Customer Reviews
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
JVC KWADV794 Receiver
By Paul E. Hines
I was very concerned about ordering this type of item sight unseen. I did alot of research before making the purchase and all the the online reviews gave it high marks. I had a local audio/video specialty shop install it. Since the install the receiver has worked perfect. It is loaded with all the goodies one could ever want. The anti theft design makes it a great purchase also because I can remove it before leaving the vehicle.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Great unit for the price
By Steve B
Ok so I looked a lot of reviews on this and other receivers before I purchased this one. I realize that there were/are some not so easy to use interfaces on this deck but liked the overall capabilities that i read about. It took me less than 3 hours to install with my son in my '97 4Runner so I was pretty happy about that since I have not installed a deck in about 10 years. This includes mating the wiring harnesses together that I was very anal about and overall it went really well. I would recommend buying the following to make the install easy and get the most out of this stero- a wiring harness that matches your car/truck/suv- the JVC iPod/iPhone cable (JVC KS-U30 USB Video Cable for iPod and iPhone)this lets you do video from your apple product & yes it works sound and video- some crimpable connections to connect the aftermarket radio wiring harness and the mate to the factor connectors together- housing adapter if needed- I would recommend at least hooking up the cables for XM ($20) or Sirius ($50)but the receiver costs more ($100 XM & $60 Sirius) and can be updated later without having to take the dash back apart + monthly/yearly serviceFor those reading this because of the 4Runner comment make sure to remove the factory amp aswell (if applicable) and you will find the two connector harness, also ignore the second (smaller) antenna connector that was connected to the back of the factory deck. Nothing else was needed for my 4Runner. I just removed the bracket from my factory deck placed it on this one and with four screws the stereo was secured.As for other commments I saw about the power antenna not working or not going down when other functions were selected I did not have this problem at all. I connectedThere is some getting used to with this unit that is for sure. It would be nice if the interface was as easy to use as an iPhone but it is not. Some good some bad. I would like a shuffle option for my music but I can simply set that in my iphone before I hook it up. As for selecting artists, playlists, specific albums or songs I find it easy to use. There are a lot of options to tweek so if you want something simple this is not the unit for you, so look at the Clarion that has a iPhone like interface. Overall I really like this unit.I was able to hook up my phone via bluetooth and can play music as well as make calls. Only one person has complained that it was hard to hear me from the microphone.The sounds is much better than my factory deck was using the same speakers.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Disappointing. Really, Really Disappointing
By D. Ausberger
Wow. Did I get screwed on this one.I had this installed in my truck so that I could use my ipod to listen to music. The lady at the stereo store told me that not only does this unit play your music, you can also watch video from your ipod or DVDs, use it as a bluetooth for your phone, display song and station info on AM/FM, receive Sirius/XM radio, etc... For just a little more than the more basic model, I could do all of that and more. Holy cow- that sounds great. Sign me up!When I got it, the receiver was on. Sound was ok, so I played with the settings and chose the dynamic sound setting. A big improvement. The next thing to check out was the dvd player. I put in a disk and the kid in the middle of the backseat loved it. The ones on either side- not so much. They had a really hard time seeing the screen without looking around the front passenger seats. Then I plugged in the ipod. And there was my music- just what I wanted.At about this point is when I started sowing the seeds of regret with this unit. I tried to play a music video that I had stored on the ipod. I got music, but no picture. Hmmm, I must have been doing something wrong. So I went home and started reading the manual. About 30 pages into the manual there is a single reference to an optional cord. I went to Best Buy- they didn't have it but knew that I needed it to play video. So I went to Amazon and found a cord claiming to be JVC (it wasn't) that some people had success with, others only frustration. So I rolled the dice and ordered one. When I got it, I realized that I neeeded to plug it into the USB port in the back of the unit and into one or two RCA ports. All I had to do to make this happen was to remove the unit from the dash. I fought for an hour to get the double DIN unit to slide out until I called the installer. He told me that this JVC unit didn't fit a double DIN hold quite right, so they had to cobble their own mounting. To get the unit out, I would have to remove the whole dash. So I removed the whole dash. Remember, I didn't know if this cord was going to work or not. I plugged it in, held my breath and turned the receiver on. The gods of car audio were looking kindly on me that day and I got video to play from my ipod. It only took a week of messing around and half a day to tear my dash out, do the install and replace the dash, but it did work.Over the next couple of days, I spent more time playing with the ipod controls of the JVC system. I quickly learned that JVC managed to turn my ipod into a frustrating, hard to use device because of their wonky controls. For example, we heard somebody talking about a particular Nirvana song and my son asked me about it. I said that I could play it for him. I went to my ipod (through the JVC receiver), went to 'artists' and started scrolling through the list with my finger on the touchscreen. Everytime I would get close to Nirvana, I would hit a bump and end up a couple of screens away from Nirvana. I finally got nervous about doing so much driving while looking down at the screen and pulled over. I finally found Nirvana and went to the album the song was on. Under the 'album' listing, there was only one song. Not a Nirvana song. So I unplugged the ipod to make sure the song was actually there. Yep, along with every other Nirvana song on that album. So I plugged it back into the JVC and went through the whole procedure again with the same results. So I went back to the JVC menu and tried looking up the song directly. If I thought going through the artist list was tough, it was nothing compared to searching for a specific song. My kid had long lost his interest and I was spent 15 minutes at the side of the road fiddling with the thing to finally get to the song I wanted to hear.Part of the problem is that the JVC menu is extremely cumbersome and ineffecient. The other issue is that most of the adjustments cannot be done with the remote, including scrolling through the files of songs or artists or albums. At this point, I was wishing I could take it back, but then I would be stuck with an oversized hole in my dash that nothing else would fit in. So I decided to perservere with this high dollar piece of crap. I finally just put the ipod on shuffle and resigned myself to the fact that I would not be able to find specific songs or play an album straight through.The next point of frustration came a couple of days later, when I decided that it would be convenient to use the JVC's bluetooth to make/receive cell phone calls. So I connected my phone to the receiver. That only took about half an hour. Unfortunately, when I would try to make calls, either the person on the other end couldn't hear me or vice versa. And my contacts list wouldn't come up in the bluetooth menu. So I disconnected the phone and reconnected it via bluetooth. Several times. I finally got things to work right and I called myself at home and left a message on the machine. Then I shut my truck off. When I went to restart, the phone and the radio seemed to connect. But when I went to make a call, I had the same frustrating results. So after fooling around with the thing for another hour or two and re-reading the manual for a third time, I called customer support.The customer support guy was really nice, but engrish was obviously not his first language. I explained my issue and he talked me through the same procedures again. Same results. Customer support guy told me that he didn't have much experience with this unit, because it is so new. Then he asked what phone i was trying to link. He told me that it was too new to link to the JVC. Then he told me the phone was too old. Then he said I should buy another phone and try it on the JVC.... Ummm, NO. I finally decided to bag the bluetooth idea with this receiver.Another beef I have with this unit is that it is extremely difficult to physically touch the right contoller on the touch screen. It's not like I have giant sausage or banana fingers, but you have to get lucky for the screen to identify the right touch button.This whole thing is extremely frustrating. I would not buy this reciever again. The issues I have described are not the only problems I have run into with this turd. Every day, another one seems to pop up. Sometimes they clear themselves, other times, I have to figure out a workaround. I think it's dangerous to have to spend so much time looking at th screen and trying to make it work while driving a vehicle.Don't buy this.
See all 4 customer reviews...
