Great buy!

I shopped around for a car CD Changer that plays mp3s, reads CDRWs, holds a lot of CDs, and works via RF. This is easily the best one.

I'll start with the installation. This product installs easily. I drive a little Nissan Sentra and had plenty of room under the radio/cupholder/ac console for the RF tuner (about 6" x 5" x 1"). It requires 12 volts DC, and there are 3 wires, about 18 AWG in size and about 5 or 6 feet long. 1 wire for ground, 1 for power, 1 for always on power. 2 wires to run over to the fuse panel, stripped the ends off the wires and slipped them into 2 spots in my fuse panel, then found a grounded screw to screw the ground wire under. Then I unplugged the antenna from the back of the radio, and plugged it into the RF tuner, then plugged the RF tuner into the radio where the antenna was plugged. I was told I'd need extra cables for this, but the radio/antenna cables had the right connectors on them, so I didn't need any. Next was to run the cable from the CD changer to the RF tuner. This cable was plenty long, I'd say at least 10 feet long. A nice molded plug made it easy to plug in at both ends. I didn't bother mounting the CD changer to anything because nothing in my trunk looked flat enough or out of the way (even though you can mount this to the ceiling, upside down, at various angles...), so it's just resting back there, and the cable is still long enough so I can move it out of the way if I need to. Also, JVC sells this changer as being great at absorbing vibrations. Last thing to do was to find a place to put the control display. The control display is way too shiny and flashy and is kind of an eyesore, especially with the cable being a quarter inch thick which you won't easily hide it if you stick it anywhere on the dash. So I ran the cable down thru the middle console where the hand brake is located, and let the control display lay next to the hand brake (still easily viewable from the driver's perspective, but not quite such an eyesore). The cable on the control display was about 6 feet long so I had plenty of length for that run. With everything in place, I just had to plug the control display into the RF tuner, and that's where I made a mistake. This plug has pins on it, like a mouse/keyboard ps2 plug, and I accidentally bent one of the pins back when I tried to plug it in. After taking only the control display back and exchanging it, only to find that something must have shorted with the pin being bent back, I took all the parts back and exchanged it for a new one, reinstalled it, and it works. All of this was worth not paying $75 to have them install it at the store. If you've never pulled out your radio before (like me) or never installed anything like this (again like me) it should probably take you about an hour or 2 (excluding exchanges) to install.

How does it perform? Fast switching between CDs, slight delay when first reading an mp3 CD (only a couple of seconds, hardly noticeable), has never skipped (though I've tried to make it do so). On mp3 CDs it will play your mp3s as they are organized by folder/directory, and alphabetically. It will read the mp3 id tags and display and scroll them on the control display at a very nice rate. You can also press the intro button which plays the first part of a song and then goes onto the next mp3 (if you are trying to browse through your 200 song mp3 CD), or the random button if you don't care for alphabetical order.

Sound quality is not as good as I expected, not quite CD quality, but still quite acceptable. The audio signal is coming thru an RF tuner, and is fighting with a radio signal on the same station (I just happen to live where all the available frequencies the RF tuner works on are occupied by radio stations), so maybe it's just me, although I don't hear any interference at all. JVC has a BBE button which is supposed to boost the quality, and it helps a little. I've noticed that the difference in recording quality of mp3s is unnoticeable on the CD changer, even though I can hear the difference at home. So an mp3 recorded at 256k will sound pretty much the same as one recorded at 128k when played on the CD changer. I guess that could either be bad, if you like your mp3s at a high quality, or good if you want to fit more mp3s on a CD (since the files are smaller at lower quality).

Epinions listing shows a picture (as of this date) showing the CD changer, the remote control that comes with it (kind of pointless to me since the control display is well within reach), and the control display. The control display unit is molded plastic, and the grey casing is kind of shiny/reflective, although the actually lcd display is not. The lcd display is bright enough to read even in moderate sunlight. The buttons are: power (if you want to turn the CD changer off and listen to the radio signal instead of the CD changer signal), BBE which "boosts" the signal, change to next CD, change to last CD, change to next folder (for mp3), change to last folder (for mp3), change to next track/mp3, change to last track/mp3, intro play, random play, repeat track/mp3, and frequency select. The display fits comfortably in hand and is easy to learn and operate without looking at it. As for the remote, I left it in the box since I never use it.

One last thing. It's at a really good price (Bestbuy ripped me off by raising the price up from $179 to $229 for 1 week then dropped it back down to $179, so watch the prices!).