JVC EXAD KD-AVX77 DVD/CD Receiver

26th August 2009 Adam Rayner

Single DIN car DVD player with no buttons but rather an LCD tft display with touch control. Equipped with an Infra Red remote control, a microphone for Bluetooth phone use and many RCA outputs and also AV inputs. A rare full 5.1 surround sound decoding unit with centre channel RCA output. Dual zone output is also possible and you can choose your screen layout and colours as well as the background image or wallpaper. It has full Bluetooth compatibility and will work iPods and iPhones via the USB port and allows two-way control of most such that you can use and see the display on either headunit or iPod when in use. Video may be used from an iPod with an additional (£45 approx) KS-U30 connector adapter lead. One interesting feature is the proximity sensor that re-animates the screen when a hand wafts nearby, ready for instructions.
– 4 x 50w (MOSFET Power IC)
– 5.4 inch ultra wide (3.32:1) LCD tft touch screen
– 576,000 pixels, 800 (x3 RGB) x 240
– Wide viewing angle
– Motion sensor for panel activation
– User selectable GUI colours and three choices of layout
– .jpeg and video image capture for customisable wallpapers
– Gold-plated RCA preout terminals @ 5V Front L&R/rear L&R/subwoofer/centre channel and composite video, Second Audio Out
– Subwoofer has 0-16dB gain available
– Gold-plated AV input terminals
– CD/DVD/VCD/DivX/MP3/GIGA MP3/WMA/WAV/AAC playback
– Plays DVD-R/-RW and +R/RW but not dual layer RW & +RW
– Cable mounted USB port
– Made for iPod/iPhone (KS-PD100 needed for iPod 3rd gen 30/40GB; iPod mini 4/6GB and 4th gen 40GB)
– Full speed iPod control
– 2-way control for iPod/iPhone
– Built-in Bluetooth 1.2 for hands free calling and audio streaming ( HFP/OPP/A2DP/AVRCP)
– Text message display and voice dialling
– 5.1 channel Dolby Digital decoder (NOT dts though odd lack)
– Dual Zone output and divided screen for display of DVD and AV in (rear camera or video nav)
– Separate volume control for second zone
– Seven Band EQ; 3 user memories plus Flat/Hard Rock/R&B/Pop/Jazz/Dance/Country/Reggae/Classic settings
– HPF & LPF selectable between off/80/120/150Hz @ 12 dB per Octave
– CD changer control (port can be converted to aux in with KS-U57/8 adapter)
– Steering wheel remote ready (optional adapter required)
– Rear fan cooled
– Microphone, two mounting devices and RM-RK252 24+4-way button remote included
Review by Adam Rayner
In another genre-creating move JVC (who started the whole single-DIN-with-a-screen thing) have released another CES superstar to the UK at last. The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas had a flurry of engineers crawling all over the original El Kameleon headunit. That was a revolutionary piece of kit that I nicknamed Hidey-Face as the buttons and illumination switched off and hid so fast and so completely that you couldn’t quite follow the action and tell what was going on. They didn’t know what to call it in the UK, as the Americans thought we wouldn’t get ‘El Kameleon’ despite all of us lot living so much closer to Spain than them! It was Ricky Martin’s ‘Living La Vida Loca’ that gave us a more Hispanic view and the machine was then called the same here. Interestingly, the EXAD ï¿½ber-level of JVC top product branding has now gone global, with the word printed on the box. I think it would be cool if we had Addzest, Excellon and Carrozzeria here, too! (Clarion, Kenwood, Pioneer.)
Now a generation later, son of El Kameleon sees a pair of clever technologies brought together. One is a tft LCD touch screen but made by JVC in their single DIN required size which is heralded as super-duper wide-wide extra wide screen, when in fact it’s a mothered-by-necessity size. Make no mistake, this is big company muscular engineering clout and is a pretty fat investment as the panel itself is the major item. No small bitty company could do this. This is pure big outfit FLEX! And opens up a world of fun as radical as the birth of what the trade simply call ‘JVC type’ or regular car radio sized things that have TV screens on the front.
The idea of integrating a tiniest-size TV screen into a JVC single-DIN deck some years back was an inspired move and as said, created the genre but this panel can and will be used on other units, I’m sure. I can see Kenwood in particular getting a slice of this one day in their merged-corporate future!
One benefit of all that fabulous display real estate is the fix-it-yourself wallpaper and again, this idea was something that JVC have done before with web-support and other methods on previous head units but choosing your own .jpeg or just pressing pause on that rude DVD (I did) has to be better. I favour a car radio with proudly displayed boobies myself. How about the Hulk’s eyes and frown? Or a reclining goddess..
The unit for USA use that I saw in ‘Vegas has some features ours does not of course, as we use a different source of high def radio. So we don’t get satellite and soi-disant ‘HD radio’ built in. DAB features in the manual but there are no spare plugholes in the back bar the CD changer one so I guess the control that is referred to has to be via this, unless this is printing error. Upon researching, it is apparent we are talking about this orifice and the KT-DB1000 box. This goes blissfully unmentioned in the manual and the customer service number is a) hidden in the press-only contact section on the main site that has no links to JVC mobile and then is clearly available on the JVC mobile site but no-one on it can answer ANY in car question so you are forced to use e-mail. There are some issues there but not likely to confront many people as most will deal with the shop who sold it to them.
We get Dolby’s Digital 5.1 and even the super clever Dolby ProLogic IIx codecs, which is umpteenth generation Dolby and is the holy grail of stereo-to-surround codecs and can make any decent stereo recording into a credibly presented surround experience that’s actually enjoyable. This means you can have full surround sound from stereo recordings as well. Bizarrely, though, the dts codec has not been licensed and that’s plain odd.
I know that handling video is a world more costly processing-wise than flinging audio around in either analogue or digital form but it is still a great shame that the KD-AVX77 needs another forty five quid spending to get the right adapter to play videos from iPods and iPhones. Especially with all the iPod compatibility the KD-AVX77 has and with the importance of the video screen on the KD-AVX77 and again how crucial video use is to so many sorts of ‘Pod. But that might have put the price through the roof and most of us have a heap of DVDs anyway.
I know I am something of a musical pervert in admitting that I adore 5.1 music mixes and view this sort of recording as an advance as important as from mono to stereo. Still in its infancy, there are some audiophillic artists (can you believe Linkin Park and Sting and Boys II Men?) who put out recordings specially made for surround use, let alone the nutter-outfits put together for showing off the ill-fated DVD-Audio system. (moment’s silence) like Studio VooDoo.
So I pulled out some odd discs and hooked her up in simple stereo. This is going to sound cynical but as a leading UK reviewer of Home Theatre speakers and whole systems (up to a whopping ï¿½1m!) I know that surround for films is adored in the UK. For music, even in the exalted heights of the Talk Audio Community, I couldn’t find a single solitary enthusiast who had hooked up his system in Dolby Digital surround. Even amongst those whose units came with it! Odd but true, Dolby ProLogic IIx is huge in the upper end of the OEM market with Harman Kardon supplying it in Range Rover and Mercedes and Alpine in Jaguars. Go figure but I know most readers of this want to know about how well it works and how easy it is to use the touchscreen and remote.
I found it intuitive and that the manual for the little bit of RTFM required, was clear and concise but could have included a bit more about other devices (optional) as some other Japanese manuals tend to. The display is sumptuous and detailed and crisp and the sound on USB via a top end WMA file is as sexy as CD. You can hear the MP3 slight lack of dynamics and quality, which is testament to a good on board op amp to feed the RCAs.
There is so much on here, I could have spent weeks and there will be plenty who will be aching to know how it’ll cope with a fat-bum big old HDD for 12v use. I used some flash drives and found that despite the WMA files being perfectly readable by my PC, the KD-AVX77 is another that doesn’t like WMA in its least lossy form. You got the title but a frustrating ‘not supported’ message as well. It read quickly, too.
I really do think you could watch movies on this screen and it can be hooked up to a plethora of other stuff, including a reverse camera for the AV input! I liked it a lot and I foresee this as a future superstar if only enough sell in the meanwhile. Of course that screen has been engineered now, so even if there’s a Credit Crunch caused sales hiatus due to it being a bad time to rewrite the Ice rulebooks, this is going to be huge.
A couple of odd lacks like real nav ability in touch screen and not reading any dts 5.1 (which would fling out ALL my DVD-A/dts music disc catalogue) cost it a couple of points and make this still terribly exciting new Early-Adopters’ Wunderkind earn a Recommended rather than Best Buy Talk Audio flag but it’s still got lumps of WOW factor.
Heartily Recommended.
Sound Quality 9.0
Appearance/Display 10.0
Ease Of Use/HMI 10.0
Features 8.0
Value For Money 8.0
Overall rating 9.0