8/19/2011
Pioneer MVH-P8200BT Multimedia AV Receiver with Built-in Bluetooth Review
Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I received my MVH-P8200BT yesterday, and installed it. Installation was as normal as any other stereo, except the additional parking brake wire if you want to use the photo or video portion of this radio. Let me first start out by saying the AM & FM portion of the radio work pretty good, you can relatively easily seek to the next or previous station by pushing the knob left or right, or bring up your presets by pushing it up. The radio displays the RDS nicely as well. Changing sources (Radio, ipod/USB, or Aux input requires pressing the SRC button and rotating the tuning knob to the right or left to highlight the source and then pressing the tuning knob in. This in all is relatively easy to do in a timely manner.
Where the problem comes in, is using the ipod interface. it will start playing I believe the last song you had playing, but if you want to jump to another artist or lets say a podcast, be prepared to take your eyes off the road. You have to hit the Home button, and then rotate the knob one to the right and then press it in, and rotate the knob to highlight Songs or podcast or artist, and in my case lets do podcast, then the lost of podcast comes up and you have to rotate to the podcast and press the knob in, then it shows you the episodes, then you push it in. But on top of doing this, the tuning knob which is a 5 way control (left, right, up , down, and in) is very sensitive and plan on registering the wrong menu choice, and then having to hit the previous button on the display to pop out one menu and continue. You have to do this anything you want to change songs that are not the next immediate song that you can just press the right commander button to jump to next track.
So, I thought, well the nice remote has a left right up and down, and in feature as well. I will do this from the remote with a little more precision, well turns out 70% of the buttons on the remote don't even do anything. any function that requires you to turn that knob on the radio, still has to be done that way. the up and down will not allow you to scroll through menu items. the only real think I was able to do with the remote was volume, next track and previous track, and radio tuning.
If you thought it would be nice to be able to play videos from your ipod or photos, it requires a $40 cable with a usb and aux cable now hanging out of the front of the radio per the manual. I did put some photos on the SD card, but you cannot play music from SD while you do your slid show, and again its a cumbersome use of the scroll wheel to jog between music and photos on the SD setup. You are able to play the slide show while listening to the radio.
Now for the real good, I think the best integration with this unit is the bluetooth with the iphone or probably many other phones, I was able to easily pull up contacts, and you can quickly choose a letter of the starting letter of the contact and click through to dial the appropriate name and if you want to call mobile or home. And the audio with the included mic is excellent. it will mute your music and continue it when your call is done.
The radio looks really good and thats what lead me immediately to this model, but I am ever so sorry I did not test it out before doing the install. I for sure thought the short comings would be overcome by using the remote, but you had no way to test it that well in the store. The remote is useless for iPod navigation or navigation or any SD media. I did get a chance to watch many tutorials online on the Alpine receiver 305 which was made for iPod and it has the navigation the way I would prefer it, thought it does lack characters and you have to scroll most titles, this pioneer was able to display a good character set. Oh and speaking of a feature that Alpine has, it has a nice readable clock. The clock on this is small, there is a feature you can turn on to show a nice clock, but you have to turn it on every time, it doesn't stay on as an option. Even with the radio in off mode, it should show the nice larger clock IMHO, but it doesn't you have to fight menus again to call this up.
To summarize, much fighting with a poor jog wheel to drill through menus to make common settings to what you want to listen to. They made it simple to change source and volume and next and previous track everything else gets deep in menus that will take usually 6 to 10 seconds to drill through menus to do, this is not safe in a car and the remote which could have assisted in this matter has much less ability. I think if you can do a double din the AVH-P3200 double din touch screen, is sooo much easier to navigate and for not more then $120 more in general, very upgradable and the addition items you get (CD/DVD slot and DVD playback, you wont be trying to convert stuff to Divx, and you can burn your stuff or bring along your DVD's and you have a bigger screen.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Pioneer MVH-P8200BT Multimedia AV Receiver with Built-in Bluetooth
"Mech-free" receivers are all the rage lately, as more and more consumers migrate their music and media collections to hard drives rather than physical media. The MVH-P8200BT from Pioneer is one of the company's first mech-free receivers, and has plenty to offer the digital-centric crowd. Make and take hands-free calls with built-in Bluetooth technology. Enjoy direct control of your iPod, with simple navigation and search features. Play back MP3/WMA/AAC audio files, DivX video, and even JPEG images from USB devices or SD memory cards. You can even tag songs heard on the radio for later purchase. It's all conducted via the simple "Rotary Commander" control and simple user interface displayed on the unit's three-inch display.
MVH-P8200BT Features
Built-In Bluetooth The MVH-P8200BT features built-in Bluetooth technology, which allows you to take incoming calls through your vehicle's sound system. Connecting your Bluetooth-enabled phone is a snap, and gives you access to all your contacts. Best of all, you can make or take a call without a headset.
Smart Interface for Quick Access Pioneer's new user interface has a minimal yet powerful design, and scales to accommodate modern media sources easily. Tailor it to your own preferences with the customizable home menu, putting your favorite features right at your fingertips.
USB Input / SD Memory Card Slot Connect USB thumb drives or other devices and enjoy playback of your digital audio and video files. Ditto for SD memory cards. This makes it a breeze to quickly grab some media from your computer before a big road trip, and enjoy hours of entertainment on the road.
iPod Direct Control (CD-IU50V required) Connect your iPod directly and experience exceptional sound quality while easily navigating through music, videos and album art on the AVH-P5200BT's screen. Say goodbye to the annoying static of FM transmitters and other iPod half-solutions.
Simple Search for iPod lets you quickly search your iPod/iPhone with alphabetical search by Song, Artist, Album or Genre categories.
MP3/WMA/AAC Playback Play back three of the most popular digital audio formats:MP3, WMA, and AAC. The MVH-8200's screen displays track info, and makes navigating directories/folders a breeze.
Video/JPEG Playback for Non-Stop Entertainment The MVH-P8200BT features a three-inch color display designed to take full advantage of all of your media. Play music videos and more from your iPod/iPhone, or from SD memory cards/USB devices. The MVH-8200 can decode Divx (AVI or DIVX extensions) video. You can even display JPEG photos using the Digital Photo Frame feature.
Auto EQ Automatically tailors acoustics by fine-tuning frequency bandwidths plus front/rear speaker digital parametric equalization. Result: smooth sound full of subtle nuance and clarity. Requires optional CD-MC20 microphone.
Customize Your Colors The MVH-P8200BT will accommodate your taste or mood. Select from six colors (blue/violet/red/amber/green/white) for the display, and 112 colors for key panel illumination.
Connect, Tag, and Download Have you ever heard a great song on the radio, but couldn't remember what it was called or who sang it when you went to go look for it later? Now you don't have to worry about missing out on great music. iTunes Tagging gives you the power to "tag" all of your favorite songs without having to scramble for a piece of scrap paper in the car, then later preview or purchase music at iTunes Music Store. Works with stations transmitting RDS data.
Bring Your Music to Life with Advanced Sound Retriever This year you can hear the detail, warmth, and clarity the way the artist intended it, from all of the highly compressed MP3, WMA and AAC files playing on your CD player. By restoring data that tends to get lost in the digital compression process, we can make your music sound close to CD quality.
Supertuner IIID AM/FM Tuner Pioneer's legendary Supertuner IIID combines the best of digital and analog tuner technologies to reduce distortion to bring you exceptional FM and AM performance. If you live in an area where reception is weak, you'll hear a big improvement in signal strength. And when you're near tall buildings, Supertuner IIID reduces the effect of multi-path noise, which occurs when the signal is reflecting off of the buildings.
Always have your favorite stations at hand with 18 FM and 6 AM user presets. And when you're somewhere new, let the tuner do the work for you by activating the Best Stations Memory (BSM) function. The tuner will seek out the 6 strongest stations in the area and set them into the tuner presets.
MOSFET 50W x4 Amplifier for the Power Hungry Compared to conventional power supplies, the MOSFET amplification circuit is smaller and more efficient, delivering power with less distortion and absolutely zero on/off switching noise. And that doesn't just mean a boost in volume: it means that your music will be cleaner at higher volumes because you're not pushing the limits of the amplification circuit. Clean, efficient power that will rock your vehicle.
For those who'd like a bit more power, three 4V RCA preamp outputs are also included for system expansion (front/rear/sub).
MVH-P8200BT Basic Specs
What's in the Box Pioneer MVH-P8200BT Receiver, Wiring Harness, Installation Hardware, Owner's Manual
Labels:
bluetooth,
digital music,
hd radio,
ipad,
ipod,
ipod nano,
ipod touch,
pioneer,
touchscreen,
usb
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