a USB flash drive over 4GB in size. (FYI, using a DVD with mp3's on it results in the same loading time issues).
On a side note, I did bypass the video cutoff. It's parking brake wire just needs to connect to ground. The trick to it though is that it needs a pulse on the ground line. So you can't just connect the wire to ground permanently. Some people rigged switches that they manually press to get it to work. I rigged up a relay that is triggered by the head unit's amp turn-on line that makes the ground connection. I now have a unit that fully automatically lets me view video at any time. Don't be an idiot and try to watch a video while driving though, I did it for the benefit of passengers.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
It's OK!
(3 out of 5) by Ian Lynch on Aug 30, 2009 (Kingston, Jamaica)I compared this unit with the JVC KW-AVX710 and decided to go for the Pioneer, for starters the JVC had no USB options that was standard and no SUB-Woofer out. Otherwise the picture and sound quality was very good even with my factory installed speakers. I am installing a Pioneer TV Tuner soon so I'll write an update then.
Concerns: I also hear that 1 second skip others complained aboutwhen playing either my IPOD or watching a DVD, and why in heavens name is the clock in 24-Hour format, was it being manufactured for the military? I don't see why Pioneer can't send us a software update to fix this problem.
Also in the year 2009 when I beleive my unit was made, why can't they include some small battery backup for the unit, if my car battery is disconnected everything goes including 18 FM stations which I can't always remember which frequency to avoid repeating and why didn't Pioneer give us the option on such an expensive unit to assign names to the FM/AM Preset Stations, my 10 year old Pioneer did that easily.
Don't drive and stop and start your car too ofter or you will get a USB Error, seems this unit doesn't like that or changing IPOD tracks too often and rapid.
A final plus note, my old Pioneer remote control can change the volume, track, mute and hold control which is cool, otherwise a good unit.
Concerns: I also hear that 1 second skip others complained aboutwhen playing either my IPOD or watching a DVD, and why in heavens name is the clock in 24-Hour format, was it being manufactured for the military? I don't see why Pioneer can't send us a software update to fix this problem.
Also in the year 2009 when I beleive my unit was made, why can't they include some small battery backup for the unit, if my car battery is disconnected everything goes including 18 FM stations which I can't always remember which frequency to avoid repeating and why didn't Pioneer give us the option on such an expensive unit to assign names to the FM/AM Preset Stations, my 10 year old Pioneer did that easily.
Don't drive and stop and start your car too ofter or you will get a USB Error, seems this unit doesn't like that or changing IPOD tracks too often and rapid.
A final plus note, my old Pioneer remote control can change the volume, track, mute and hold control which is cool, otherwise a good unit.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Great unit, but USB indexing need work!!!
(3 out of 5) by James Kirk on Aug 8, 2009 (Florida)Let me start with my biggest issue with the unit: USB support.
Ok, I had a Pioneer DEH-P6900UB in my previous car, a 2-3 year old model now. I have a Fujitsu 80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive in a Masscool USB case. With this setup, I usually have about 17-22GB worth of music on the unit. With my old head unit, it would take about 30 seconds to load and start playing. And while it was loading, I could listen to the radio, a CD, etc, then switch to the USB, and it would immediately play...This unit is a whole new story. With the same setup, load times are now over a minute (I have timed it to be 1:05), and that is not only when you first start you car, but every time you go to another source and return to USB, you have to wait. This is an awful system. I realize the drive has to do indexing to make a list, but my old Pioneer unit did the same thing, and much more quickly, and while playing another source. This unit is also double the price of my old one. Acceptable load times for something like this should be no more than 30 seconds. Even if the first time you hooked it up it took longer, then it could save an index in memory or on the drive. But no, it rebuilds it EVERY TIME you return to the unit, and it takes forever.
On the positive side, the screen is awesome, the touch features are great, the sound quality is great, and if you have an ipod, it is supposed to work very quickly with that.
However, I bought the unit primarily to play from a USB hard drive, so to me everything else is secondary.
And no, my drive is not slow. I can read from it on my PC in the 20 to 25 Megabytes per second range, much faster than cheap flash memory, though expensive flash can be faster, and better random read times, so it may build an index more quickly, but it's hit or miss.
Many of the other reviews here have already thoroughly covered many of the excellent other features on the unit. My review is to describe to those interested in non-iPod USB support how well it works. Once it loads, it works great. But if you have a good amount of music, prepare to wait. EVERY TIME!
Ok, I had a Pioneer DEH-P6900UB in my previous car, a 2-3 year old model now. I have a Fujitsu 80GB 4200RPM Hard Drive in a Masscool USB case. With this setup, I usually have about 17-22GB worth of music on the unit. With my old head unit, it would take about 30 seconds to load and start playing. And while it was loading, I could listen to the radio, a CD, etc, then switch to the USB, and it would immediately play...This unit is a whole new story. With the same setup, load times are now over a minute (I have timed it to be 1:05), and that is not only when you first start you car, but every time you go to another source and return to USB, you have to wait. This is an awful system. I realize the drive has to do indexing to make a list, but my old Pioneer unit did the same thing, and much more quickly, and while playing another source. This unit is also double the price of my old one. Acceptable load times for something like this should be no more than 30 seconds. Even if the first time you hooked it up it took longer, then it could save an index in memory or on the drive. But no, it rebuilds it EVERY TIME you return to the unit, and it takes forever.
On the positive side, the screen is awesome, the touch features are great, the sound quality is great, and if you have an ipod, it is supposed to work very quickly with that.
However, I bought the unit primarily to play from a USB hard drive, so to me everything else is secondary.
And no, my drive is not slow. I can read from it on my PC in the 20 to 25 Megabytes per second range, much faster than cheap flash memory, though expensive flash can be faster, and better random read times, so it may build an index more quickly, but it's hit or miss.
Many of the other reviews here have already thoroughly covered many of the excellent other features on the unit. My review is to describe to those interested in non-iPod USB support how well it works. Once it loads, it works great. But if you have a good amount of music, prepare to wait. EVERY TIME!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Great Unit
(5 out of 5) by M. Johnson on Mar 26, 2009 (Tennessee)I purchaced this radio and installed it. The installation went very well after I modified the install kit to allow for the motorized face. Everything worked great on the unit until I tried the radio. The reception was very bad. I could only get one station. I removed the radio and reinstalled the factory to test my window antenia. The factory radio picked up very well. I was going to return the radio and found out that the 2006 Nissan Altima had a power antenia wire that had to be hooked up for the window antenia to work. When I hooked this wire up to the system remote, the reception came in great. I love this radio, it is really easy to operate and the sound is wonderful. I alos hooked up a relay to bypass the video and it worked great. The kids wanted to watch a movie going down the road. I highly recommend this radio for an outstanding upgrade to the factory. The only thing I don't like is the clock is a 24 hour clock and can not be changed.
Awesome!!
(5 out of 5) by E. C. Pasion on Nov 1, 2009This is just great! I love how it looks and really makes you enjoy driving! The sound and LCD is so clear! The unit is so user-friendly!