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Basic ICE!

Will a Car CD receiver bought from the US work properly over here? I'm thinking of the connectors and the thing that detects what radio station you are on and displays BBC 1 or whatever..?

Gotta get one for my g/f for her birthday.. to be able to play mp3's is about the only real spec but she'll want it to look nice..

Cheapest I found is a Panasonic -

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@ £112.94 but it lookscrap.

There's a Kenwood one at £129.99 -

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The interfacelooks a bit "fussy" though and I don't think she'll like that. But was looking at a shop in the states you can something like this:
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would likely work out about the same price but they cost about £150over here.

Thing is, will it work?

Ta

Bigus

Reply to
Bigus
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It will work fine, but you need to be carefull with the fm tuner, US banding is a little different than over here, so you may get radio 1 at 99.7 instead of 99.5 etc

Otherwise it should be the same, I think they use the same ISO style connectors as we do

Ron

Reply to
Ronny

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Thats 119 and its in the UK

I dont like that sony one, but thats just my opinion, unless your spending big money on a headunit 300+ get it from the uk, if it goes wrong you can send it back, dont forget also you may get stung for import duty and VAT.

Ron

Reply to
Ronny

IIRC, they don't have the same RDS. Could be wrong, though.

Reply to
Dave Plowman

I think, apart from in small places, they don't have RDS at all.

Reply to
MeatballTurbo

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There's teh Sony one on Ebay for £125:

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Looking at it, though, it appears to be just a control unit for a CD changer and hasn't got a CD in it itself, so that's no good.. might have to be that Kenwood after all.

Thanks

Bigus

Reply to
Bigus

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Ahhh, it has:

"Fold-Down Faceplate: This unit is equipped with a manual fold-down faceplate. When you press the Open button, the faceplate flips down, revealing the CD slot and the CD eject button. The faceplate is removable only when it is in the down position."

Hmmmmmm

Bigus

Reply to
Bigus

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F.me - £35 delivery they want on the Sony!!! Only £7 for the Kenwood..

Bigus

Reply to
Bigus

They seemed to have it pretty much everywhere in California a couple of months ago - at least in those bits where they had any radio stations at all... I have no idea whether they use the same standard as us tho.

Andy

Reply to
Andrew Kirby

DONT get a USA tuner unless it has an option to switch to UK specs. The FM band in the US has a totally different pre-emphasis compared to the UK and strange channel spacings that may render the tuner useless in the UK.

Ed

Reply to
Ed

No.

Connectors and stuff are fine. CD bit is fine. FM/RDS is not - their RDS is different, and they have different frequency hops.

Remember to add on plenty of shipping-cost to the USA price, and then 17.5% VAT on top, and then 2.5% import duty on top of that. Final price will be very similar to here, if not more !

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will sell youan identical Sony CDX MP40 for £125 - you obviously didn't look very hard :)

Reply to
Nom

No.

Connectors and stuff are fine. CD bit is fine. FM/RDS is not - their RDS is different, and they have different frequency hops.

Remember to add on plenty of shipping-cost to the USA price, and then 17.5% VAT on top, and then 2.5% import duty on top of that. Final price will be very similar to here, if not more !

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will sell youan identical Sony CDX MP40 for £125 - you obviously didn't look very hard :)

Reply to
Nom

Pffft.. I searched for ages but didn't come across that supplier and nowt cheaper than about £149. Know any other places? :)

Bigus

Reply to
Bigus

MCS are the cheapest around. I've used em many times in the past - excellent service. They really need a better web-site though :)

Reply to
Nom

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125 + 10 for next day delivery. I've used themtwice.

-- Chet

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Reply to
Chet

Your local car audio place (including Halfords) will sell you an adaptor for your GFs car (I needed one for my Pug 405 - it was about a tenner IIRC), or a set of bare-lead ISO sockets that you can fit to it (if it's REALLY wierd).

Reply to
Nom

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