Electronics Store

Can't be beat for the $.
I must admit that I have a bias towards Sony. I STILL have one that's pushing 15 years old and had it serviced at my expense - ONCE. And that was minor. Took the tech more time to remove the back-plate screws than to solder the bad connection.

There are currently seven TVs in our house. Yea, it's a big house. I'm a very serious audiophile and movie buff. (At over 2,500 hard-cased DVDs and B-Rs...and still counting.) Five of the sets are Sonys. Don't get me wrong, because I've tried MANY brands. LG, Mitsu, Samsung, Proscan, etc. (I WAS a huge Mitsu fan, until time proved me in error.) I keep coming back to Sony. The only reason I ever change sets is purely technology driven. I rotate them downward, and end up with lots of happy nieces and nephews. It is fun at holiday time.

This last one was for the guest quarters. It fit perfectly into the existing entertainment center and that was actually my paramount concern for this one. (Okay, I wasn't going to be watching it. Shoot me.)

BUT!!!! I find myself getting sucked into watching it in there!!! And there's a 70+ inch 1080i LCD Sony with audio to rival an IMAX in the REAL TV room! No kidding... (I'm not ready to shell out the dough for the "p".) Can't sell my wife on it - yet... ;-)

Hey, sure I could have spent more and improved a bit - maybe. It's one of those 95/05 esoterica deals. For what I wanted to spend, this was it. Hooked it up a Blue-ray and HD sat in about 90 seconds with HDMI. Perfecto. I could have assembled the stand in 3-minutes in a drunken stuper with only a flashlight. Other than the "cheat sheet", I still haven't opened the manual, nor needed to. I didn't have to go help the guests use it last weekend either!!!!!!!! That's sweet!!!!!!

If you don't have any significant OTHER considerations, don't even bother to shop at this price point (other than maybe between Amazon, Costco, BB, or whomever - and if there are shipping and/or availability issues). Do watch your MODEL numbers!!! I hate the way they ALL make it confusing sometimes to compare. You can't miss if you go by SONY'S model numbers - only.

Above caveat aside, bottom line, just buy it and start enjoying it. You'll never look back. :-)

Exception value- an amazing television!
I bought this tv to upgrade from a 26" Sony Bravia LCD that I bought a couple of years ago. It had only 720p and I was wanting something at least 32inch and full 1080p. This thing blows away all other competition in it's category! I had been studying up on the different sets for a while and decided that I couldn't pass up this tv at this price. It's got a 60hz refresh rate which is all you really need for a tv of this size. In my experience 120hz or 240hz refresh rates only stand to distract you from the movie. It doesn't bother some people, but I know when it's activated or not and it drives me crazy. All in all this is a great buy even for the 550 dollar price tag. There are places you can go to get better deals on it, but this tv has the quality that makes it worth the price.

32EX400 thoughts + calibration
Well, I picked up this set from another retailer when it was on special for 4 + tax a couple of months back. It is a really really nice set if you are looking for a value 32" HDTV that has 1080p and plenty of HDMI ports. Those were the 2 main points that made me go with this set. This set has great picture quality, has tremendously good black levels for an LCD set, has tons of customization options.

2 negatives about this set that make me wish I could have picked up a different set for similar price are:

1. It has really really bad viewing angles compared to an older LG 32" 720p model I had. I mean this set really really needs you to be viewing it from center on or it loses a lot of it's brightness. Both the vertical and horizontal viewing angles are worse than my previous LG 32lh20 model.

2. I wish this set had a swivel base like my previous LG model had OR like the EX500 set has. I would have purchased the KDL-32EX500 if it wasn't an extra 0 or so. That model has a swivel base which is great, seeing how the 32EX400 has such terrible viewing angles.

I'm currently using the following calibration on my 32EX400 while using HDMI for Cable HDTV, Blu-Ray, and DVI-HDMI PC. The viewing environment is in a dark room with a dim light towards the back of the TV and a viewing distance of 4-6 feet (although these settings also work for daylight viewing for me). Calibration was done using the AVS HD 709 calibration disc along with a blue filter (for setting color and tint/hue).

* Picture Settings
o Picture Mode : Custom
o Backlight : Min
o Picture : 91
o Brightness : 51
o Color : 52
o Hue : R2
o Color Temperature : Warm 2
o Sharpness : 1
o Noise Reduction : Off
o MPEG Noise Reduction : Off
o CineMotion : Off
o Ambient Sensor : Off

* Advanced Settings
o Adv Contrast Enhancer : Off
o Black Corrector : Off
o Gamma : 0
o Clear White : Off
o Live Color : Off
o White Balance : Factory Default

* Screen Settings
o Wide Mode : Full
o Auto Wide : Off
o Display Area : Full Pixel

o Sound Mode : Custom
o Treble : +7
o Bass : +5
* Equalizer
o 100Hz - 5, 200Hz - 3, 500Hz - 3, 1kHz - 2, 2kHz - 2, 5kHz - 6, 10kHz - 7
o Balance : 0
o Surround : On
o Volume Offset : 0

Sony Bravia
Wonderful TV. Easy to install and use. Basically plug it in and follow simple instruction. We only watch Public TVs for less than an hour per day for less than 100 days a year in the USA. So, it will not be an elaborate review. We love the sharpness of the image and the sound is wonderful too.

Really surprised
The picture and colors this TV has is simply amazing. Didn't think it would be a big difference but if you are gonna buy this for gaming this is the way to go, pop some GTA IV in and just have fun lost in the picture. Simply mesmerizing

Not as fast, even less compatable, and not reliable at all
This is my second WD My Passport Studio, I owned another one for about 3 months before finding a bad region around 200GB where data could not be written. I had to return and exchange for another one (because it was the only FW external hard drive in stock).

The drive comes as HFS+J (Mac Extended format with Journaling) formatted as one partition encompassing about 499GB (99.8%) of the drive with the last 1GB used for a built-in "Virtual CD" partition that contains the drivers, Mac and Windows programs, instructions, etc.

You need to manually print the instructions (including the installation instructions) from the "Virtual CD" as the drive does not come with any hard copy of any instruction manual... so basically you need to figure out how to connect and mount the drive on your own or elsewhere before you can actually get to the instructions.

The HFS+J partition only works with Macs, if you want to use it with Macs and PC/Linux then you need to run Disk Utility on a Mac and reformat the partition to HFS+ (Mac Extended without Journaling) and set the permissions to "Everyone: Read & Write". I wasn't able to find a way to simply disable Journaling, so I had to reformat the partition. Linux will mount an HFS+J partition but only as read-only.
If you want to use it on PC/Windows, you need to still get it to a Mac and reformat it with the WD Smartware program (not Disk Utility) that comes with the drive (found on the drive's Virtual CD partition) and recreate the main partition as NTFS. This partition will not work well on Macs, there will be nodes above 200GB that will be unwritable in some cases on Macs so only do this if you want to use it on PC/Windows only.

I was not able to find a way to make it work on Macs and PC/Windows. There were no problems with Mac and PC/Linux using HFS+. If you plan to only use it with Macs only then leave it as HFS+J. I also want to add that I feel this incomparability-problem is solely the fault of Apple and Microsoft and not Western Digital.
The cables that come with the drive have incorrect labelling, if you try to roughly connect them you will damage the ports, below is the list of corrections to make:

Drive Ports:

FW800: Inverted
USB-B: Inverted
(Basically, the top side of the ports are facing you when you hold the drive upside down and the drive's undercarriage is facing you)

Cable:
FW800 to FW800: "Bilingual" label side is up, "WD" label side is down.
FW800 to FW400: "Bilingual" label side is down on the FW800 end, FW400 end is correct.

USB-A to USB-B: Inverted on both sides (USB-B label is on wrong side)
I made my own labels on paper and taped them over the cables to cover the incorrect ones.

In terms of speed, I did 2 days worth of read/write test on FW. After much patience, I got an average read-write speed of 285.71Mbps. This was disappointing because FW is rated at 800Mbps, even taking into account overhead this was too slow.

Works Great!
Initially I purchased the WD My Passport Studio 640 gb for TimeMachine backups (for MacBook Pro early 2008). But after reading other reviews about issues with creating bootable backups with older versions of My Passport Studio, I decided to switch my TimeMachine backups to the older WD My Passport Studio 500 gb (no e-label). My reason for considering the Passport Studio was to make use of firewire 800. It seemed as if my TimeMachine backup was faster but since I didn't time the backup made via USB port, I cannot confirm.

I followed the instructions on the WD website and updated firmware and uninstalled Smartware ... easy to do. I did have to format the new drive from Apple partition map to GUID Partition ... via disk utility. No problems there. I made a copy of everything on the hardrive using Carbon Copy Cloner. On spot check, I was able to boot the external hard drive.

Cons: no case included; warranty shorter ... older products carried 5 year warranty.

Before purchasing, I shopped around and Amazon had the best price ... with free shipping.

I hope this helps. I'm not a computer expert so if I can make this work, I think most people can.

where's the firewire?
I like the hardrive but I can't get a cable to utilize the empty firewire ports. The drive works very well on USB but slows the machine a little

Bad Product
This product has some serious mounting issues on a mac. It takes almost 5 minites to mount. Secondly even with the firewire the transfer speeds are 10 MB/min. From what I know it should be at least 50MB/sec. I have an SSD installed in my mac. So I know that the bus speed is high for my computer. Therefore there is something wrong with the drive. Then the caption perpetually says "VIDEOS 09". I have no clue what does that mean or how to get rid of that, since the users manual does not describe it. However, this is a minor issue. The major one is the load time which is just ridiculous. I was not willing to try another WD product and experiment. So I went with the Toshiba Canvio and it works super.

The best yet
After years of using LaCie Rugged drives, I've switched to these drives partly because they're smaller and lighter for travel. It's also conenient to Velcro them to my laptop. I do a film show so need the FireWire 800 for speed. It's been impossible to find anything but USB drives in retail stores. Also the software included gives easy access to see how your memory is being used I.e. Video,photos, music breakdowns. You can also digitally label the drive on the outside.

The mother of all DVD systems!
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 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
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.

Very Disappointed
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.

Awesome Unit Great Features - Video Playback Limited
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.

fuzzy album art
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??

Way over priced
The device works sometimes, but not consistently. After a day or so it is nothing but irritating. It is basically a dust collector.

Not Worth It
The videos that I checked out before purchasing this product were a lot more impressive than the actual product. I have a great sound system in the vehicle I tried it out in, but had to crank the volume almost all the way up to hear it. Didn't seem to matter what frequency I had the radio tuned to either. Being a young driver in the late 60's and early 70's, I definitely know what a healthy (realistic) running V-8 sounds like, and this isn't it.

Fun toy
Keep it turned down and your friends will think it's real! I used it in my Lexus and it sounds pretty real! If you crank up the stereo you can totally tell it's fake! Still worth som laughs with your buddies and would make a fun gift to a guy that dives an econo-box.... Just tell 'em it's a performance booster!

A little flakey but loads of fun!
Yes, it's a little flimsy.
Yes, sometimes it doesn't work right.
But when it does work, it is AWESOME! And most of the time it works fine up until the point I get tired of it and turn it off.

Here is what seems to work the best for me. Wait until you start the car to plug it in (I assume you've already tuned your radio, etc.)

Slowly start rev'ing the car up to 3000 rpms. As soon as you hear a single beep, back off the revs, then you should hear 2 beeps and you're good to go.

As far as plugging your mp3 player into it, that works too, but sounds like FM. I get better sound using a cassette adapter but this works too in a pinch.

A audio item from Amazon with no audio sample ???
would be nice if Amazon had added an audio sample to their list of SoundRacer items.

No Sound - No Purchase.

Beautiful
For all you Caravan drivers that just wish you could have one of these double din H/U sweeties in your single din ride take heart, the answer is "YES YOU CAN" I have a 2005 Dodge Caravan SXT I had a Pioneer DEH-P7700MP single din receiver which i dearly love but wanted something very different, after looking at this H/U the 64,000 dollar question, how to get a double din H/U into a single din slot? After pulling out the center dash panel there is a way to make space for it. But there are a lot of butts in this deal and major cutting. First one,Make sure your wheels is paid for(LOL) okay it does help, if you intend to DIY If you for any reason cut too much, or damage the interior area where the H/U will go, "you're screwed" and i mean big time. If you don't know what you're doing or too gun shy to try, go to a audio shop that you trust and has done other installations on your ride in the past. Anyway I'm comfortable with DIY so i took a gamble. I got the AVH-P3200DVD BT and It looks good, damn nice in the dash, just like the big dogs (SUV's Fords,Chevy's etc!) and looks like it's been factory installed. I've been a pioneer fan for many years and many vehicles and this H/U is everything why i love pioneer.

Pretty good, but could be better
I've had this installed along with the the HD radio plugin for about 1 month now. Sound quality is awesome. HD radio sounds really good as well. The color matches my red buttons exactly. However, I am knit-picky about things. The usage of the nice screen is why I only gave it 4 stars. The clock and date is so tiny I can hardly read it. I know I can make the clock bigger, but only when I choose the world as the background, which I don't like. They could have done some really cool things with the date/clock, but functionality in this area is VERY limited. If I tag a song, there is a small blue note in the middle of the screen which I cannot get rid of, what is with that? The ability to name the preset hd radio stations is not an option. I would like to see that. When I had just regular radio, it would put the current song for the preset name, but only like 8 characters, I found that completely useless.

HD radio puts the song information on 1 scrolling line on the display, it could at least separate it like it does when playing mp3's from the usb, it has a whole screen to do this!

Also although I can change the buttons to red to match my other buttons, the song text is pink and I have found no way to change this.. Pink text? hmm I wish I could change that.

I would like to see more animation options to choose from. There is only 1 that dances according to the beat, and that is the only I like. They could have chosen more options here.

The option to use the scroll line in an .mp3 is awesome. I would like to see that used on the radio as well. Using this line scroll through radio stations would be awesome.

DVD playing works great. I even played an xvid file from my usb drive and it played it ok.

So my top 2 annoyances are the limited clock/date viewing and limited graphics while playing songs. I hope they will release an update to fix these issues.

Other than my issues, this radio works really well. I don't have any other touchscreen unit to compare, as this is the only one i've ever used.

Great Double-din Headunit
I replaced my Alpine 9887 with this unit because I wanted a double-din with touchscreen. It works great after installation and the video bypass from eBay worked perfectly with it.

Pros: Touchscreen is responsive and fast. SD card option, side buttons for easy Forward, Backward, Mode, etc and EQ
Cons: No volume knob, which is something I miss from my Alpine as it is so much easier to adjust the vol with a knob instead of looking at the unit to press them. The USB/Ipod cable is in the front which makes the wire in the way and doesn't look as good than if it was in the back.

DVD works great and you have to get the CD-IU50V ipod cable to play videos. This cable will not work with the new Ipod nano because the video cable will not fit with the usb input at the same time. I used it with my Ipod video classic and works ok, there were problems with the video showing sometimes and it takes some time to show the video.

Will update if anything changes.

Great for the price
I wanted a deck that was ipod compatible. Then I realized I wanted a touch screen, color screen and customization, aux port and all the goods.
This deck is great and easy to install.
I bypassed the parking brake wires so it plays DVDs while you drive. Dangerous yes, but it's for my passengers.
If you can afford the model that comes with the Bluetooth feature you should get that.

Pioneer is the best
My only real complaint with the product is the dvd unlock sequence with the parking brake (I have an f-150 with a pedal e-brake) I don't plan on driving around while playing a dvd video, but having to apply, release, and then re-apply my parking break is quite the annoyance. I have ordered a toggle switch to bypass that action, and will receive it in the next 2 days. Over all, I recommend this stereo to anyone looking to get a touchscreen unit. This is one of the best stereos I've had a chance to play with. Installation was easy with a mounting adapter and a wiring harness. Touchscreen navigation is very smooth and fast! After installed I slightly wished I had gotten the 7-in unit, but this one more than fulfills my needs. It does take a few seconds to read a mp3 dvd/cd, etc,, but that's because it's indexing the entire drive for media. Sound quality is amazing, it's waaay better than my stock stereo system. Touch screen dvd navigation is a little tough to get through but hopefully the ir remote for this stereo will help with that.