Thursday, May 15th, 2008
Just two days shy of their one-year birthday, Panasonic is introducing a couple of successors in the Strada F-Class line. Announced in Japan, the June-bound CN-HX1000D and CN-HW1000D are both destined for gaping holes in dashes and possess a 7-inch 800 x 480 resolution display, built-in Bluetooth, iPod compatibility, AM / FM tuners, digital terrestrial TV tuner, DVD / CD player and an internal hard drive for storing map data and Sade jams. The only noticeable difference is the physical size; the former is a single-DIN unit while the latter touts a double-DIN frame. These two also allow for home control, so you can lock your doors, turn the heat down and flip off the porch light from the driver’s seat. Sure sounds pleasant, if only they weren’t ¥354,900 ($3,388) apiece.
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Monday, May 12th, 2008
Panasonic’s Value for Money ethos is amazing. You can see it operating up close when you check out what a £100 higher price tag gets you for their posher 7005 deck. It looks very similar in that it too is a single-DIN DVD deck with a sexy 7 inch touch screen. This 5005 is a one-er cheaper but you lose 5dB of dynamic range and signal to noise ratio on CD playback, although you really would be hard put to hear that with any background sound at all. You lose all those surround sound things like extra centre channel outputs and dts and SRS stuff although it’ll read Dolby Digital and down mix it to stereo. There is no digital output for feeding to a decoder. You don’t get the time alignment or the seven band EQ but you do get the three band version of their SQ system and DivX certification means that the web’s favourite movie format is readable on your deck. This is a cherry back to you as the more expensive machine does not have this. The LCD TV screen panel is the same with the same pixel count, so the resolution and picture will be the same. As car screens seem to have a rule to show adult entertainment, this is perfectly on-genre. Read the rest of this entry »
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