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(More customer reviews)i wrote this review for the Pioneer MVH-P8200BT which is the exact same product but with built in bluetooth. i edited out any bluetooth mentions, so everything else here applies.
* it looks nice
* it sounds nice (multiple audio options: full eq, bass boost, low pass filter etc)
here are the cons:
while it's refreshing to have a nice clean sparse interface in a car audio system, inside it's unnecessarily complex with navigating media. like a nokia phone, it seems the software was an designed by hardware guys who treated it as an afterthought.
* you really need to hit dead center of the dial to hit the center button. it's too often that i end up selecting left or right because i was a bit off.
* while there is a way to 'bookmark' certain menu options in a custom quick-shortcut menu, it's not as quick as it should be. you still need a button press, a knob turn, and another button press to access the menu. it would have been so much helpful if there was a dedicated shortcut menu button.
* when browsing an SD card or a USB drive, you can only browse one type of media (music, video, audio) at a time. if you want to switch media it's a button press, several knob turns to the bottom of the menu, another button press to the AV mode, where you can switch to video, music, or pictures.
* i used this with the external HD radio unit (GEX-P20HD). it works fine, and the reception is great. unfortunately for some bizarre reason only one line of radio id text shows up at one time. to show more information you'll have to (you guessed it), button press, knob turns to the display menu, button press, then select 'artist' or 'song' or no text. why do i have to do all that just to find out the artist or the title? all the other audio sources show all this information at the same time.
* as reported before, you can't use the remote as a substitute for the rotary dial so the majority of functions are useless with the remote.
* also as mentioned, there is no artwork support on MP3s on SD card or USB. album art is for iPods only!
* SDHC cards are inserted behind the faceplate which you have to detach to remove (which btw, only knob and buttons part of the face detaches). not that big of a deal unless you have a bunch of SD cards you want to swap on a regular basis.
here are other oddities that i discovered on my own:
* USB won't charge my iPhone if i have the source at SD card. but it will charge in any other mode.
* there's an option to have a four background wallpapers. three by pioneer and one jpg you can import from a memory card. they are nice. but if you have any of these background pictures set, there's no way you can view any pictures or video. the crazy thing is that it pretends that there's nothing wrong and the only thing you'll see is the filename of the picture or the video. so if you turn on the wallpaper and you select a video, the audio plays, but the only thing that's shows up on the screen is the filename. if you're in slideshow mode, you'll just see the filename of the picture change at certain intervals.
i thought it was the way i was wiring the safety parking brake wire. maybe it thought i was driving so it was blocking the video for my safety. i spent a few hours messing around with it before i figured out i did nothing wrong. the pioneer customer support rep told me this was a known quirk and it's been that way with several pioneer units with no plans for a fix. i can definitely live with this limitation but it's not mentioned anywhere in the manual! argh so frustrating.
* it does accept SDHC cards even though they won't admit it. i thought maybe the reason SDHC cards were not officially supported was because it takes a really long time to do the initial scan, but then i inserted a 16GB USB memory drive and it took almost a minute to scan!
* and maybe i shouldn't use the word 'initial' together with the word 'scan' because it scans the card or usb memory EVERY TIME you select it as the source. EVERY-TIME. that means even though it would be nice to leave 16 gigs of music indefinitely attached to the unit, every time i want to switch to it from another source i'll have to wait 30-60 seconds. this is an absolute dealbreaker for me.
* the second dealbreaker is that there is no expandability for a second auxiliary source. there's an add on adapter (CD-RB10) to add stereo rca inputs to the rear of the unit. even though it's listed on pioneer's product page as being a supported accessory (as of this writing), it doesn't work at all. it fits, but there's no option in the software to select it as a source. this was all confirmed by a pioneer customer service rep.
i'm kind of sad. for something that looks like it has tons of potential, the software underdelivers and makes it half assed.
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Pioneer MVH-P8200 Multimedia AV Receiver with 3 In. Color Display"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-P8200 from Pioneer is one of the company's first mech-free receivers, and has plenty to offer the digital-centric crowd. 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-P8200 Features
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-8200 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-P8200 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-P8200 Basic Specs
What's in the Box Pioneer MVH-P8200 Receiver, Wiring Harness, Installation Hardware, Owner's Manual
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