Focal Car Audio

Amazing for the price, September 29, 2011

So this was an instant buy for me because I was planning on driving up to Orlando from Miami with 2 kids. I was not going to have that “are we there yet?” questiong haunting me for 4 hours, thus why I purchased and installed these units. The went in to my Mercedes GL-450 (factory units in the thousands.) The one big thing is that the headrest sits a little bit further back then the factory installed headrest. When I lean my head back my eyes stare right above the sun visor and headliner. Also, my car comes factory equipped with active head restraints. If I was to get rear ended, my original headrest would shoot 1-2 inches forward catching my head from whipping back preventing whiplash and neck injury. I really don’t care about that. I have been numerous accidents in cars withOUT that safety feature and I’m still here. I unplugged original headrest from the SRS cable and when I finish installing new LCD headrest and turned the car on SRS light turned on and dash told me head-restrain malfunctions. In my opinion these LCD headrest are the best safety feature in my car. I don’t have to look back at the kids when they are fighting (2boys) which mean I keep my eyes on the road decreasing my chance of crashing.

Installation:
It was fairly easy to install if you have some experience with A/V and understand the fundamentals of video in and video out or have some common sense. If you don’t you can search for some videos online with tutorials on installing these things. I did a simple search to figure out how to remove back part of the seat. Simple 2 screws and pull. The hardest part of the installation was getting the power source. It includes a cigar light power adapter, but the units came with nothing to plug that into. I wasn’t planning on using it anyway, but just a note. I bought 18gauge speaker wire. Stripped them ran them under center console (not dismantling just pushing the wire under the plastic) to the front. Then took 2 more screws off with some investigation and pulled out the cigar socket. First attempt blew a car fuse because the other side of the speaker cable was already stripped and the chassis/body of is negative and the positive cable was touching the seat rail. Replaced fused taped positive side of speaker cable and attached wires to the back of the socket with nothing more than wires twist and some electrical tape strategically placed.

If you have one DVD you can play that DVD on both units or just one your choice. It has 2 modes: DVD and AV1. Your suppose to plug the output of headrest1 into the input of headrest 2 and visa-versa. that way either one of them can share the DVD they are playing by leaving one of them in mode DVD and the other in mode AV. I got a bit more fancy. I did that, but didn’t do the visa-versa. In other words. I made one the Main unit and the other the slave. the passenger headrest is the Main unit. So if one of my kids wants to watch the same DVD they can ONLY play it from Master headrest(passenger seat). The other one can play it’s own DVD or watch the same one Master is playing. If the Passenger want to see the DVD the driver side is playing it CANT be done under my setup. Reason I did it this way is because this free’s up the only Input that the Passenger side unit has. Why? would I want the free? Well I bought ‘Audio/video cable out’ for my iPhone4. so I can stream videos from my iPhone to the headrest. using a video stream service app. ONE of my kids were able to watch internet streamed videos while on the road. Which brings me the reason I took out 1 star. The output of any TV should ALWAYS be ‘outputting’ the signal that is being seen. This unit only activated output on DVD mode. To watch internet movies you have to be in AV mode. AV mode should then repeat the input mode too the output mode but it does NOT. So I have to buy a hub to split the signals thus complicating this installation in the future. For now the oldest has internet video and the youngest has no idea what that is.

Pros:
-Kept kids quiet 95% of the time.
-You can install them yourself with some research
-pleater matches the Mercedes leather fairly well. You CAN notice the difference, but only if your analyzing.
-has zipper to cover up the LCD’s to deter criminals from breaking in.
-comes with decent IR headsets.
-come with games. (never tried but I’m sure they are horrible compared to the kids current gaming systems)
-plays burned movies and has sd card reader (havent tried sd reader)

Cons:
-SRS light for some cars only
-No output signal when in AV mode.
-Poles aren’t of that great and make headrest sit too back. Going to bend them in near future.

Results. Much better units out there, but for the price this one ROCKS.
WIll update if anything goes wrong. So far it’s been a month of the kids abuse and it still works.

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