skipa4

I'm leaning toward the 5120 because it does RDS. The extra POIs are nice but will be out of date on a year anyway. I think the 5120 doesn't need a nav DVD in the slot so should elininate disk swapping.

So what if you don't do any routing? I very rarely use routing. Will it save your local area to the HD so next time you start it the maps are there and you can leave the music DVD in?

Has anyone tried the Euro model of the D3 in the US? I really want RDS but it looks like that's only in the Euro model. Anyone know if the Euro model will work in the US? Assuming you can get it to read the US map DVD. Right now I'm leaning toward the Kenwood DNX7100, but it looks like it's going to be at least $100 more.

Hummm - I wonder if it's possible to get a European model to work in the US? The US model does not have RDS and the EU does. What frequency steps does the Eu model support? 100 kHz or 200 kHz? I think the radio stations in EU are all on even frequencies (100.2, 100.4. etc) In US they are all odd (100.3, 100.5) If the radio will do 100 kHz steps we should be able to use it here.

I had Sirius in my car when it was new, but found that there are more over the air stations I like than satellite. And they're free! So I dumped satellite. My current radio has RDS and I love it. Hey Pioneer - are you listening? We want RDS! Give us a firmware update!

I didn't realize it was a different tuner. Why would they have a different tuner? Different specs? There's nothing different about the Euro stations other than the frequency steps - and one tuner could handle that easily.

Well, most of the stations around here support RDS now. A lot of factory radios support RDS. I can't believe it really adds any cost. The Euro version of the D3 supports it, so I'm guessing it's in the D3 and just disabled on the US radios. There must be some hackers here that can figure out how to turn it back on. If I could figure it out, I'd buy a D3 today! Otherwise I'm looking at the Kenwood.

I'm guessing they're all made overseas. The US ones can't be that different. Has anyone tried to hack a US version to see if the RDS can be turned on? Or is there something different about the format of the US RDS? Gotta be a way!!

I'm nav shopping. I saw in the Pioneer web pages that the D3 does not support detailed city maps where the N4 supports 23 cities. How detailed are the cities? I'm used to the VW Navteq that has about every road as far as I know. Would I be disappointed with the D3 maps?

Gauges? What kind of guages? I don't remember seeing anything like that in the spec sheets.

I've seen web pages indicating both yes and no. I suspect maybe just the European versions do RDS. If that's the case, any hacks to the US version to make it work? I can't believe the US and Euro versions are that different - probably just bits turned on or off. My current radio has RDS as do a lot of the new radios. If the D3 will not do it, doen anyone have any suggestions of a similar radio/nav that does?