this is the 2nd time the stock unit cd player crapped out on me. i could keep it and just use my ipod.. but now im considering gettin an aftermarket unit with navi and a touch screen. got any suggestions?

 

get the navi

 

Alpine IVA-W505 with Blackbird PMD-B200.

 

I'm on my fourth head unit, this time the CD player still works, but the LED display that shows CD tracks and radio stations isn't working, so I'm going the aftermarket route as well, since my warranty ended and I'm not paying several hundred dollars to get this piece of junk fixed. (My dealer wants $5.5k for a new one).

I think I'll go the Avic-Z2 route because of the HDD based nav (DVD is slow), the ipod interface, and the fact that I can get an interface module to preserve my steering wheel controls.

The alpine units are nice, but you have to do a hack to get the steering wheel controls to work; you buy this module from PAC which pretends it's an IR remote and you glue a little IR emitter over the remote control sensor - which is kind of nasty, I want a clean appearance.

 

I'm sort of picky about visual things, having a background in computer graphics, and the Alpine approach annoys me. The Blackbird NAV does not display a higher resolution picture when you dock it in the IVA head units, its small image is just stretched to fill out the IVA screen, and looks blurry and slightly pixellated. To be fair, I've only seen the older version, and I'm not sure if the new version of the blackbird/head unit combo behaves this way, but maybe somebody who has one can chime in.