Belkin TuneCommand AV
Starting at: $129.95
CNET Editors' Review
CNET Editors' Rating
- Reviewed by: David Carnoy
- Released on:
- Reviewed on:
- Updated on:
The good: The Belkin TuneCommand AV allows you to play audio, video, and photos stored on your iPod through your home-theater system while charging your iPod. We also appreciated the S-Video connection for superior video output and that you can control your system from as much as 120 feet away with the included remote.
The bad: The remote has limited functionality, the iPod menus aren't duplicated on the TV screen, and there's no USB pass-through port for connecting the dock to your computer.
The bottom line: The Belkin TuneCommand AV offers nearly identical features to Apple's iPod AV connection kit but costs $30 less, making it a better bargain for people who watch a lot of iPod video on their TVs.
The TuneCommand AV works with 4G, Photo, Nano, and Mini iPods for audio and photos, but to display video, you'll obviously need a video-enabled iPod--either the original 5G version or the recent upgrade. The TuneCommand AV package includes an iPod dock base station, an A/V cable (three feet long), and a small wireless (RF) remote control. You also get four interchangeable trays to snugly fit various types of iPods in the dock, as well as a lanyard and a belt clip so you can wear your remote around the house, if you're the type that does that sort of thing.
As far as connectivity goes, you have several choices. The simplest option is to attach the included A/V cable to the variable volume A/V output on the back of the dock. One side of the cable--the side that plugs into the dock--looks like your standard headphone jack, while the other side looks like your standard red, white, and yellow composite audio/video jacks. The advantage to this setup is that you can control the volume using Belkin's little white remote, which controls your iPod from as far away as 120 feet. The downside is that you're not getting the best video connection; for that, you'll need to provide your own S-Video cable.
For the majority of our tests, we connected the TuneCommand AV to a TV with an S-Video cable and opted for the fixed stereo line-out route using standard red-and-white RCA audio cables (also not included). This afforded us the best picture quality, but we did have to control the volume with the TV's remote (if you connect the audio to your A/V receiver's inputs, you'd use the A/V receiver's remote to adjust the volume).
All in all, we had pretty decent results. Using the Neuros MPEG-4 Recorder 2 Plus, we'd recorded a few episodes of The Office at Fine quality, and while they looked a little soft on our wide-screen, 30-inch, direct-view HDTV, they were quite watchable. As you might expect, the higher the resolution and better the quality of videos you have stored on your iPod, the better the image you'll get on your TV. The same goes for photos.
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Hunkered down in New York City, Executive Editor David Carnoy covers the gamut of gadgets and writes his Fully Equipped column, which carries the tag line "The electronics you lust for." He's also the author of "Knife Music," a novel that's available at Amazon, bn.com, and as a Kindle, iBooks, or Nook e-book.
User Reviews
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"Unreliable" By ericvisa
Pros: It charges the iPod
Cons: Works once every 10 attempts and when it does, the response time is way too slow!
Summary: I recently purchased this Belkin product in the hopes that I could control my iPod (which sits in my office on one end of the apartment connected to the main sound system serving the entire house hold) from the rest of the aprtment. I didn't need much control since ... Expand full review
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Specifications
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- Remote control type: Player remote control
- Remote control technology: Radio