PressPhotosUK Star Rating Very Good but not perfect.

We have within the last few days installed a Pioneer AVIC900HVT complete with the Pioneer hideaway TV Tuner, Multistack CD player, with the Pioneer AVH-P6500DVD head unit. As the Jeep Grand Cherokee that we installed it in, was already equipped with the Infinity Gold Amplified Stereo set-up, we didn't bother replacing the under-seat amplifier or the factory fitted speaker units, as they are more than capable of handling the 50w RMS per channel that the Pioneer is kicking out. The first thing is that there are a lot of boxes and cables to install, fortunately there is quite a bit of room in the dashboard, to accommodate it.

In the dashboard is the AV DVD Head unit , GPS receiver unit, hideaway TV tuner, along with the harness adaptor a Nokia Hands free Car phone install as well as several miles of cabling including the front TV aerial, the rear aerial is installed on the rear passenger window. The aperture for the Head unit in the Grand Cherokee is a non-standard size (fortunately) as it would have been even more of a nightmare to install in a standard DIN Opening.

So an Adaptor plate was required, fortunately available off the shelf, as there are a number of Grand's in the country. The Mobile phone bracket is secured using a Dashmount Bracket designed specifically for the Grand Cherokee, however I wish that it were possible to install the phone on the other side of the head unit nearer the steering wheel. The installation was easy enough, but there are a number of glitches that need sorting out. First the mobile phone cannot be used when the ignition is off, as the speakers that it plays through require the amplifier to be active.

Also when making calls or receiving messages you don't get any message tones or keypad sounds, I think that this is because the mute function only cuts in after the call initiated, or when it recognises an incoming call. This makes it a pain if you can't get a signal (as can still happen in parts of Surrey and Sussex) you may not realise that you have an answer phone message, unless you remember to check the display.

I may have see if I can reactivate the Answer phone recall that I used to have on Vodafone (I can't recall if Orange do it). The screen quality of the screen in the head unit is very impressive, especially when watching DVD's, and it seems to be very resistant to greasy finger prints, the buttons are a little fiddly, but then most of the time you will be using the onscreen functions.

The screen slides in and out of the head unit with a little noise, but it's nice mechanical noise, rather than a sound of plastic cog teeth grinding and once in place holds its position well, and the angle is adjusted via a rocker switch on the front fascia.

The DVD player is of excellent quality and plays CDs and DVD equally well, the only disappointment is it doesn't support Music DVDs (which would mean that you could carry 4.7gb of mp3 audio files on a single disk, around 1200 tracks).

The system also doesn't have an automatic noise sensor, enabling the automatic change of volume, as road noise increases. Talking of volume, the system does have a method of adjusting the source volume of each individual component (which frankly it needs as listening to a DVD, and then switching over to radio will deafen you.)

The system software is a little flaky with the same button on different screens turning up in different places. I haven't really sat down and programmed the system yet, but there appear to be a couple of glaring omissions (however I may have missed them in the manual) You don't appear to rename the station presets to something more meaningful than "Preset 1, Preset 2".

But the last two mornings the system has had to be reset, which wipes out the preset memories, as the voice system for the Navigation package will not play, you get the muting for the AV source, but no voice, bloody frustrating. Further examination reveals no apparent reason for the lack of voice when first started up, one possible thought is that the cold weather may cause some condensation inside the DVD unit installed in the boot of the car, and until it warms up and clears the condensation it will not operate.

This morning I waited for 20 minutes or so and it appeared to clear the error. More investigation is required. But at £3000 this situation is not acceptable. The Satellite Navigation is faultless, I have used it four days on the trot, running into London, and whilst in some areas I know a better route than the navigation software, its ability to recalculate on the fly, and the accuracy of the system has impressed me greatly. On a job today it recalculated the journey in less than a second, after I deliberately missed a turn.

There have been a couple of times when the description of a junction is not quite right, but the illustration (in Drivers View Mode) is spot on. The software interface is pretty good, although I would prefer the touch screen keyboard to be of the QWERTY type rather than the ABCD type that they have. The most annoying part of the Sat Nav is that once you have programmed a journey you cannot cancel it, if half way to a destination you change your mind, you actually have to program a new destination to replace the original, otherwise it squawks and continues to recalculate routes to place that you no longer wish to go to. How annoying is that; I'll tell you Fecking annoying.

Pioneer have recently announced a new iPod component for this system (and others) which means that you can have your iPod plugged in (and hidden away in a glove box) and control the functions from the on screen menus. If the menus are as flaky as the some of the other components, it may not be a triumph of design over function but I would know that at least it would work. Unfortunately I can't see it being as slick as the Alpine equivalent.