Does anyone have experience with the TV tuner?

How good is the reception?

Installation issues?

Is it worth the money?

I was considering to purchase.

Any input would be helpful.

Thanks.

Yes.

When you're moving horrible. When you're parked bad.

Installaton is pretty straight forward. Mount antenna, run power and data line up to radio.

Me personally, I don't think it's worth the money.

I was considering on getting an inexpensive tuner for $60 and feed the video to the input video of the Z1. These cheaper units have a separate remote control that you would use instead of the Z1 control. That's probably why the Pioneer tuners are so expensive becasue it is integrated with their unit. Has anybody tried a cheap tuner instead?

I have a GEX-P5700TV Tuner. I would agree with Cntrylvr79 for the most part. :) When moving the picture certainly is not great, but it is not really horrible for me. When parked, the picture is more than acceptable. Where did you mount your antennas Cntrylvr79? The GEX-P5700TV uses four diversity antennas. Here in Maryland the reception is just so so with this thing. I can't get channel 2(ABC) at all. However, 11 (NBC) and 13 (CBS) come in sort of okay on the VHF band. On UHF, I can get 22 (Public Television), 24 (UPN), 45 (Fox), 50 (WB), 54 (WB) and 67 (Public Television) pretty decently. However, there is ghosting, line noise, static and snow more than a stable clear picture. And as Cntrylvr79 said, when moving this is a little worse. Now that we have digital television broadcasts, I was sitting here watching some digital television broadcasts this morning before I head off to work and it hit me. Why can't I duplicate this in my SUV? If I took a digital set-top box like the Samsung SIR-T451, coupled it with some flat coax cable that can easily bend and fit under SUV doors, power it off of the 12V DC outlet conveniently in the back cargo area of my SUV, connect a power inverter like the Xantrex XPower 175 Plus, and mount a outdoor antenna like the Terk TV-55 under or on top of my rear spoiler, and then run composite cables from the output of the SIR-T451 into the audio/video input on the AVIC-Z1's external A/V connection on the back of the unit, would I be able to get a MUCH better and clearer digital picture while driving around in my SUV? Digital television is either on or off. You either have a strong enough signal to get the picture or you don't. There is no drifting. No ghosts images. No snow and static. Unlike DirecTV, where you need to aim at a particular point in the SouthWest sky, local digital television broadcasts are just in the air I thought. Given all that, I'm curious can I get for under $600 something that while not offering as many channels as the TrackVision DirecTV satellite system that goes for over $2,500 (US), could give me crystal clear SDTV digital tv reception of at least 7 or more channels network channels (ABC, NBC, CBS, UPN, WB, PBS and FOX) plus dedicated weather and traffic channels.


http://www.crutchfield.com/S-uXGW8aXWxO ... IRT451#Tab

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-uXGW8aXWxO ... &i=209TV55

http://www.ramelectronics.net/html/flatwire.html

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-uXGW8aXWxO ... h=inverter

Thoughts? Ideas? Suggestions? Can someone much smarter than me (that doesn't take much) explain how to go about getting digital tv (SDTV and/or HDTV) in a mobile setting in the car? In the meantime I guess I will have to just enjoy DVDs in the SUV, as they are MUCH clearer than any OTA broadcast via the Pioneer TV Tuner that integrates into the AVIC-Z1.

I think it's worth the effort to make an old GEX-P7000TV work, considering the amount of money you can save. I paid around $65 shipped for mine from eBay. I'm still waiting on cables for mine, but I'm thinking with cables and everything, total cost should still be less than $100 when I'm done. The IP-Bus part of it is already compatible and the only real challenge is splicing the composite video output of the 7000TV to the composite input in the AV-Bus. Oh yeah, some lucky person was able to win a 7000TV for $21+s&h on eBay. Granted, it didn't come with cables, but IP-Bus cables aren't that much, and it would be real easy to make a power cable using parts from Digi-key or Mouser.

As for that digital TV idea, I was actually surprised the $200+ GEX-P7500TV wasn't digital. It just seems crazy to me to pay that much for an old NTSC tuner. The digital tuner, if it has a good enough signal, will receive a crystal clear picture and if broadcast in HD, will be in widescreen as well. Anyway, that idea will work, but not without drawbacks:
1. Head unit can't control it. This is the main reason to go with a Pioneer tuner is the HU can control it. With an HD tuner, you'd need to keep the remote for the tuner with you.
2. Physical size. My 7000TV is huge, but an HDTV tuner is even bigger since they're designed for home use.
3. Needs an inverter, which is another thing you'd need to find a place for.

Also, considering the video input is just composite NTSC, HDTV won't buy you much in picture quality compared to a good, strong, analog signal.

In Europe where I guess digital TV is either standard, or a heckuva lot more popular than it is here, they actually have digital TV tuners for car use:
http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_det ... y_id=25-36

Where I am, I only get PBS, NBC, and whatever UPN is now, in digital. All the other stations are still analog. :(