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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26 in Car Audio or Theater
• Brand: Pioneer
• Model: AVH-P4100DVD
• Dimensions: 3.60" h x 20.40" w x 12.00" l, 6.80 pounds
• Display size: 7

Features

• 7-inch motorized touchscreen LCD monitor
• Double DIN Head unit
• Plays DVD-R/RW, CD-R/RW, DivX, MP3, WMA and AAC
• Features touchscreen control for iPod/iPhone with album art, touch slide, ASR and USB control

Amazon.com Product Description
Introducing the Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver with 7-inch Widescreen Display, including DVD Video, DivX, MP3/WMA/iTunes AAC playback, iPod Direct Control (CD-IU50V Required), and Bluetooth Adapter Ready (CD-BTB200 Required).

Now Playing In A Dash Near You
This is what Drive-In Movies were supposed to be. Audio/Video players improve on CD Players by adding a nice large touch screen. With features like touch-slide control and improved iPod interface, taking your favorite movies, music, and other media on the road is better than ever.

Pioneer AVIC-F900BT In-Dash Navigation AV Receiver with DVD Playback and Built-In Bluetooth. Click to enlarge.

Controlling your movies and music has never been easier with the slick touch panel display.

Back connections of the Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD.

Now playing in a dash near you: Your calls, CDs, DVDs, your iPod and more.

Widen Your Horizons
With a 15 percent larger display that the AVH-P3100DVD, the AVH-P4100DVD's motorized display hides the CD slot, allowing you to enjoy all of your Audio/Video content on the full-color 7-inch screen.

iPod Made Easy
Simply plug your iPod directly into the unit using the CD-IU50V iPod cable, and you are ready to rock and roll. Touch slide scrolling, Alphabetical Hi-Speed Search, Album Art, and improved Link Search make it easy to find your music.

Bring Your Music To Life
Hear the detail, warmth, and clarity the way the artist intended it, from all of your highly compressed MP3, WMA and AAC files. By restoring data that tends to get lost in the digital compression process, we can make your music sound close to CD quality.

Smooth Operator
Controlling your movies and music has never been easier. With a smooth swipe of your finger on the touch panel display, you can fastforward and rewind Audio/Video content (Note: Touchslide Fastforward/Rewind function not available on iPod).

Now It's Personal
Select among five display colors and 112 key panel illumination to match car interior lighting, color, and design. You can even set your favorite JPEG file as wallpaper. Parked with no place to go? Now you can enjoy a slideshow of your photos on a CD or USB Device.

Fed up with your Bluetooth headset?
Here's a better hands-free solution. Use the available CD-BTB200 Bluetooth Adapter and Bluetooth-enabled cellular phones for easy, safe, and hands-free operation. The unit acts like a speakerphone, channeling the sound through your car speakers which makes the call sound better. It also automatically mutes your music so that you'll never miss a call (Note: Optional CD-BTB200 adapter required).

What else does this model have to offer?
The AVH-P4100DVD also includes additional features like built-in AUX input for your media devices. Features that are designed to expand your system, customize your experience, provide superior sound quality and easy operation.

• 3 RCA Hi-Volt pre-outs for adding on external amps and speakers simplify system expansion.
• Play your MP3, WMA, iTunes AAC from CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, or USB Device.
• Built-in MOSFET 50 W x 4 amplifier for excellent sound quality, minimal distortion and efficient power handling.
• Supertuner IIID advanced analog and digital processing assure superior imaging, less distortion and noise, and stronger, smoother broadcast signal reception.

What's in the Box
Pioneer AVH-P4100DVD, wiring harness, installation hardware, operation manual, installation guide, warranty sheet

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Customer Reviews

Generally a good unit, but has a couple shortcomings
I have had this unit for about a week now, and generally it's a pretty impressive unit. I also purchased the Pioneer GEX-P10HD HD Radio Tuner for Pioneer HD Radio-Ready Head Units, the Pioneer CD-BTB200 Bluetooth Wireless Adapter, and the Pioneer Car CDIU200V 2 Meter USB iPod Cable for AVH-P4100DVD.

Installation:
Installation for the product was generally clear. I am using the unit in a 1999 Nissan Altima. Had plenty of room for all three pieces either below the stereo or below the steering column.

AUX Inputs:
You'll need to buy an 1/8" headphone extension cable if you plan to use the aux input to connect to a normal player since the AUX input is in the back of the unit. You can also use a normal RCA stereo to 1/8" cable like for a home stereo as well. The unit accepts both and you can use them for different units, so you can have an ipod hooked up and another player at the same time.

Video Quality:
* Album covers from ipods are okay. A bit fuzzy, but okay.
* DVDs look awesome on this unit. Every bit of what you'd want. Plenty of control options. I have no complaints on this one.
* Color on the screen is bright and easy to read and selecting things on the screen is also easy. It's a senstive touch, so I never have to press hard. Most of the text is very large, so it's easy to read and select on the screen in a moving car. Has a clean look, will be impressive to passengers, but when off, nothing that makes it look fancy (in my ideal world hopefully that'll reduce theft potential). If you go to the Pioneer Electronics website, they have many more images of the screens. And the unit looks just as good in real life as it does in those pictures.

Sound Options:
* EQ is parametric, only three bands, but it allows you to choose what frequency and how many frequencies on either side of that one are affected. Provides enough flexibility if you may be used to a 7 or 10 band EQ like I am.
* Also, for external players, the feature that compensates for MP3 compressed audio is great. Really helps improve the sound from ipods.
* The Loudness feature has three intensity levels--quite helpful since on some units the difference between it being on and off can be crazy.
* The sub woofer settings allow you to choose the sub frequency you want to accent or reduce--assuming you have one with an external amplifier connected.

* Clock is only military time with no option to change it to am or pm. And it has a "just" option that drops the minutes and rounds the hours up or not. At least in the U.S., why would someone want to know a rounded hour. Not sure how that helps with anything.

Radio:
* The automatic station presets (BSM) only work in each preset group. Each group only has 6 options. So, you can't have it find the top 18 strongest signals. For example, if you use BSM setup for FM set 1, and then do the same for FM set 2, they have practically the same stations in them.
* HD radio is great, but when selecting presets, it doesn't insert the name of the station like it does with normal FM. All you see is P1, P2, etc. And I have yet to find a way to manually add it in. I don't expect to. If you use the HD unit, the normal radio functionality in the unit is disabled. You can still get the analog signals, it just works a little differently. It seems like they forgot to dot a few i's. But it switches back and forth between the analog signal and digital signal pretty well. With strong FM signals, I really can't tell much of a difference. Generally speaking, I probably wouldn't buy this item again if I had the choice. Most stations don't provide song title and artist information, plus most average stereos have that capability anyway. And on the display, what information is available from the station is really small and cluttered at the top while tremendous space is wasted in the main areas. Poorly thought out for such a excellently featured unit.
* AM stations don't come in well. When they come in, they sound great. It basically acts like a digital signal, so it either comes in and out quickly so you can't catch the words, doesn't come in at all, or it's on perfectly. When perfectly, it sounds much better than a normal stereo. My guess is that there's a processor in the unit that tries to clean up the signal. But as a result, weaker signals are simply cut off. You can't turn this feature off. Pretty tough since AM signals are so weak in the first place. My last stereo was much better. AM HD certainly sounds better, but it requires a stronger signal than the analog AM. So, it doesn't help you either.

iPod Controls:
* iPod controls work just like on the ipod except the scroll wheel action. In playlists, you can't see title and artist together. It also truncates titles and shows only 5 at a time. It's hard to find artists on the screen if you have a lot and scrolling is time consuming. There's really nothing special with this feature. It's better on the ipod because you can use the scroll action. The stereo allows you to use the ipod to select songs instead if you want. I didn't find any significant bugs when using this feature.
* The unit allows you to play videos from your iPod or iTouch if you have video capability. I have a 5th generation ipod video (The stereo does have requirements as to what ipods can be used. Basically if you have one manufactured in the last two to three years, you'll be fine.). I used DVDFab's software on a PC to convert my DVDs to a format for the ipod. But for some reason, the videos wouldn't play via the stereo like they should. I have the same problem on exercise units with the same feature. It's probably a problem with my encoding. Just know you may have some adjustments to make. I haven't bought a video from iTunes yet. I'd assume the videos would work just fine then.

Parked Requirement:
* I found a way around the parking brake requirement like a couple other reviewers. It is as simple as connecing the parking brake lead to a switch and the switch to the car chasis. The switch will have to be on (i.e. grounded) when you start your car. Then you'd switch it off and then on again. Most product descriptions on sites about this unit talk about it blocking DVDs, but if you don't hook it up at all, it actually blocks other features in the unit as well, such as changing the display intensity and setting up the bluetooth module. Even after you engage the "parking brake", there is a compliance screen prior to watching a DVD that requires you to press OK saying you're parked. It's good they do that. They shouldn't be liable in an accident caused by us going around their system and watching a DVD or trying to dial a number while driving. By going around their system, we are certainly fully responsible for the consequences.

Bluetooth Capability:
* It allows you to dump your phonebook into the unit if your phone has that option. Wasn't too hard to do that on my Treo 700p. The microphone sounded great on the piece and callers through the stereo sounded ok. I wouldn't say it's clear, but not much better than what you hear through your cellphone. The unit disables the EQ, however. So, you're stuck with the default cellphone sound. The only thing you can do is balance the signal volume with the other equipment, which for the Treo is unnecessary since you can control that on the unit.

Backgrounds:
* The default set of background options are really good, except for the animated versions. They are very pixelated--very poor quality. The are still pretty cool, though. I still use one of them for some sources.

Summary:
Overall, I'm glad I bought the unit. The radio shortcomings and ipod clumsiness are pretty big ones for me. But considering the price here on Amazon vs. other options in the same price range, I still would have bought the unit again.

Pretty Good - But What's the Deal with the Remote???
I've read through many of the insightful reviews here (not all of them, so some of this may be repeat), and I'd like to add something that I haven't seen commented on yet.

Let me try and break this down into a few small areas of my deliberately limited focus for this review: Overall, Sound, and Control.

OVERALL
I think the unit is pretty good. I thought it was great at first, and love the DVD and video and all that (which is what I've wanted for SO long!), but as I've worked more with it, I'm noticing some very annoying issues (I'll explain below.) The installation was easy (easier than I thought), and the parking break thing didn't pose much of a problem to tweak. The unit looks nice, the screen is well designed, and the touch screen is very responsive (I love that!). One BRILLIANT addition to this unit is the display button on the left of the front of the unit. To turn the ENTIRE screen off and just make it black is just brilliant to me. I've had units where even the dimmer at night doesn't do enough to not distract me with the display while driving, or doesn't give me enough of an option to turn the brightness down to where I want it at times (if I'm parked somewhere just talking to a friend). To push a button and have the screen toggle off and on (keep in mind we're not talking about a 4 step menu option) is just great. One of the nice things about this unit. I love that. I too have a gap between my deck and the double-din area in my car (as one commenter noted), and can't seem to get the flat piece of plastic, that's supposed to go around the unit, to fit right. But overall I'm very happy with the look and functionality (in this sense) of the unit and am glad I got it.

SOUND
The sound is good, as I've always experienced with my Pioneer decks. Deep base, good mids and highs, and full output range (3 pre-outs, including a sub). What I don't really get is the EQ. Why? I have a 10 or 11 band on my old Pioneer deck and would LOVE to have that on this unit. I've been able to get this (really a 3-band) EQ to the sound I want, so I'm good for now. But I do wish this unit had a volume knob instead of buttons for volume up and down, but I've grown accustom to them now. Overall, I'm quite satisfied with the sound.

CONTROL
Here is the crux of my complaint with this unit. Everything else (even the things I disagree with above) I can live with (even some of the complaints of others), but these below are almost deal-breakers for me (and if I'd have known about these things beforehand, I might not have bought this unit, but I couldn't find a display of it at any store anywhere!)

*First* is the listing of the artists and albums from my thumb drive. I have a 32 Gig drive (and I know it takes about a minute and a half to load, which sucks, and if you switch between sources you have to wait AGAIN, but I can live with that). The main problem I have is that the music seems to show up, NOT in alphabetical order, but in the order in which you PUT THE MUSIC ONTO THE DRIVE!!! Which is insane to me. Why does it index by create date (or whatever it does)??? Does any else's do this? It should have the artists, albums, folders, etc, sorted alphabetically (or at least give us the option of being able to choose our own sort criteria.) There doesn't seem to be any adjustment that I can make to address this. This is a serious issue for me and totally doesn't make sense. I can't stand the fact that it does this.

*SECOND* is the fact that I can't control ANYTHING with the remote (CD-R55), save some DVD options, or track forward and back, volume up and down, and pause. The remote operation for this unit is foolish. Without touching the screen I should be able to go forward and back on the screen with the remote between different folders, scroll up and down through artists, pick one, and click to play! Why do I have to do everything from the touch screen?? I should be able to select what I want from the remote. It just seems like they paired these two things up, but the remote doesn't do half of what it should. This too is a SERIOUS issue that I have. To me, it's far more distracting to try and scroll through and find the right folder and artist and album I want than any movie I have on. Not to mention that when you scroll down about 50 artists, select that artist, and then realize that you want someone else, when you go back, you don't go back to where you left off when you scrolled down to the 50th artist, but you're brought all the way back to the top to scroll through ALL of them again. Go back to where I was please!

*Third* (similar to the second) is that the remote doesn't control any of the audio functions either. On my old Pioneer, I could hit "Audio" and my audio menu would come up, enabling me to turn on/off, up/down my sub, change the Loudness, change any aspect of the EQ, or just change the preset to any one I wanted. I could change the fade, balance, etc. as well. You can do NOTHING of the sort with this one. Extremely frustrating for me, because I'm always tweaking the audio for different kinds of music. This is insane that it doesn't work like it should.

These are serious issues that, like I said, had I known, I might've looked into something else.

What can pioneer do to make this model better (in addition to the other things people have rightly pointed out)? Get a fully functional remote design to work with the unit, allowing both folders (artists, albums, songs, etc.) and audio to be accessible with the remote, get a 10 or 12 band EQ with each frequency independent from one another (accessible from the remote, obviously), and have the folders and artists from the USB be sorted alphabetically, rather than by create date (or, at least, if it's create date, put the most recently created ones AT THE TOP (instead of the bottom as it does now), since you'll likely be looking to listen to those new songs you just added.)

These to me are serious flaws that someone should've addressed before releasing this thing. I hope that a new model will have these issues addressed.

This is the best headunit currently available.....
I purchased this head unit after doing intensive research. I previously owned a Clarion head unit with built in Bluetooth. I used the Bluetooth often so I needed a head unit with two primary purposes, good Bluetooth call quality and exceptional IPod integration. This unit delivers both without disappointment. I added the GEX-P20HD Radio tuner and the Pioneer CD-BTB200 Bluetooth Wireless Adapter. I also purchased a little adapter on ebay that plugs in the back of the unit which automatically removes the necessity to apply the hand brake in order to watch DVD's. The installation went flawlessly with my microphone mounted nicely in the corner of my 2008 Honda Fit Sport.

The unit powers on quickly and plays songs almost instantly. The Ipod integration is amazingly easy although I find it frustration that there is no "back" button. For example, if you go to ARTISTS: GARTH BROOKS: and then click the song The Dance and then decide you want to play a different Brooks song you have to go all the way back to Artists, find Garth Brooks again and choose a different song. That is only necessary if you are controlling the IPOD through the deck. I always chose to control the IPOD from the Ipod itself. I love LOVE this feature! I can find/navigate songs so easily on my ipod so it makes things very easy. Keep in mind that if you have a 5G (80gb or 120gb) Ipod it will not work with Master Ipod control...you must control it through the stereo deck. My iphone and Itouch work flawlessly with master control and charging the phone.

The Bluetooth easily downloaded all the contacts from my Palm Treo. However, if somebody calls you it will only show you the number on the display, it takes about 3 rings for the name to show up on screen if downloaded from your phone. I wish it was quicker but since my phone is usually in my lap I can just look down and see the name. The call quality is great, callers can never tell I am talking on a bluetooth device. The stereo automatically makes all calls completely FLAT without any bass so sometimes it sounds a little screechy but not bad....much better than my Clarion.

Lastly, the HD Radio tuner is a nice little add on since I do a lot of Fm listening. I'm a little disappointed in the quality though. It searches for a signal like you had XM or Sirius so it can sometimes take awhile for just regular terrestrial radio stations to come in.....and at least in the Dallas area there are a lot of times the signal just goes out or gets scratchy. I don't know if its my unit or what but I wish the quality of this add on was improved with a better antenna or sometime.

Overall, I'm extremely pleased with this device. The quality of the video is superb! It's so simply to navigate and very customizable in regards to bass etc. If you're looking for a spiffy looking unit with the best Ipod integration on the market...this is the unit for you.