Kenwood eXcelon KVT-819DVD

great unit for the price worth every penny! once you figure out all the controls and settings this thing is a beast! does everything you need and more...if you need a dvd player to "stunt" a little this is the one for you.

I am a middle aged, tech savy, man that loves rock and country. I have a keen ear for clarity and no matter what type of sound system that I am building, if doing this for myself, clarity is of the utmost importance, after all, music is the no. 1 reason for a car stereo and anything else is just extras. With that said, I decided to purchase this unit after trying a cheaper brand. This unit's sound quality is exceptional and contains all the features I would expect to come with a high-end head unit. The GUI interface is exactly what I expected it to be (excellent) and user friendly. The software in the unit even organizes the audio files itself based on Album, Artist, Genre, etc... no matter how you have the files organized on the USB drive. The cool thing is that it does not physically move the files around on the drive, it just uses its memory to organize the files. So throw your files on the USB drive and plug it in (MAX: 255 folders each containing 255 files, 7000 files per playlist, total of 64,770 songs. Read the owners manual for proper file and folder setup when using this many files! I have 122 Albums or folders containing 1822 audio files on mine). The downside is that it takes a moment to access your audio files (though starts playing music from a file immediately) on a USB drive when you select USB as the source. However, what is a few moments compared to the time it saves searching for music files while driving down the road. I am more than willing to give it time to load all the audio tag information into its memory to save me alot of time and frustration later while driving and searching for songs. This feature is extremely important to you when you have 1000's of songs on a USB drive. Everything about this unit is exceptional. You have endless features and options from adding many accessories to fine tuning the audio quality. I am glad that kenwood did not build alot of extra features into this system (HD tuner, Navi, Bluetooth, etc....) and they stuck with keeping the quality of sound as their top priority. Of course, if you want the extra features you can always purchase them separately as accessories. This head unit really brought my system to life after trying a cheaper unit and being very disappointed. It took me about 12 hours to remove the cheaper unit and install this unit in my truck. My entire build consist of: 4 door speakers with Cerwin Vega 68's, MTX Thunderform subwoofer enclosure w/ dual Rockford Fosgate 8" punch subwoofers, 1-P200 Punch amp for the subs, and a Jensen POWER PLUS 840 4-Channel amp for the 4 door speakers. After completing the entire installation, I turned on the head unit and WOW! Listening to audio files from the USB source at 192kbps sounds so clear you can almost here the lead singers breathing as they are singing. Crystal clear!!!! I love it! I am very satisfied with this unit. Thanks Sonic.

The KVT-819DVD works well. Certain features freeze every once in a while with the iPod and I have had a little trouble with the trim piece around the unit coming loose when opening and closing the unit. The sound quality and the features are great. Overall, I would recommend it to someone looking for an in-dash DVD player.

So glad I purchased this unit for my Grand Cherokee Jeep...I was a little indecisive on what name brand unit i wanted. And now Im glad I stuck with kenwood kvt-819dvd because its truly a wonderful unit... I just got it a couple of days ago and I have yet to figure out all the goods of it....I will most certainly suggest this item to anyone trying to get something worth the bucks. Plus Sonic Electronics have the best prices period! I will be getting the navi n tv tuner very soon. Thanks Sonic Electronics your the best! :)