Out with the old, in with the new

May 03, 2021, 07:35:11 pm

When we bought our 2003 U320, I went through it and thought some of the gear could use some updating. Last week I got a bit more indepth and decided to basically remove almost everything in the audio/visual department.

In the first cabinet is a Bose AV3-2-1 media center is circa 2001. The DVD drawer didn't work, but it sounded ok. It was also connected to the output of the TV and VCR/DVD combo. Last weekend we watched a DVD and I was unimpressed with the video quality to say the least. Since the Bose DVD drawer was INOP, I used the DVD player instead. Looking at it later, its output is HDMI, but only 480p. Not sure how old that guy is, but it's a dinosaur in electronics terms.

I removed the Bose unit, disassembled it and fixed the DVD drawer. We'll likely never use it, but I'd rather have it work than not. Video output is composite only, so I didn't even bother to connect it to the TV.

In the other cabinet was a VCR/DVD player, DirecTV receiver, Nomad satellite dish alignment device and a Winneguard coaxial cable "switcher". We will never use the satellite system, and if we did, we'd upgrade to a tracking system anyway. This old antiquated stuff has got to go. We'll also likely never use the cable stuff either, so that's all outta there too.

I opened up the front cabinets, coiled up the wires we would not be using, and cleaned up the installation. I then installed a new Sony Blu Ray / DVD player with an audio extractor to send audio to the Bose AV3-2-1 system. Now the picture looks suprisingly good on the older Sony 32" TV in the overhead.

In another cabinet I found an Alpine navigation unit from 2001 also. Seriously outdated, this was removed. There was also an Alpine CD changer that didn't appear to be connected to anything, hidden in the lower console...yup, that went too!

Next was to replace the 2000 Ford Explorer factory AM/FM/CASSETTE player with something from this decade.

I decided on a JVC KW-M750BT, which has a 6.8" touchscreen, AM/FM, Bluetooth, Android Auto and is SiriusXM capable. I also added the SiriusXM receiver. Installing this proved to be a bit more work than installing in a car as the dash is completely different. I had to fab up some mounting brackets from some 1.5" aluminum angle. Came out pretty good though.