It has a what??? (JVC KD LH 401)

Member Name: drewboy

Product:	JVC KD LH 401
Date:	04/04/05 (1173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Tilting facia, Sound Quality, MP3 Player

Disadvantages: ATT function, Detachable facia machanism

Your driving along in your car, happily singing along to one of your favourite cd’s when all of a sudden, it finished, and even though it is one of your fav’s, there really is only so many times you can sing along to The Time Warp…… However, at 70mph on the motorway, do you really want to be hunting through the glove box and swapping disks over?

Of course not, neither do I. So, I decided to go out and buy myself a cd player for the car that had the capability to play MP3/WMA files.

So, after a trip to Halfords, I decided to buy this little baby. Browsing through the display they had, the JVC seemed to have the best combination of features on offer and, luckily for me, was on offer at 1/3 off, making the price £199 (normal RRP £299). It did also come with free fitting but since I have fitted my old machine to all 6 cars I have owned, I didn’t fancy waiting for an available slot so did it myself. This is quite easy but you do need to have the correct tools to actually get the players out so if you are not sure, get a pro to do it. If it doesn’t come with free fitting, Halfords can do it but will charge you £30.


What does it look like?
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This was another reason I decided on this model. The outer edges of the facia is silver, as is all the buttons with the screen having a black surround. I think it really looks great! On the left it has the volume knob, combined on/off and ATT (don’t know what that stands for but it makes the volume drop very low if need to answer the phone or something) button, along the bottom of the facia you have the numbers 1-6 together with a ‘D’ for display button and an ‘M’ for mode. On the right, there is a cd button, FM/AM button, the facia release button, the CD eject button and four directional buttons.

One very interesting feature of how the CD will look in your car is that you can actually change the angle at which the face sits at. This is possible as the whole face has to tilt down to get the CD in or out so JVC made it possible to set it at one that is convenient. This is good for a lot of cars there the CD player slot is low down in the cars console as it means you can set it at an angle that is easier to see for the driver.

So, What does it do?
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The main difference between this CD player and most others, is that it has the ability to play both MP3 (music files) and WMA (windows media player files) as well as normal CD’s. Now the techie folk amongst you will know that this means that you can put masses more music onto CD’s as the tracks are much smaller in these formats than if you were to leave them as CD files. This has enabled me to make up music disks for the car with about 13 full albums on each.

The good thing about this player in this respect is that it is able to cope with ‘folders’ on the disks. This means that you can leave the music separated out into albums rather than having about 200 songs in continuous order! The player enables you to first of all skip though the albums by pressing the up and down buttons, then through the songs in each by pressing the left and right search button. If you have just recorded the tracks in one long list however, you can press the mode button and then skip 10 songs at a time to find the song you want.

Of course it plays normal audio CD’s too as well as and excellent tuner that covers FM and MW bands. You can set it to cut in on Traffic Reports and you can set it to search the stations for a certain type of music or speech – ie pop, jaz, rock, news, debate and loads more. I have found this great when not in my own area as it can find the stations that would interest me without prior knowledge of the local stations. Like most players I have used, to save the station all you need to do is find it and then press and hold the numbered button you want it on or you can use the auto find feature which will find all the stations in the area for you.

With the display button, you can choose to see various different things from the Station name (i.e Radio 1) or the frequency (99.5 for radio one up here), or the time or animated pictures.

It does have one feature which is a bit gimiky and which I have found no use for. You can (using the software from JVC) put any picture you want onto the display screen that will show when the machine is in use. I am not too sure about this as the pre-loaded pictures are very pixilated and not very clear.

Sound Quality
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I have found this to be exceptionally good. The radio tuner is a lot better than me last Kenwood machine and holds the stations very well. If it loses the signal, it will quickly run through the frequencies and try to find it again on a stronger signal. The CD quality is the best I have heard and I can hear very little difference when playing MP3’s/WMA disks on it. It is set up to play 200 watts through 4 speakers and I have detected no bad quality playback at all.

You can adjust the sound settings on an independent basis (ie the bass and treble settings) or it gives you the option to choose from pre set options like Rock, Pop, Jazz, Speech, Flat and a few more. I tend to leave it on the Rock setting as I like a bit of bass in my music but through the mode button this is very easy to change if required. You can also, through the mode button, change the balance (between the left and right side of the car) and also the fader (from the back to the front). I usually have this set to the back but again, you may want to change this if you have passengers in the car.

It has a what?
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It comes complete with a remote control. Now, I though this would be like the kind you get fitted as standard to a lot of cars nowadays but no, it is actually a little control that is separate and works via infrared! This may seem a little silly at first but when you chop and change songs as much as me (I rarely let a song finish before getting bored) it can be held in your left hand so that you do not need to stretch down to change anything and I can steer and change gear while holding it and means that I don’t have to take my eyes off the road to find the buttons. It is also good for if you have people in the back and they are listening to something (on the rare occasion that I relinquish control of the music…) so that they can chop and change to their hearts content without bothering the driver to change it for them. The control is about a third of the size of a credit card and has 7 buttons – the four directional, volume and the ATT (quick silent) button.

Some bad points
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Compared to my old player, attaching the facia each time you get in is not quite as easy and is a bit fiddly for some reason. The catch that you have to put it on is not as big and as well fitted. I have also found that I have though it was on correctly but when driving away it gave me an message saying ‘panel error’ which made me stop to fit it on properly.

The ATT button while useful for turning volume down quickly, does not work as well when you turn it back on. My old player would gradually put the volume back up to the previous level however with this one, it jumps up straight away which can give you a bit of a shock if you forget how loud you had it in the first place!



So, in conclusion, I am very much impressed with this player, and now have four disks in the car which has a massive 50 odd albums on it so I never think I will get bored or have the opening situation ever again! I have decided to give it 4 starts as the bad points, although few, could either result in breaking the machine if the facia is not secured correctly, or very sore ear drums or worse, you could lose control of the car if you get a big enough fright.

Other than that, highly recommended and I think great value for money!

Any questions or comments feel free.

Take care people,


drew

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