This brand is a household name for every car audio enthusiast. Mention the name Kenwood car stereo and they will know what you’re talking about.

Kenwood car stereos have produced high quality consumer electronics, test equipment and communication equipment since 1946. Kenwood car stereos primarily specialize in the design, engineering and manufacture of wireless communication infrastructure but are also renowned in the production consumer mobile and home entertainment systems. Kenwood car stereos are also committed to creating the finest quality components with state of the art technologies that has earned them a huge following in the audio products scene.

At present, Kenwood car stereos have a very impressive product lineup that would make anyone drool over, whether he is an audio enthusiast or not. For the regular Joe who isn’t really into technical stuff, and is just looking for something nice to put into his ride, Kenwood car stereos offer sleek designs that will surely satisfy anyones craving for aesthetic. Tech-freaks and geeks will also be impressed with the specs a Kenwood car stereo has.

A lot of Kenwood car stereo units nowadays include popup LCD panels for watching VCD/DVD movies. The Kenwood KVT-717DVD 7.0″ Wide, Fully Motorized In-dash Monitor DVD/WMA/MP3 Receiver is a good candidate for any situation.

- 7.0 inch Wide Color TFT Active Matrix Display

- Full-automatic Open/Close with slide and angle adjustments

- Interactive Touchscreen Control with OSD

- Audio Easy Control Mode while Playing Visual Source

- Selectable Wall Paper (6 Patterns)

- Installer/Backup Memory of Audio/Video Setup

- Maximum Output Power : 50W x 4 (MOSFET Power IC)

- 3 Preouts with 5V Pre-out Level

- 2 RCA AV Inputs / 1 RCA AV Output

- Video Input for Rear View Camera

- RGB Input for Navigation System

- System Q/ System E’s+

- DVD Menu Direct Touch screen Control

- MPEG 1/2 Video files (.mpg) and JPEG files (.jpg) Playback

- Dual Zone Source & Volume Control

- DVD±R/RW Compatible

- External Media Control ? iPod Ready

- Optional TV Tuner

For those who might not get what the hell all of these means, just imagine this: a really thin monitor panel that smoothly retracts and extends at the push of a remote, crystal clear movie and picture playback, all encased in a beautiful black matte finish polymer casing done with a space age design.

If all you want is a just a regular car stereo for playing CDs, listening to mp3s or the radio, Kenwood car stereo have a lot to choose from. A good head unit would be the KDC-MP928 AAC/WMA/MP3/ CD Receiver with External Media Control.

- Auto-Slide Detachable Faceplate

- Rotary Encoder & Jog Control Knob for Easy Operation

- 4096 Color OEL Display

- Display Customize Function

- Maximum Output Power : 50W x 4 (MOSFET Power IC)

- ACDrive (Advanced Codec Drive)

- AAC/WMA/MP3 Playback

- G-Analyzer (Graphic Motion Analyzer)

- Built-in DSP : DTA/System Q(4band P-EQ)/Digital E’s/SRS

WOW Digital Effect

- O.D.D. (Offset Dual Differential) D/A System for Sound Quality

- Installer/User/Backup Memory of Audio Setup

- SIRIUS Satellite Radio Ready

- HD Radio Ready

- External Media Control ? iPod Ready

- Dual Zone Source & Volume Control

- AUX Input

- Gold Plated 3 Preouts with 5V Pre-output Level

The Kenwood car stereo auto slide detachable faceplate allows you to take the faceplate (one which has all the buttons) in order to prevent theft by taking away the functionality of the unit left in the car.

Want to save some money? Ever wonder if you could do a car stereo installation yourself? Yes, you can do it yourself! Go ahead, spend that money on your hardware! Don’t spend it on labor. Besides, doing a car stereo installation yourself can be a very rewarding experience, not to mention you can learn a lot from it too. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing your creation in action, running smoothly and perfectly.

But be very careful, you really won’t want to damage your expensive hardware. Well, most car audio hardware are no-brainers to install, you’d find that most of the time the parts have specially shaped sockets and slots etc. and would only fit where it’s supposed to be installed. Still, it’s best to proceed methodically.

In a car stereo installation, you have to determine what kind of rig you’re going to put into your vehicle. If you’re a beginner, it’s best you do a car stereo installation if it’s just a simple system. You may want to leave the complicated stuff to the professionals, like installing delicate equipment like LCD panels, motorized parts etc. especially if it requires the creation of custom panels and such.

Head units are one of the easiest to do in a car stereo installation. Fortunately, most units follow the same size standards (DIN). In many cars, once the factory radio is removed the aftermarket radio will fit in the hole. In many other cars, a kit is needed if the factory hole is too big, or not deep enough. In some cases the dash has to be cut. Any car stereo store should have kits required for installation.

There are two types of mounting in a car stereo installation. ISO mounting is when the radio can be screwed to existing factory radio brackets, such as in most Japanese cars. Ring mounting is when an aftermarket radio comes with a metal ring that gets mounted to the factory radio hole or aftermarket kit via bendable tabs. In many cars, dash and trim rings have to be filed to enlarge the radio hole. Once the ring is installed, the radio slides in and is held by snaps. In most cases, special tools are required to remove the radio.

Speakers are very critical in a car stereo installation. No matter how expensive your speakers are, if they are not properly installed, the sound will not be up to par.

In a simple car stereo installation, you’ll probably be using speakers that fit into a factory location. Just make sure there are no gaps or holes. Sometimes building a wood or fiberglass baffle helps reduce holes and gives you much better sound. But always be careful when using power tools around speakers. Car stereo installation warranties usually don’t cover holes in speakers.

For unconventional speaker locations, sometimes metal has to be cut. You might want to leave this to the professionals, tools like plasma cutters and pneumatics drills are required. But if you’re going to insist, a pair of metal snips (left and right cut) will do.

A car stereo installation has to put up with vibrations and other noise sources in its environment. Even though it is impossible to eliminate these completely, there are products that will greatly decrease the noise and rattling, particularly on non-luxury cars. Liners, sprays and adhesive strips and even carpeting applied onto the panels can make a world of difference.

Pretty self-explanatory isn’t it? It’s a stereo system in a car, you say. Whoa, hold your horses, it’s not that simple. Although some people like to put home stereos in their cars and vans (out of dire need for some sounds), sometimes it just doesn’t work. Yeah, maybe before it could’ve worked just fine, all you needed was radio and a cassette player (or 8 tracks, for the inner dinosaur in you) so sure, lug those big box speakers into the back seat and you’ll be blaring down the highway. But nowadays there are things like cd players and mp3 players and your popup LCD panels and all that techie knickknack you’d think they’d like to build a home theater system right smack on the console of your van. If you don’t know anything about these things but would like to have some sounds in your car anyway, here are some things to know about a car stereo.

As mentioned above, at first units and speakers from home audio systems and professional markets were just simply installed into vehicles. However, they were not well suited to the extremes of temperature and vibration which are a normal part of the environment of an automobile. Car stereo enthusiasts were not satisfied with the sound quality of regular car sound systems, and with the advent of the CD player, they really had to start modifying some of these home stereos in order to work well in a car environment and voila!, now we have the modern car stereo.

If you have a new car, first hand bought, say from about 90 to present, chances are you already have a factory car stereo in your car. It means the car manufacturer already included a car stereo system in your car, unless specified in the car model but most often this is the case. Some car manufacturers make their own car stereos, like BMW which includes a pretty decent car stereo package head unit and speakers. It is a standard which comes with all their cars (which isn’t surprising considering that BMW is included in the league of luxury car manufacturers). Or like Mercedes Benz or Volkswagen, they use car stereo systems from a German audio manufacturer called Blaupunkt.

A standard car stereo (also called a head unit) usually includes an auto-reverse tape deck, a cd player and sometimes the optional changer a device which automatically changes the cd in play. On newer car models, the car stereo can also play mp3s and other digital audo file types like WMA and AAC, whether on a cd or a memory device which can be hooked up to the head unit.

The car stereo head unit is connected to several speakers. Older car models usually just had one speaker mounted underneath the dashboard, pointing through perforations towards the front windshield. The standard for car stereo nowadays is a pair of tweeters (used to bring out high treble) on the driver side/front passenger side dashboard, a pair of normal mid speakers on both doors, sometimes even the backseat passeger doors if it’s a large car and larger speakers capable of bringing out low ends at the back protion of the backseats.

Your car stereo is probably ok as it is, as car manufacturers ensure that the audio products that come with their cars can handle most driver’s listening demands. But if you think that what you have isn’t enough, you can always CUSTOMIZE.