JVC KD-BT1 – Radio / CD / MP3 player / digital player – EXAD – Full-DIN – in-dash – 50 Watts x 4

5 Comments

1. Parul Jain says:

   May 23, 2010 at 10:45 pm

   I replaced the Blaupunkt San Jose receiver in my Honda Accord 2000 4 door sedan (4 speakers) with JVC KD-BT1 on June 16, 2007. I also added SIR-JVC1, the tuner for Sirius satellite radio.

   KD-BT1 comes with an external microphone for bluetooth functionality. You can mount it either behind the steering wheel, or on the visor. I decided to mount it on the visor because that is where most factory installed systems have their microphones. I was able to pair my Verizon RAZR V3C phone with KD-BT1 without any issues. KD-BT1 also automatically transferred the entire address book from my phone. I was able to make outgoing calls by dialing numbers, selecting an entry from address book, and redialing. However, KD-BT1 allows “pass-through” to the phone so that I was able to use voice command features of the RAZR. That is my preferred way for calling people. The called party did not have any complaints about sound quality even when I was driving at highway speeds. I was surprised because my relatively old car gets pretty noisy at those speeds! Some reviewers on the Internet complained that the called party heard an echo of their voice, but I have made around 10 calls so far and the called parties did not encounter this problem. Incoming calls are handled well by the KD-BT1 as well. Any active audio source is automatically muted, caller ID displayed, and if there is a matching entry in the address book, the name from that entry is displayed. Overall, I think the bluetooth functionality is better than factory installed systems in BMW 5 series 2006, Acura TL 2006, and Lexus GS 2006, which I have personally experienced.

   The USB interface works great too. I do not have a very large USB flash drive or hard drive, but I tested with a 512 MB flash drive and it worked flawlessly. I also have a SanDisk 1GB player loaded with DRM WMA music purchased from MSN, Walmart etc. I plugged that in to the USB port and KD-BT1 took over the player controls and played DRM WMA flawlessly! This was very exciting because I have a huge library of DRM WMA songs!

   The Sirius radio worked without any issues. It is easy to surf channels or jump to your favorite channels.

   I only wish they could have made the menu system a little more user friendly. It takes a while to get used to it, but once you do it works fine.

   I do not think there is any other car stereo out there with so many features and sources for this price! Highly recommended!
2. Jay in PHX says:

   May 24, 2010 at 1:00 am

   I am extremely happy with this stereo so far. I searched around looking at other Bluetooth-capable receivers and this one had the best features for the price, hands-down.

   The menu system does take some getting used to, but once you spend a little time setting it up the way you want it, you shouldn’t need to be messing too much with the many various settings – and there are a LOT of them to customize the way it behaves.

   While not a true multi-color display, it is settable for different colors for each input if you want, or you can have it always on one color setting. There are two fonts to choose from, one regular and one bold. A cool feature is the ability for it to automatically switch from positive to negative display based on what time of day it is. JVC could though have utilized display area a little better – once I’ve selected USB input for example, I don’t need the left 1/4th of the display to always tell me I’m on USB source. Also, Caller-ID display could use to be larger on the screen, but it is functional.

   USB input is handled via a decent length cable out the back of the unit – I had more than enough cable to route the USB adapter into my glovebox up from underneath and behind. And USB functionality is actually BETTER than advertised! JVC’s specs on their website say it handles up to a 10GB device – however I plugged in a 20GB laptop drive in an enclosure, loaded up with over 15GB of files and it works PERFECTLY – the stereo powers the drive and I’ve had zero problems with it. And the drive remembers where it was, even mid-track when powered off/on.

   CD Playback works great, and MP3-CDs play pretty much the same way as USB input works. Another nice touch – the unit read CD-TEXT information on a newer regular audio CD I tried, and it displayed the song names instead of just “Track 01.” One other small thing though, removing and re-attaching the faceplate is a little tricky.

   Overall the performance so far and incredible features far outweigh the few criticisms I have for this receiver – I would definitely recommend it to others.
3. vertigo_2_20 says:

   May 24, 2010 at 1:22 am

   I’ve been using this radio now for about 9 months. I got it for about $250, and to get full Bluetooth capability and USB support at that price it’s hard to complain. However, there are a few things people should be aware of before purchasing. If I were to do it again, I’m not sure I would make the same choice; I would strongly consider spending a little more money and getting something better.

   Here are my dislikes about this radio:

   1) My #1 complaint: Poor USB support. Instead of providing the music in a directory (dir) tree structure, it simply takes all the subdirs and puts them into the root dir. I got a 60GB drive to use with it, but anything more than a couple gigs (if that) gets too difficult to sift through and find what you’re looking for. JVC claims there is no problem and shows no intent to try and improve on the design and perhaps release a firmware update, showing a lack of support.
   
   2) There is an annoying echo for people on the other end that seems to come and go, and it is sometimes difficult for them to hear me. The mic is positioned in my instrument panel directly in front of me.
   
   3) When using the Bluetooth to talk on the phone, it doesn’t transfer the call to the phone when you shut the car off. If you’re at your destination, you either need to keep the car running, wasting gas, to finish your conversation, or you need to hang up on the person and call them back. This, however, might be common to all Bluetooth radios.
   
   4) There is no pause. I find this annoying and cheap, and common to many JVC radios.
   
   5) Non-intuitive menus, particularly when configuring custom EQs. For example, even if you select User 2, after you make changes to it, you have to tell it to save it as User 2, otherwise it will overwrite User 1. I did this many times before figuring out what it was doing, and still did it a couple times afterward by mistake. If you select User 2, it should save any changes you make to User 2. That’s just common sense.
   
   6) These are not complaints, more suggestions to JVC (or any other company) in the hopes they keep an eye on these reviews. First, instead of the simple time set dimmer functionality, why not build a calendar into the radio and allow it to be used to coordinate auto-adjustments to the dimmer times as the months pass, to adjust to the changing sunrise/set times throughout the year. Even if it adjusted once a month it would be a substantial improvement. Also, since USB drives can be used with the radio, why not provide a feature to save all the settings and custom EQs to the drive, so if power is lost it is easy to restore the radio to the user’s settings.

   All in all, this is a good radio, and if you’re on a budget it will do nicely, providing many features typically only found in higher priced units. I don’t want people to think based on my review that this is a terrible product, because it is not. I just want people to be fully aware of what I consider to be its major downfalls, so they can make a more educated decision.
4. David Naylor says:

   May 24, 2010 at 1:50 am

   I bought the KD-BT1 from Crutchfield. I installed it myself and everything went great. I was easily able to pair it with my Samsung Juke to stream audio as well as have the phone functionality. Once I turned the radio off is when my pairing problems showed up. When I would turn the radio back on, it would pair with my phone, but only for the audio. The Bluetooth Phone source was showing that nothing was conncected to it. At the same time the Bluetooth Audio source was successfully streaming/controlling music off of my phone. I tried to manually connect the phone from the radio interface, only to have it disconnect 1 second after it says it is connected. I emailed JVC and never received an email back. I just got off the phone with them and there only suggestion was to keep trying to re-pair my phone, over and over again. When I told him that I have tried that time and time again, he said that was the only thing he had.

   Every once in a while I would turn on my car and my phone would pair correctly. When this happens, the radio is great. I haven’t mounted the external microphone yet, but it seem to work well wherever I place it in the car. The audio streaming works like a champ, however make sure you hit stop before turning off the car because your phone will keep playing through its own speaker.

   UPDATE**** It turns out that my cell phone had faulty bluetooth after all. I got it replaced and now it works perfectly with the KD-BT1.
5. Mike Herbst says:

   May 24, 2010 at 3:37 am

   Overall, the KD-BT1 has a great mix of features. The Built-In Bluetooth works fantastically well with my Blackberry Pearl, and with the addition of the KS-PD100 iPod adaptor, I can now play music via my phone, my iPod, or via flash drive.

   What absolutely boggles my mind, however, is that the radio doesn’t support RDS/PTY decoding. (aka the Radio Data System that shows radio station data such as station ID, track and artists names, etc.) This is such basic functionality that even the stock head unit I replaced from my 2002 car had it. This isn’t the end of the world, since the BT1 lets you name radio stations manually, but it means I won’t be able to see real-time track info and the other helpful text scrolls that my local radio stations send out.

   Sadly, this is a 2007 model from JVC, which means its also not compatible with the KT-HD300 HD-Radio adapter. Oh well, I’ve gotten by on analog radio and a pantload of mp3s thus far, I guess I’ll survive without HD radio.

   My only other knock against the BT1 is that (so far) I’ve yet to find a display setting that is easy to see in bright daylight. My car has a permanent tinted glass moonroof with no fully opaque cover, which means during the day there is always a LOT of light in the cabin. There’s no brightness adjustment for the display, only color (RGB sliders) and contrast. The upside is that at least the nighttime illumination matches the oddball red/amber lighting scheme in my car.