Installation and Operation:
Installation will vary from car to car, and may generally be more than some would be willing to tackle. Removing your old stereo may be the hardest part, while matching all of your existing wires to the RedPower 990DVD-4's may be the next challenge. In order to simplify things as much as possible, I recommend purchasing two things specifically designed for your vehicle; a wiring harness and a mounting kit. You can get these at automotive electronics stores (Crutchfield's), some department stores (Wal-Mart), or online. I bought both items off of eBay, and for less than $20 (including shipping), I had everything I needed to wire and mount the 990DVD-4 in my Jeep.
My installation was made easy by my minimal extra purchase, and the fact that the center console's cover pulls off with minimal effort to reveal just two screws that need to be removed in order to slide the radio out. Taking the stock radio out took all of a couple minutes, but this could be much more involved in some cars.
The next step was to attach the 990DVD-4's wiring harness to the one from eBay. This took about 35 minutes, simply because of the volume of wires to connect, and because I left things as tidy as possible with wire nuts on all connections made. The final step was to mount the radio into the car, which was also rather easy, and initially took just about 5 minutes.
Once installed I immediately realized the issue mentioned previously where the USB port and SD/MMC card slot were not accessible due to trim on the dashboard hanging over the opening for the radio. The mounting kit came with two shims that could push the face of the radio out about a half an inch, so I uninstalled the RedPower unit, installed the shims on the mounting kit, and reinstalled everything. Now I was able to use the SD/MMC card slot, but the USB port was still impossible to use due to the size of the boot on a typical USB cable. Even though the RedPower 990DVD-4 comes with mini-USB to full size USB adapter cable, it still didn't work well. I intended to use SD cards for playing MP3s, so I proceeded with this slight hitch in the installation.
Now that the device is installed, let's take a look at some shots of it in action and cover some of the positive and negative features of use in general use.
Operation - Radio:
The radio portion was probably the biggest disappointment. AM radio worked great (if anyone cares), but FM reception was terrible! I spent many hours trying to troubleshoot it, but in the end I never got it working to my satisfaction. With the stock stereo installed, I was able to pull in about 2-3 dozen stations while "seeking", most of which had crystal clear, strong signals. Trying the same "seek" test in the same physical location with the 990DVD-4 pulled in a total of ZERO stations. I manually tuned to a local rock station, and was able to get fuzzy reception that faded in and out, as if I was travelling out of range (despite not moving at all).
While in radio mode I was reminded of a computer's "blue screen of death" by the minimal data provided against the stark blue background. It does echo the stations frequency, and if you can manage to tune one in well enough, you receive the extra data they broadcast, such as the "DHA Rock" tag above.
You are provided 30 presets, so if the reception issue is just an isolated incident, you will be able to load yours up with all the stations you could possibly care for. In my case, I don't need a single preset. Even my FM modulated CD changer couldn't be tuned in, and it is hard wired through the antenna!
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