Since this thread is dead-ish lately, I figured I would drop a line about Pioneer's new F-series line up of double din head units. We had sold a ton of the AVIC-D3's over the last two years (and many to TR members also) but the new AVIC F700BT's and F900BT's are just incredible for the money. The screen is a little smaller but it fits great with the package. They have updated the screen pixels and the screen is sharper and cleaner than ever (although JVC was using this resolution a year ago).

The F700bt is a great cheap alternative for those that want a nice name-brand head unit with navigation but don't care to play a DVD up front. The coolest thing about it is that you can just hook up your iPod (the cable is still optional though for another $45 which I think is a little lame), and watch video on the screen through it! the F900bt has a little more interesting 3-D display that shows animated renderings of big buildings and such (this is bad-ass). It also has the DVD player built-in. Both units finally overcame the complaints of not being able to navigate by and play a CD/DVD at the same time by moving the maps to the flash card drive. Simple yet effective. We just got them in on Friday and installed a few for a couple of customers and some dealerships and everyone is going crazy over them for the price.

They also have the blue tooth built in (much easier to install now and better/faster connecting to the three phones that I have paired them with so far). For the first time, they have "conversational voice recognition" so you don't have to say "play" or "stop". You can say like "Play Black Eyed Peas" or "call work (girlfriend, John, etc)". Worked pretty well as far as I can see so far.

If you have been waiting to upgrade to a double din navigation system for a while, these new f-series from Pioneer should really be in your comparison shopping.

They even look so nice in the dash that we have two new car dealer accounts getting them preloaded into their showroom units! I have NEVER had any dealer request a system preloaded into stock units-these pieces are simply NICE!

Pioneer USA - In-Dash Navigation

One of my guys bought the F900BT to install in his SuperDuty tomorrow so we will be getting a ton of real world experience over the next couple of weeks.

And last but not least, they are completely and easily by-passable!

 

Pics!!!!

and what method is the bypass?

 

Attachment 107142

Don't have pics of the Super Duty uploaded yet but this was the first one of many that we installed for the Hyundai dealership (2008 Hyundai Elantra).

The bypass is as easy as the D3 (similar but not the same). Involves a pin placement swap/wire grounding.

What I am more suprised about is that the F700BT (doesn't have DVD playback is the only main difference from the F900BT but about $200 lower in price) is being chosen over the more expensive DVD player version. The feedback I am getting from customers is that they are burning movies to their 80GB iPod and that is what they watch all their movies on anyway (picture is really good from the iPod into either unit).

I thought everyone would still want the DVD playback function but looks like the trend is changing yet again!

I also just thought about it-for the $200 you would save, you can purchase a badass iPod anyway even if you didn't have one. Interesting....

 

Looks sick I was gonna get the D3 until this came out but I endedup getting the 4900 instead until I do a lil more research on the F. Has anyone figured out a bypass yet?

 

Bypass is as simple as the D-3's involving moving an unused pin to a certain slot and grounding it along with the parking brake wire. Pioneer learned their lesson last year when the original D-3's were NOT bypassable (that was fixed with a software "update" that they later released in June).

Something I thought was a little quirky though is that the cheaper 700BT has NO vehicle speed sense input. The directions state it is not necessary on that model. The 900BT has it and they state it "MUST" be hooked up. Many shops weren't connecting the VSS wire for years and all manufacturers stated that was a big no-no. All of the sudden-it is no longer needed? The bitch is, the speed display on the 700 BT sucks because it relies on the internal gyrometer so it is delayed by a couple of seconds but on the 900BT it is real-time (due to the traditional hard-wired connection).

On our next 700BT install we are going to insert a pin in the empty VSS slot to see if it fires up that input. Not understanding the logic behind this one...