| AM/FM/DVD Receiver with 7-Inch Motorized, Touch, Full iPod, Full Bluetooth interface MOSFET 5 X 60 watt, Multi-Zone, 2 IR Remotes, Full integrated Navigation, 11 mil POI, 300 Watts Peak (60x5) Motorized 6.5-Inch touch screen TFT LCD monitor Integrated Navigation 2-DIN Chassis Center channel output (60x1) Fully self-contained (no hide-away box) Multi-zone Import ISO/DIN mountable Internal cooling fan Electronic volume, bass, treble, balance, and fader MOSFET audio output 5.1 audio outputs (RCA) 1 Audio/video input (RCA) 1 Rear camera input (RCA) 1 Composite video output, Integrated SD card reader (up to 2GB) Integrated navigation (SD card) 24-Bit D/A Converter Multi-zone remote control Infrared remote control ( iPod Cable NOT included) |
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 Great head unit! |
| Review Date: September 30, 2008 |
| Reviewer: Rodney Washington, NC |
| This unit was great for the price. I especially loved the amount of options available in box. The only down fall is the lack of satelite radio. But, no need to worry you can have hours of music... just attach your ipod to the included control adapter and you are set. Audio settings are great as well. You will enjoy this one! |
Great Value
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| Review Date: October 29, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Brian Schan, |
Just picked up one of these for my 4-runner. Looks great installed. It is packed with features. Would have given it 5 stars, but it was missing a couple of minor features I would have liked to have seen. Here are my pros and cons:
Pros: Packed with great features including Nav, Ipod connection w/ cable included, Plays DVD +/-RW, Decent bluetooth, built in microphone for use with bluetooth that I have been told sounds pretty good when making a call, easy to use touchscreen interface. All in all, great features considering the price.
Cons: These are nitpicky little things that I felt were missing. None of them should really be a dealbreaker, but thought I would list them for your edification. 1) Ipod playback doesnt browse to Artist>Album like it does on the ipod. WHen you select the Artist, it just lists all the songs by the artist, regardless of what album the songs are on. This makes it a little difficult to find a specifc album unless you use the Album search. If you are like me, that search could take a while. 2) No sat radio. 3) No way to store contacts for use with Bluetooth. You can use your phone to find the number and call, then use HU. 4) No voice command option.
That is what I noticed just after a couple of days of use. Despite these shortcomings, the Dual XDVDN8290 HU is a terrific value for the price. You get 90%+ of the features offered by the more expesive stereos and if you can live with the missing features I have mentioned, I see no reason not to get one if you are in the market. |
XDVDN8290 Good but not great
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| Review Date: March 1, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Grant Nichelson, Utah, USA |
XDVDN8290 Navigation Receiver
Good value for the amount of gadgets but has some issues
With GPS, Blue Tooth, mp3 playback, SD card reader, DVD video, touch screen, iPod hook up, midi 3.5 audio jack, .JPG picture viewing, and external three plug (yellow, red, white) RCA jack for video or game console connection all for around half to one third the price? Sounds great, right?
Pros:
It has a ton of features for a fraction of the price of similar devices with the same amount of gizmos.
The DVDs sound great. The audio separation is very cool and makes for a theater like experience.
The unit looks very good installed in the dash.
SD card reader.
Cons:
The SD card reader is limited to 2GB cards. SDHC cards are not supported. I found this to be pretty disappointing.
There is only 1 RCA out to the sub-woofer. I had to get a "Y" cable to connect to both jacks on my amp.
Touch screen can be picky and not accept finger presses sometimes.
If you like listening to mp3 burnt CDs, as I do, you may be a little let down by the mp3 playback on this unit. I like being able to put an entire band's album discography on a single CD-R. In the past I have had several decks able to play mp3 CDs, it is pretty much standard now days. In those past instances, the decks would have a four button interface: right button = next track, left button = previous track, up button = next album, down button = previous album. This setup was very easy to navigate to exactly what you were looking for. On the XDVDN8290 there are "folder +" and "folder -" touch screen soft keys that are much more difficult to scroll through as compared to a nice click of a physical hard key button. When using the "folder +" and "folder -" it will display the next folder but not start playing it. You will have to physically press the screen for the song you want (e.g. the first song of the next album). If you don't press a song it will timeout after 5 seconds and then it will go back to the currently playing song. I found this very frustrating when looking for a particular song out of a couple hundred songs. As far as I know, I have not seen an option to change this 5 second timeout. You can advance to the next or previous track with the "Out" and "In" hard keys though, which is nice. Also, I would rate the load time as terrible when playing mp3 data CDs. A full 700MB CD-R is going to take about 20 seconds to start playing every single time you start the vehicle. This is compared to the last couple decks I had (a Pioneer and Kenwood single dins) that would start playing within 5 seconds. Keep in mind that the previous decks were several years older. If you create an mp3 data DVD-/+R with 4GB+ of music, forget it. First of all that is too much data to easily navigate through using the folder soft keys and it takes about a full 60 seconds to load and start playing every time you get in the car. I realize that this Dual brand deck has a 10 second buffer to prevent skipping but on the older units I had, that loaded much more quickly, I never had any skipping issues.
These might just be considered personal knit-picks, however there are sizable problems that I can see affecting many users.
Most mp3 computer software used for ripping CDs to mp3 files to the computer (e.g. Windows Media Player, WinAmp, iTunes, etc.) will create hidden files in the ripped album's directory. These files are usually the album art that is associated with the CD that was retrieved from the internet. In Windows 7/XP, to see these files you will need to open the folder containing the ripped mp3s then select "Tools", "Folder options", "View", then select the radio button "Show hidden files, folders, and drives" and un-check "Hide protected operating system files", then click "OK". You will then be able to see the "AlbumArt_{EXAMPLE}_Large", "AlbumArt_{EXAMPLE}_Small", "AlbumArt_Small", "Desktop.ini", and "Folder.jpg" files in that directory for that album. When creating an mp3 CD-R data CD with files to be played in this car deck DO NOT add any of these files to your compilation. This is the same situation with SD cards.
What this means:
You unknowingly dragged and dropped your favorite music to be burnt to your mp3 data CD or added to your SD card from your PC that contained hidden files. You happily take the CD/SD card out to your new car stereo. It takes, what seems like, forever to load and then you get the DVD video warning screen. The warning screen indicates that you have to initiate the e-brake sequence to start playback. The playback sequence for DVD videos and .JPG files to be displayed is: e-brake down, e-brake up for 1 second, e-brake down for 1 second, then e-brake remaining up. (This is ridiculous. Why can't the e-brake just be up without a confusing sequence?) After completing the e-brake sequence, the display will now slide-show through all of the hidden album art files that you didn't even know were there. Then, finally, it will play your music on the CD-R/SD card.
The XDVDN8290 also plays .JPG files.
The XDVDN8290 sees the hidden .JPG album art pictures and tries to display them. If you want to use data mp3 disks make sure to Not copy the hidden files to the CD-R, DVD-/+R, or SD card.
I also had issues with the Navigation.
Symptoms:
Initially, half of the time when I hit the "Menu" button, the "Navi" option was grayed out on the touch screen and not available. Pushing the "Nav" hard key also did not respond. The navigation runs off of the provided NavMate 2GB SD card.
(Note: You cannot use GPS while listening to SD music files, one or the other.)
Currently the Nav seems to be working properly. I have had it for about three weeks. It started working after I did a couple things: I had the installer re-verify that the GPS threaded antenna was secure. I reset the unit by using a pen to hold in the reset button on the right side for 6 seconds. Then I used a different 2GB SD card suspecting that mine may be bad.
This part was easier said than done.
I did this by using the NavMate software DVD to reload the files to the new 2GB SD card from the computer. I could not get the NavMate software DVD program to work properly in Windows 7. The Navigation Software Utility will have you select the destination SD drive e.g. "E:" drive. Then you click the Map/Voice Uploader. From here you can deselect languages and voices but are not able to pick which State maps you would like to load as far as I could tell. In Windows 7, the program would not load the "DB" folder that contains all of the Canadian and US State maps. It would only load 6.8MB of other system files to the SD card but not the state maps. The Windows 7 PC I used was with a USB to SD card adapter. I tried the NavMate PC DVD Map/Voice Uploader again from a Windows XP laptop with a built in SD card reader and it worked fine.
But here is the problem: the actual size of the NavMate 2GB SD card is 1.88GB. All of the navigation data will take just about this entire amount! This is with Mexican Spanish, US English, Canadian French, all Canadian State maps, and all US State maps. Most standard SD cards - I tried a PNY 2GB SD and a SanDisk 2GB SD - both only had 1.83GB of available disk space formatted in FAT32. Even with not loading the Spanish and French there was not enough room on the new SD cards. So... If you think you have a bad card and want to try a different one: Run the NavMate DVD on your computer. When it gets near the end of coping the files it will fail because there is not enough room. I had to manually take out folders of states that I knew I wouldn't be driving to fit within the 1.83GB limit of the third party SD cards (e.g. in the SD folder "E:\DB\" Hawaii would be the" UHI" folder, Puerto Rico "UPR" folder, etc.). Hopefully your SD card works when you get it and don't have to worry about all of this.) You can pick and choose what states you want to include from the NavMate "DB" folder and copy them to the SD card. Clear as mud? Hope this helps someone else.
Bottom line:
The GPS does work even if you have to mess with it.
There are some very cool features.
The DVD videos rock.
It costs much less than the competition.
The very technical details may not bother you.
I really want to like this product. I haven't had it for very long and I think it will grow on me.
I will give the benefit of the doubt and assume that I was just unlucky with the Nav SD card.
I will go 3 ½ - 4 stars out of five for the value it offers.
I will update this review if/when I find out anything else.
If you have experience with this device and have additional information or corrections please e-mail me at: grantnichelson@yahoo.com
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