Pioneer AVH-P4200DVD In-Dash Double-DIN DVD Multimedia AV Receiver

I recently purchased the AVH-P4200DVD, along with the Scosche TA2053S9B, to upgrade my 2010 Tacoma D/C TRD. Man, I gotta tell ya........Amazon is absolutely awesome! I did the free shipping with my order and it arrived in 3 days! WOW, can you beat that!? Anyway, the AVH-4200 is going to blow you away! The Tacoma factory speakers now sound like their on steroids! The increased bass, mids, and overall clarity and power is really unbelievable.

The 4200 is so intuitive and user friendly, that you really don't need to refer to the manual. It's just that easy to operate. The touch screen is quick and on target. The FM radio, sounds great. I'm now receiving a few more stations than the factory unit. It has (1) AM setting and (3) FM's, with (6) individual presets, which gives you a total of (24). And of course, it has built in RDS (radio data system), for station text. It plays your CD's and Mp3's flawlessly. Not to mention DVDs! But the screen clarity is nice. Very clear, crisp and smooth. It's able to produce close to HD quality, with certain premium DVD's.

I also installed the video bypass, but now I'm thinking about removing it, because I can't keep my eye on the road. I'm serious! The DVD quality is also going to blow you away! Also, you can customize the thing from the rooter-to-the-tooter! Everything from color, appearance, background, (8) band eq, crossover frequencies, DVD picture aspect, etc. The list goes on and on. Plus, it's upgradable. From nav to bluetooth, to HD & XM radio, etc. Sure other DVD sytems are out there. But, can they match the price and quality of the Pioneer AVH-4200DVD? Pioneer was smart, by not installing all the other components. This allows you to custom tailor your system. For instance, I don't need the navigation, but I eventually want bluetooth. Or, I'm not partial to HD radio, but I like XM. You get my meaning.

Anyway, there's several other Amazon and You-Tube reviews, that go into more detail. So, I'm going to stop mine right about here. I highly recommend this awesome DVD/Audio system.

Pros:
1. easy to install
2. very user friendly, with lots of options
3. sounds awesome, even with factory speakers
4. very intuitive menu controls and software engine
5. upgradable to nav, bt, hd & XM radio, etc.
6. Ipod, USB and SD inputs. (Ipod requires $20 adapter)
7. Pioneer quality!
8. Definitely the price! This unit should cost a lot more at retail level.

Cons:
1. wish it came with a remote control. (optional remote CD-R55)
2. wish it had just a little more RMS power. at least 20. (rated @ 14watts RMS)

I love this double din for those who say it doesnt work you must not have had it installed right never had a problem out of mine I even put a toggle switch on it for I can have a movie playing while I drive and it works perfect it takes any size sd card and for the price it is a good buy.

When you pay this much for a pioneer product you expect it to work, and judging by all the 5 star reviews on amazon many people are more than satisfied with the unit they received. Thus, when the 4200 is operational it is most likely one of the best in dash units on the market. Take it for what its worth, but mine worked for approximately 3 days before the system completely failed; the touch screen stopped working, the motorized face plate ceased to move and the screen went dead. This is the second 1 star post on amazon for this product out of 16 reviews which for pioneer is completely unacceptable. Buy this at your own risk! I got the unit installed in my vehicle drove around and thought it was great for a few days and then it just stopped working to my amazement. I have no choice but to switch it out with amazon for a new one of the same model and if there is even the slightest detail wrong with the second one I receive I will never purchase a Pioneer product again as long as I live.

Great looking HU, very easy to use, all controls are where you expect them, had it installed in my 2005 Ford Expedition in less than 30 minutes. The ONLY reason I gave it 4 stars was because of the following three reasons:

1) It only plays back DIVX. My only reason for buying this HU was to take all of my Music Video DVDs and throw them on a USB HD. The problem is this HU does not playback MKV, MP4, or even AVI. So basically it does not recognize any of the most popular formats in use today. Instead it will only play DIVX which means I had to get the DivX Plus converter. The end result was really lousy quality music videos which are nowhere near as clear as the original DVDs.

Ironically the much more expensive AVIC model line plays back a much wider variety of formats. The H.264 codec handles compression way better than DivX and I have no idea why they chose such a non mainstream format.

2) While playing back videos there is no way to easily fast forward. It does not have an option to say jump forward 15 or 20 seconds, you can touch the slider and pick a place in the video that way, but when you are in traffic that's a little difficult.

3) The HU will only play up to a certain resolution. I'm not sure yet what it is, but I do know it will not play 720p or 1080p even when using the DivX codec. So even if my source video is HD, it has to be downsampled to play on this HU.

Overall though this is a great unit, it is also very easy to bypass the built in screen lockout so you can watch movies while you are driving, its not quite as easy as simply grounding the ebrake cable but it as simple as using a relay. A quick Google Search will show you how, there's even a YouTube video on it.

Also, if you are planning on using a USB hard drive it has to be formatted as FAT32, or else the HU will not be able to read the hard drive. I used guiformat.exe to format it in Windows 7 since Windows 7 would only format the 1TB drive I bought as exFAT.

I have to give this a 3.

It would have been a 5, if the album art off my iphone isn't fuzzy, blurry or pixelated. That's not what's being shown in the product description.

What gives??