Stock Stereo Amplifier

[Mr. Flibble]

I have a Dual Din DVD player for my Delica on order from Chinavision. I chose this as it has the features I am looking for and is considerably cheaper than anything you will find in future shop. Also, some of the people on the OZ forums have posts on this very same model:

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info ... -and-dvbt/

One question I have though, is that I have the Karaoke machine in my Royal - and yes, I know it probalby won't work with my new head unit, that is ok.

However, there once was a CD player under the passenger seat, although it was not there when I got my Deli. There is also an amplifier directly under the drivers seat, and from browsing the forum it seems that this amplifier only functions with the stock stereo.

I have my own amplifier for a huge 12" sub (long story there) from my 4Runner, and I plan on installing that.

The question is, should I keep the stock Amplifier under the drivers seat, or, is it basically useless without the stock Mitsubishi head unit?

[luckydad]

I am guessing that the stock amp will work only with the stock head unit. If you remove the head unit, your karaoke and cd (which you do not have anyway) will also not work. Therefore there is no use for the amp.

If you are installing your own amp, remove the stock one and use the space.

Phil

[Rural]

Are you doing the install yourself? If so, are you going to need a bracket to physically mount the unit and what are you doing to adapt the electrical connector?

In preparation for replacing the stereo on my own ( ), I removed (gently) the bezel out of my Delica last night. I got a good look at the electrical connectors on the stereo system. They look nothing like the Road King's connector. Of course, I'm not 100% sure that the stereo in my Delica is stock as there was a JVC CD changer installed. (I posted some pictures over here.)

The Road King 7 is very interesting. From what I can tell, it's exactly the same as the more expensive King Cobra 7 except that the KC7 includes a cheesy USB WiFi dongle. The KC7 and RK7 are probably otherwise identical. Due to an error in the documentation on the KC7, they've let on that the system's main processor is a Samsung 2440 which is ARM. In essence, they are an ARM-based PC running Windows CE. Meaning that you could install fairly standard software on it. Pretty neat. I'm on the fence about buying one just so that I could try to get Linux running on it. That would make a great little car PC. The risk, of course, is that I fail and have to see a Microsoft Windows splash screen for as long as own the unit. Horror for a Linux nerd.

[Seabird37]

Mr. Fibble:
I too am looking to put a double din touchscreen unit in my L400 in the near future so I am interested in your assessment of this unit and the ease of the installation. I had looked at some of the units offered on eBay for around $220 to 250 but the Chinavision version looks to be superior.
Please keep us informed!

[Rural]

Mr. Fibble,

So I found some Aussie tek forums with long threads on the Road King (ie. here). Getting one of these working looks like a fun project, but a lot of the issues people are having seem related to weak QC.

The unit is quite modest when it comes to computational power. I'm surprised it can do video at all. Then again, hardware accelerated video decoding is pretty ubiquitous.

I think I'll steer clear and just go with a fairly ordinary receiver with an AUX input and leave the computing and video to a portable device. But I really want to thank you for bringing this device up as I really enjoyed reading about it. I'm going to keep an eye on similar Chinese produced units in case something extraordinarily good appears. Best of luck getting yours installed and in working order. It looks like you won't have any problems unless you use the GPS a great deal.

[Mr. Flibble]

Mr. Fibble,

So I found some Aussie tek forums with long threads on the Road King (ie. here). Getting one of these working looks like a fun project, but a lot of the issues people are having seem related to weak QC.

The unit is quite modest when it comes to computational power. I'm surprised it can do video at all. Then again, hardware accelerated video decoding is pretty ubiquitous.

I think I'll steer clear and just go with a fairly ordinary receiver with an AUX input and leave the computing and video to a portable device. But I really want to thank you for bringing this device up as I really enjoyed reading about it. I'm going to keep an eye on similar Chinese produced units in case something extraordinarily good appears. Best of luck getting yours installed and in working order. It looks like you won't have any problems unless you use the GPS a great deal.

From my understanding of the unit the GPS won't be much of a problem. The GPS itself is fairly standard, and all I need to do is to load my own winCE software onto it such as igo8 and the appropriate maps on a SD card. Apparently you can run multiple versions of various different GPS software programs and just switch between them as you see fit. That is a nice bonus.

As to Linux, I work with it lots, and I considered Linux on the device for about 5 seconds. I have a Mythbuntu system that I built and I love it - however, it was a lot of work to get exactly like I wanted. I don't need that experience again with my Stereo Head unit! WinCE should suffice.

Part of the reason I wanted this head unit, and my previous 1 DIN unit was also Chinese was because of format compatibility. Standard head units at places like Future Shop cost more, but play far fewer formats. The other advantage of the North American head units is the easier to use interface. That is a big plus. However, the inability to play the educational videos and audio courses I have while driving is something that I could not handle. (Note, I don't actually watch the videos while driving, I listen to the courses that are already stored in AVI or DIVX format).

[Seabird37]

I have a Dual Din DVD player for my Delica on order from Chinavision. I chose this as it has the features I am looking for and is considerably cheaper than anything you will find in future shop. Also, some of the people on the OZ forums have posts on this very same model:

http://www.chinavasion.com/product_info ... -and-dvbt/

head unit?

Did you ever receive this unit? If so, what are you impressions of it?

[Mr. Flibble]

Did you ever receive this unit? If so, what are you impressions of it?

Yes, it arrived some time ago, but I got sent away on business!

I took photos of it out of the box, and then after removing the sticker on the back that covers a place where a 25mm fan can go. Bad Chinese design decision there. I think that the engineers who built it had ideas about cooling, then handed the product off to somebody else who decided to cover up the vents the engineers made with stickers!

Thus, the stickers are going to come off for sure!

I probably won't be able to get back to have it installed before October. :(

[Mr. Pistachio]

Well keep us posted on the install and if it's working properly

[mararmeisto]

The big issue with whether or not the amp will work is whether or not you can find a pin-out for the connector. Not the proprietory 9-pin (or 11 or whatever the little round one is), but the large 20-something pin. If you can figure that out, then you can figure out whether the amp will work or not. I got one too, but I've not found a pin-out as of yet.

[Rural]

From my understanding of the unit the GPS won't be much of a problem. The GPS itself is fairly standard, and all I need to do is to load my own winCE software onto it such as igo8 and the appropriate maps on a SD card. Apparently you can run multiple versions of various different GPS software programs and just switch between them as you see fit. That is a nice bonus.

What I was getting at is that some people are having problems with the unit over-heating when the GPS is used.

As to Linux, I work with it lots, and I considered Linux on the device for about 5 seconds. I have a Mythbuntu system that I built and I love it - however, it was a lot of work to get exactly like I wanted. I don't need that experience again with my Stereo Head unit! WinCE should suffice.

Good decision. If you found Mythbuntu stretched your muscles at all, you'd probably be outmatched by a Chinese unit with an ARM processor at its heart. ARM is a whole different ball game. Most ARM devices don't boot according to any sort of standard procedure. Some folk actually boot Linux through Windows CE. In all honesty, if I got serious about installing Linux on one of the Chinavision devices, I'd buy four with the expectation that I'd brick three of them while figuring them out.

(By the way, since I gave up on getting things "exactly like I wanted", I've found that I spend a lot less time fiddling with my Linux devices and more time using them. It took about a decade to get to this point though. Maybe I'm just getting old.)

I stayed up late one night shopping for a stereo, figured I'd ordered it, went to bed, waited three weeks for it come, then realized that I had never placed the order. So I'm still in the market.

Right now, I'm leaning towards ho-hum single DIN stereo with an AUX port and a PC Engines computer. PC Engines makes dirt cheap computers that will fit in a DIN slot. Very nice. I get to play with their hardware through work, so I've already been able to do some of the ground-work. Once the stereo is installed, its all familiar ground for me. But I give myself 50-50 odds of smartening up and just being happy with the stereo.

[Mr. Flibble]

(By the way, since I gave up on getting things "exactly like I wanted", I've found that I spend a lot less time fiddling with my Linux devices and more time using them. It took about a decade to get to this point though. Maybe I'm just getting old.)

I stayed up late one night shopping for a stereo, figured I'd ordered it, went to bed, waited three weeks for it come, then realized that I had never placed the order. So I'm still in the market.

Right now, I'm leaning towards ho-hum single DIN stereo with an AUX port and a PC Engines computer. PC Engines makes dirt cheap computers that will fit in a DIN slot. Very nice. I get to play with their hardware through work, so I've already been able to do some of the ground-work. Once the stereo is installed, its all familiar ground for me. But I give myself 50-50 odds of smartening up and just being happy with the stereo.

I will be getting this stereo installed tomorrow - along with the amplifier and my 12" sub that I had in my 4Runner. :D (I got a whole bunch of stereo stuff for free when my truck was stolen and I worked at Future Shop a long time ago, Insurance paid for the stolen stuff, and I had a staff discount at Future Shop at the time, and I had to spend it on SOMETHING! )

I agree with you on the Linux front. I have been using mostly Red Hat in the server sphere since 1994. I don't play with Debian/Ubuntu much, and as you mentioned I don't work in the ARM space. I have too many computers already, and since I travel so much for work I don't want to be fixing computers when I come home! I would rather just have the damn things do what I want now. I am getting old too apparently.

I will keep everyone updated on this stereo.

Oh, and to overheating - the engineers designed the case for the stereo to work with vent holes - which are drilled into the case. Then some genius - probably in marketing... Put stickers all over the device and those stickers cover the vent holes. This is why they overheat. Take the stickers off and it works much better.

There is also a spot for a 25mm fan covered by a sticker as well. If I get overheating issues, I will buy a fan from NCIX and install it on the back of the unit.

[Mr. Flibble]

The head unit seems good. I can't yet figure out how to adjust the subwoofer output on the interface. I like the touchscreen.

Some points are annoying, but overall it is better than the 1 DIN unit I had in my 4Runner.

Now, if I can just figure out why my foglight fuse keeps burning out - and why none of my dash lights except the compass and indicator lights come on, I should be good to go. I am certain that the installer grounded some wires he should not have. And, my foglight relay is right next to where the subwoofer was wired.

I just tested all my fuses - and only the one tied to the Aux Lamps is burning out. I cannot for the life of me find the dash fuse at the moment.

[Mr. Flibble]

Seems that the stereo installer guy did not ground the unit properly, hence why my dash fuse kept blowing. And, given that my foglights are tied to the dash lights they would not come on either.

That is all fixed. (Although my Radio bezel is totally destoyed now, it was on the way out before, but now my cupholders just come right out of the face!)

I had to get a new bezel anyhow...

I like the unit overall. The GPS seems to work great, I just need to load the software on the card. It plays MP3s DVD movies, does all the normal stuff. So, for the price I think it was pretty good.

Drawbacks are:
You cannot dim the unit at night. It does not support that even though there is a cable on the back for the dimming it does nothing.
There is no seperate volume for the subwoofer. So, while I have a great amp and sub I can't control the output except with the regular volume.
The touchscreen is nice, but somethings require the use of the remote, and that can be finnicky.
The Bluetooth to the phone works very well, but my initial tests show that the microphone is pretty shoddy.

Oh, and being a Chinese unit I got what you would expect the moment I put the 2 GB SD card from the unit for the GPS software on my laptop....

[Mr. Flibble]

Update:

I have been playing around with the GPS software. While I have not got the stuff working as I would like with maps etc going, I can say that it does in fact work. It will just take me a little more work to get a proper Windows CE software set installed and functioning on this unit.

I find the MP3 interface to be kludgy and sometimes unresponsive to screen or remote input. It is as if MP3 sometimes overtaxes the processor, as when changing screens the sound cuts out for a brief period.

Having said that, the bluetooth feature is great, having bluetooth calling *AND* the ability to play bluetooth music directly off of an iPhone or Blackberry onto the car stereo is a pretty great feature. Direct plugging in an Ipod is another great feature, and you can partially control it from the screen. (You can't tell what the ipod is playing or set random etc, but you can skip forward, rewind and change volume).

DVD playback is great on the 7" screen, although I have not figured out the remote fully yet to deal with menus etc.


Drawbacks again appear that it remains powered on even when the van is off. I notice that the power button on it remains lit red regardless of the ignition position. I will be leaving my Delica down here in Seattle for a few weeks in storage, and I will find out if it has the dreaded "drain battery" syndrome after a couple of weeks. We will have to see.

The lack of a subwoofer volume control is a serious PITA for me, as when I crank the bass, it does so for the system as a whole, and my front 5 1/4 speakers distort badly (those speakers are gone) so Pink Floyd does not sound right. I will get some new JBL's perhaps to fix that.

Overall, despite the annoying chinese quirks that this head unit has, I think for the price I paid it is a pretty damn good deal. There are some annoying points about the deck, but it has more features than $1000 units you find in Future Shop, and you can figure out workarounds for the most annoying issues at any rate.