I picked up a new car stereo - a JVC KD-R810. It was on sale at Best Buy, $250 marked down to $200 in one of their weekly specials. They always have some model or another on sale.
It's the first aftermarket one I've ever bought. Mainly, I bought it to get a USB port so I can listen to music on USB. This should replace the pile of unlabelled CDs in the car with a a single USB stick! (though it's likely that I will wind up with a pile of unlabelled USB sticks later.)
The secondary thing (which interestingly enough, is probably the most expensive component of the stereo) is a Bluetooth audio setup, so I can use my Blackberry in the car hands free.
I've never done any sort of installation like this myself, and I didn't like that I had to disconnect/reconnect the car battery. The last time I did something with the battery, I got some nasty sparks flying. I figured I'd let the Best Buy do the install. They finished the job in about an hour's time and showed me that all the speakers were hooked up correctly using the fade and balance controls. They demonstrated how it plays mp3s off of a USB stick. The tech couldn't figure out how to do radio presets so I guess Ill have to figure it out later. The rear USB cable sits in the glove compartment, and the microphone is sussed in the top middle of the windshield. It's pretty nice work I think.
They also said they can undo the install to put the factory radio back in for free, if I wanted to, such as if I was selling my car etc.
The install cost $70, the price of their USB/microphone deck install, and the only additional item I needed was some Corolla-specific wiring. So all told, about $300.
Anyways, looking at the unit in the dash now...
The unit sticks out of the dash a bit which I'm not used to - the old unit fit flush in the DIN slot. I'm also supposed to be able to change the colour of the displays and dials seperately... however a 2002 Corolla doesn't have a coloured lighting scheme unless you consider white lights on plain analog dials and plain liquid crystal displays some sort of theme. Maybe I'll just set the colour to white. :P
I can't seem to see the display when I'm wearing my sunglasses, what's the deal with that? Why is the protective cover polarized?
The bluetooth setup went pretty smoothly, you set a PIN and off it goes to sync with your phone. The voice dialling works very nicely. I hope the calls are clear too, but I'll have to find out later.
Its time to go root through my music collection. :D
Allen.
