Clarion OHM 1588VD 15.4 inch Monitor with DVD

Product Details
Manufacturer: Clarion
Website: link
Typical Selling price: £919.00
Clarion’s largest Over Head Monitor product, at 15.4 inches on the diagonal. In a soft black silky finish, with two powerful interior LED lights you can switch manually or else set to work with the door switch, whatever polarity they are working by, through use of a tiny switch set on the PCB inside the unit. The side mount DVD slot can play MP3 encoded discs and there are two AV inputs and one AV output. The screen simply flips open by up to 150 degrees but has no swivel or twist facility.
The unit is supplied with two sets of Infra Red Headphones and a slim remote control with 40 buttons, all batteries are supplied as is a long installation loom of power wires and a long AV signal lead provided to mate with the AV1 lead, that finishes in one half of a mating pair of plug connectors.
Headphones have on/off switches and volume knobs and a red power on LED.
– Door Switch Polarity flip control by on-PCB internal switch
– Long Power loom included
– AV inputs One and Two via PCB connection-plugs, one to RCA, one to plug connector to mate with extension cord provided
– One AV out via PCB-Connection plug
– 15.4 inch TFT LCD screen with 150 degree manual open and close
– Viewing angle (up/down/left/right) : 10/30/40/40
– Built in side-slot DVD deck
– Plays DVD, DVD-R/VCD/CD-DA/CD-R/RW/MP3
– Last disc position memory
– Resolution: 1280 x 800H = 1,024,000 pixels
– PAL/NTSC formats supported, auto selected
– Aspect Ratio: 16:9 widescreen
– Can display as Widescreen or use zoom modes.
– 40 button remote control used with on-screen GUI display
– Twin dome lights built in with door trigger switching or manual control
– Built in Infra Red Transmitter for wireless headphones
Editor review : Clarion OHM 1588VD 15.4 inch Monitor with DVD
In the world of TV screens, size is king. And it’s even more so in the 12V world, which makes this screen a rare and especially huge animal. For while fifteen point four inches on the diagonal is not huge in domestic terms, it is a true biggie for in car use, where seven is common and nine getting on for it.
This is a relatively simple device and has none of the bells and whistles that we saw on the much smaller NESA product earlier. It has the big screen, and as part of the OHM or Over Head Monitor series, it also has the dome light replacing lamps, as these are generally going to affix to the roof of vehicles, replacing the door light cluster.


It opens up like a book and has a simple one-direction hinge, allowing it to come open some 150 degrees but crucially for me, lacks any swivel function to point it better at any one part of the interior. I suppose it is not an issue since such a large screen would tend to be in a wagon with a good few seats and you’d be getting one this size to entertain a few passengers at once, so you cannot let one seating position hog all the angles.
This is a shame, as like brightness overall of a TV flat screen panel, the viewing angle is also something that matters. Coming in 8 inch 888VD and 10 inch 1088VD sizes, the OHM 1588VD model has a far narrower set of viewing angles than its brethren, which are rated (up/down/left/right) at 45/65/65/65/65. Whereas this product has but 10/30/40/40, which means you really have to be within 40 degrees left or right. The up/down is irrelevant as you can flip the thing open, but side-on view may detract slightly for those close-in.
There’s no SD card slot and there’s no USB plug hole either, both of which I reckon will be expensive white elephants for many UK users (I gather the Germans like to use movies on USB sticks on DivX) and as such are not missed on the paying-for-it front.
However, I really would like to have seen a much more sophisticated hinge and I do feel the much cheaper and smaller NESA NSC-909 has this beat by the inclusion of a radio transmitter. This feature would be used to broadcast the audio into your car’s radio aerial and was an extra thing on the NESA item but not included in the Clarion product. It could be due to the Sound Quality issue but I don’t think so.
Included with this mighty screen are two pairs of well made and comfy wireless headphones, which if I am honest, I was not too keen on as they had a very high noise floor and hissed a bit with the audio sounding a bit muffle compared to even cheap cans plugged straight in.
However, my experience of Infra Red headphones is still quite narrow, so I am not sure if these are par for the course or are in fact a bit sad. You can definitely hear the sound track, get some decent level and they are well sealed and nicely ergonomic for the purposes of keeping the sound in the cans and not leaking out nor letting sound in. Vital if the rear seat entertainment is a defacto second ‘˜zone’.
The picture was good, with a far greater number of pixels in one dimension due to the size of screen, taking the dot count to over the magic mega pixel. Any little niggles about the odd whistle or bell on smaller screens are really moot as this is about seeing a picture as big in terms of angle of your field of vision, as a big sexy TV indoors and as such is as rare as a rare thing in 12V. This is a reall ‘Might of Clarion’ product and could not exist for smaller company!
So, a serious screen product from a top maker that looks terrific, will last well as it’s solidly built and definitely kill the ‘˜are we nearly there yet?’ bleating from the back. It’s not in car TV, like they say on their site, it’s In-car Theatre!

Overall 8.2
Picture Quality 9
Build Quality 8
Features 7
Ease of Use 10
Value For Money 7