Originally Posted by Toddy
I think you just have to set the unit up with the parking brake wire installed, drive a bit to calibrate everything, then just pull the parking brake wire and ground it. Pretty sure that's all you need to do. I have one of these, btw, on my 300. Absolutely despise it. Lot of reasons.
1. The maps can't be updated. Call Navteq, they send you to JVC. Call JVC, they send you to Navteq. The maps are circa 2006 or so, and even farther out of date here in Canada. There are local stores and streets from 2003 that aren't on these maps. The nav is also really particular about locations. So if you're in a big city, for instance, and are looking for a mall, it might not show up if you're in the wrong borough. In Ottawa, I was trying to get directions to Bayshore the other week, and it wouldn't come up because I had the nav set on Ottawa proper, but Bayshore is actually in the Nepean borough. So to get this mall, I had to pull over, change the nav to Nepean, then plug in the search again. I have a Garmin 350 and a TomTom One that just blow this thing away in terms of basic functionality.
2. The interface is awful, especially with an iPod. I just hate using it. All you can really do is load up a playlist and let it run. Try to find an album or a song, and god help you. It's better with just the HD. But, well, read below...
3. The built-in HD interface blows as well. You have to rip actual CDs in real time. It records as the CD plays. Idiotic. And you also have to rip albums individually even from big compilation discs. So you can load up a DVD full of albums, say, but you then have to put them on the HD one directory at a time. Each album takes about a minute to rip. So, good times. I spent about five hours in my car last summer ripping DVD comps before I finally came to my senses and bailed on the whole thing. Bought an iPod to use the built-in interface instead and well, read the above for how well that's worked out.
Anyhow, you may love it. I hope you do. But for me, JVC took an awesome idea with an amazing amount of way-cool features and wrecked it with crap controls and really stupid design decisions. There are very good reasons why these units are on sale all over the place.
I think you two are talking about different units.
I had a Kenwood KVT-512 and loved everything about it other than it blocked my climate controls. Ended up selling it and buying a DNX-5120 which is for all things nothing more than a KVT-512 built into a double DIN housing and integrated nav. It's in Jonny's car now since I've been more focused on performance and other peoples projects than my own A/V stuff. You can't go wrong with this head unit as you can change the illumination to match the rest of the cars interior lighting, and at that price, it's a steal.