c6crazy

Checked with an audio dealer that sells Valor and he says that it has been a great unit for the price - no return or broken units. He did say that it was not a good unit if you were going to run separate amps as that the outputs were of poor quality - use internal amp and everything is OK. For the money you can't go wrong

Jistari

Good, cause Im going crazy with this Too many types of processors, hard drvives, video options, and interfacing problems for my taste with the carcomputer idea.
And most of the regular flip out head units either have dvd nav, bad menues or a gazzilion adapters that you have to buy (and some of the better ones dont seem to accept XM), so more and more the Valor is looking like a good solution

Thank you for taking the time to comment.

Jistari

Arrrg You're killing me Jay

I dont think I need the Core2Duo, but do understand what you're saying about the power (both ways, the proscessing and the available electrical power).

I was discussing it with my brother last night. When he said that a laptop hard drive will not survive long in the NE USA in a vehicle. I countered with my suspicion that many many public safety vehicles have MTD displays and computers (and must have HD's in them), he then reminded me that his first job was researching hard drive tech as an engeneer with IBM 20 yrs ago, his second job was desigining hard drives, and his third job was selling hard drives on a regional level :-) he then went into the problems associated with shock damping, cold environment operation and the effects of hot environmental conditions on ahrd drives in general. What could I say ?

I told him about the site, and that thousands of people have em, but bleh . . .got me thinking. I even looked at solid state drives, a little too pricey at this point.

And while I know that reading the boards is misleading in that you only see the poeple who post, which tend to be the people who are having problems making something work or fixing something that broke, but I cant get a clear picture of how I would get all the components I want to play nice together in the sandbox.

Love the Xenarc MDT 7000 head, hate the menues on it for FM and CD/DVD, and no wallpaper. Dont think I can get those functions driven from a front end. Cant find a screenshot of what XM is going to look like in the front end if I drive it with the XM adapter.

The only thing I was looking for in the PC route was the ability to make it look and work exactly like I wanted it to, and to be able to pull up to a hotspot and get on the web to check something. Not too confident I can get it all to work the way I want it to.

SO the idea is not dead, but as stated above, Im leaning towards giving up the web access and going with the Valor.

If I do go with a PC it will probably be : The Xenarc MDT 7000 display, either a 2Ghz C7 Via (or a P4 Mobile), either on board graphics or only if necessary a seperate card), at least a 400 Mhz bus, 1 Gig of memory, a decent (Opus?) PS, the GS BU 353 GPS, iGuidance Nav, a WiFi adapter, and cant recall the Blue Tooth adapter at this point, probably with Streetdeck or Roadrunner as the front end.

Im letting it go for a while, gonna try and stay away from the sites for a while, let what Ive read sink in a while before I make a decision.

CircledWagons

I found several listings on Ebay, everything is available on Ebay. If this link does not show just search for Valor Multimedia. There may or may not be anything for sale by individuals, those I found were at the bottom of the page.

This system has everything you need and more, I just wonder about the quality.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search...dia&category0=

- Craig

Jistari

Thanks Circled. I had found a distributor.
In the interim, I decided to just keep the stock head unit and install a full featured car PC
Going to move the heat/ac controls down to the ashtray, put in a fold out 7" display and run NAV, XM, Mp3 out of the PC (mounted either in the back or behind the pass seat) into the Aux on the HU. Ill aslo have Bluetooth and built in Wi-fi that way.
Should be fun, will have a lotta options to play with that way

CircledWagons

Take some pics so I can see how to do mine -

- Craig

crease-guard

Jistari, I know what you mean about the HD issue. Laptop drives aren't likely to last. That's why I bought an automotive grade HD. They do last, just ask anyone with an AVIC Z1 or Z2 in their car. I live in Texas and there aren't many places in the US that get hotter than Texas and my AVIC is doing just fine. You can't buy any old HD, you need an automotive grade, and there are only a few that make them like that.

Going the car PC route is not for the faint of heart. Most of what I have read requires a great deal of tweaking. You need to be comfortable with trouble shooting and building the hardware and taking it apart. For me, that's part of the challenge. Also being able to tweak and set things up just the way I like is also the draw.

Let us know which way you decide to go. Myself, still looking for speakers and the extra funds to purchase the other goodies. Plus, I need to finish up another project so I can start the install in the garage.

I'm also thinking about going behind the passenger seat but wonder how much that would limit the seat going back and if someone starts pushing back too far, would it damage the seat/motor/PC? Might need to put a limit switch on the seat.

Jay

Jistari

Not sure, but I think the seat just stops when it hits the end of the track now, so stopping it a little sooner shouldnt put any more strain on the motor.

Have all the parts now <big evil grin>, just putting it together on the bench and installing all the software/music so I dont have to do it while it's in the car.

Went with a Core Duo system from MCS (<== they have been good so far, good customer service, ask for Chris), 2 gigs of ram, 40 gig ee25 Series Seagate HD, Xenarc 700 IDT fold out VGA/AV, Wireless and Bluetooth built in to the computer, iGuidance4 NAV, GlobalStat BU 353 GPS and I'll use my existing XM Commander.

Pretty sure it will all wire up right to the Line in on the computer, which will go to the AUX in on the stock head unit then out to the Bose amps.

I bought Centrafuse as the front end (so I would have something that worked from the start) but I'm also gonna get around to putting RoadRunner on there just to have something more configurable.

When I do get around to the install I'll post pics.

bbrb

New member of the forum- i came across this thread- I just installed a Signature 87N made by Valor and similar to the 720w. It has lots of feature for the price. A few quirks but I am pleased with it ( doesn't have RDS and dosen't dim at night). I bought on the recommendations of the owner and installer at the audio shop I went to . Both have Valor units in their own cars. I looked around abit as well. I believe these units are practically identical to those "made" by dual.