Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description The built-in HD Radio on JVC’s KD-HDR50 offers a multitude of programming in premium digital sound and an iTunes Tagging feature, which lets you “tag” songs playing on the radio, so you can purchase later from the iTunes store. The front USB port lets you easily play songs from iPod/iPhone and other USB devices, and the 2-way control for iPod/iPhone lets you operate directly from iPod/iPhone or on the headunit itself. Enjoy … More >>
#1 by A. Kulkarni on July 2, 2010 - 6:16 pm
I got this stereo for my wife’s Jeep Liberty, a Valentine’s day Gift. I did research for a week and This stereo have everything you can ask and you can’t beat the price on Amazon under 120 bucks.
Here are some features I like.
Built-in HD Radio(R) Tuner: Don’t buy stereo without HD Radio. Like TV, all radio stations across US are converting to digital FM. Digital transmission has better signal and it displays name of songs/bands/artists.
MP3/WMA Compatible: You can play mp3 CDs.
Front USB Port: You can directly plug flash drive into USB port and it plays mp3s from it. I no more have to burn CDs for few new songs. I just copy them in flash drive and play from it.
Front AUX-IN: I have Sansa Mp3 player and I connect to Aux-in sometimes. I can play all the music from my mp3 player to car stereo
Variable-Color Illumination: You can match the color of your car console to stereo display.
I like this stereo very much and would recommended it to anyone.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by TC on July 2, 2010 - 8:03 pm
I’m really glad I bought this receiver – between the CD player, the auxiliary jack, and the USB port, I can listen to my music in the car using all the devices I use at home. CD’s, iPod, flash drive, it doesn’t matter, they all sound great. The HD stations sound like CD compared to normal FM stations, and most have few or no commercials. It will show you the name of the song and artist that is playing on HD stations, and you can tag a song you like to get it from iTunes later. The only thing I don’t like is the radio presets function – it would be much easier if there were buttons on the face for presets, instead of having to use the control knob.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Brian Patrick on July 2, 2010 - 9:04 pm
I was taken in by the combination of features (particularly an integrated HD tuner) and the price. It lasted six days before I sent it back. Here’s why:
– It hissed like a 1970s 8-track no matter what source was selected — even with the volume turned all the way down;
– The user interface is completely unintuitive;
– It would not play audio files from a flash drive in alphabetical order, neither by id3 tag nor by file name; in fact I never did figure out how it selected the play order. Not a big deal if you use shuffle mode anyway, but not cool if you’re trying to listen to audio books;
– The matrix dots on the text readout that gives artist, song, album, etc. info would barely finish lighting up before each character would scroll to the next position, making the track data difficult to read while it was scrolling;
– AM sound quality was horrendous in HD or analog;
– Speaking of HD, if the tuner loses the HD signal, it reverts to the analog signal until it can pick up the HD signal again. If it’s right on the edge of being able to pick up the HD signal, it will bounce back and forth between HD and analog, much to my annoyance. There’s a setting where you can tell it to pick only HD or only analog — but it resets itself to “bounce” mode as soon as you change the station.
I ended up exchanging it for a similarly priced Sony unit that didn’t have quite as many features (for instance, HD radio is a separate add-on) but also didn’t have any of the problems or quirks. If I were to rate this item independent of its price, I’d rate it two stars. It does have a lot of feature content given its price point, but this is a case of you get what you pay for.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by D. Harry on July 2, 2010 - 11:24 pm
Excellent stereo for the money, I have had mine for about a week. Didn’t do too much research, actually I came here for my research. I wanted a stereo with HD Radio, Bluetooth, and front mounted USB/iPod. I couldn’t find any stereos out there with all 3, so I made a compromise, I rarely talk on the phone in the car anyways, so bluetooth wasn’t a deal breaker, I plan to purchase a Parrot bluetooth speaker for my visor later on down the road.
HD Radio is awesome, you actually do here a difference, over here in Los Angeles most FM stations have it, and so far only 1 AM station, KNX 1070. It makes the AM station sound like stereo FM, and the difference between regular FM and HD radio is noticeable, but not as much as the AM.
I was debating whether to get the front mounted USB vs the rear mount, but they have to cut into the inside of the glovebox to mount your iPod inside it. Well I don’t have an iPod, the glovebox isn’t the best place for any electronics, and that is added expense.
You can get a 16gb USB drive for $20 and have a ton of songs on there, when you want to leave your car you can just put it in your pocket, and if someone steals it you are only out $20 or less compared to $200.
I do have an external 320GB usb drive with music but the radio couldn’t read off it, I think it might have something to do with the formatting, as it is NTFS, I will try to make a partition with FAT32 and see if it makes a difference.
EDIT: I put the Bitlocker encryption on it, that is why I couldn’t read it.
If you have a USB stick it is better to either have a folder with all your music in it, or just make the stick music only because the stereo goes into all folders, whether it can read the files or not, so you don’t have to do a lot of scrolling.
This radio has a function where you can “tag” music and later buy it on iTunes, great for people with an iPod. I think the button is too big, I hit it accidentally a few times.
Only gripe I have with this unit, and something I didn’t notice until it was too late is there are no direct access channel memory buttons. JVC’s solution is for you to push down on the volume button and scroll between our saved stations, something that takes practice to do while moving, even though you really shouldn’t be.
Then there is the gimmick of color changing, don’t really care too much, but it is nice to change the colors once in a while, seems everyone now is doing blue LED’s on everything from computers to radios. Blue is a nice color but then they make it so bright, like my previous Sony radio. My colors are red and orange.
The coolest feature about the front mounted USB is it’s ability to charge, you can charge your iPod and almost anything USB. My cigarette port on my car is broken, now I don’t have to spend the $100+ to get it fixed, already purchased a Nokia USB charger, and I keep a generic cable in my car to charge the Garmin nuvi, those are the only 2 things I need to charge on the go. Only thing that sucks is the Nuvi recognizes the stereo as a computer so no charge and drive.
I need to change my speakers, the stereo outputs too much power for the stock speakers in my car, the stereo cuts off the volume at level 28.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Stuart T. Hanon on July 2, 2010 - 11:26 pm
great product at a great price, barney’s is a very good company to deal with. only problem with radio is no preset buttons on radio face, have to use up and down buttons to go throughout presets
Rating: 4 / 5