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Scott in State College Pennsylvania wants to upgrade his car radio:
I have a question about automotive stereo systems. I have a 2007 Dodge Charger. It has a 6 CD changer in it now. It has a pretty good size area where the radio is. I’m thinking about getting a radio head unit that pops out with a video screen or has a video screen built-in, that has GPS and maybe my passengers could watch a movie or something. If you could help me, I’d appreciate it.
Scott, you’ll have plenty of options for car radios with navigation, but you may have to look a little harder to find radios that advertise video playback.
It’s usually not legal to have video playing while you’re driving, having said that, a lot of radios will let you play video while the car is in park and if you happen to find someone willing to install a switch that will trick your radio into thinking the car is in park, well, the radio won’t know any better.
It’s usually not legal to have video playing while you’re driving
Now, if you want to cheap options, for about $170 you can buy a Pyle PLDNB78i, it does come with navigation and bluetooth and it is double DIN, which means it a large unit, so it’s likely to fit that “good size area” in your Charger.
For slightly more, about $190 you could buy a Pioneer, but the name brand will cost you the GPS navigation. Pioneer does have GPS enabled models that you could get, but all of the ones we were able to find were north of $500.
In between those, you may like a Boss BV9386NV with navigation and a CD/DVD player for $279.
Given the prices though, you may be better served by your smartphone if you’re not too bothered by having to put it in a mount. These radios will all do less and they’re not cheap.
Joshua in Sparta, Tennessee listens on SuperTalk WTN 99.7 asked:
I lost a battle with my Samsung Galaxy S4 phone, I crushed it up against the wall so the screen is black but I can still receive phone calls– the screen is shot otherwise. I was wondering if you thought it was worth fixing? As well as my Sanyo television, the HDMI plug in the back is starting to cause trouble. It’s probably a 9-year old television, I was wondering if that would be worth repairing?
We’re extremely sorry to hear about your recent troubles with electronics! Be gentle with them. Tech is your friend! That must really cause plenty of inconveniences, especially the way you’re limited to not being able to make phone calls on your own. Just being forced to take calls from telemarketers and bill collectors must be a nightmare!
Now, your best bet is definitely not to get another phone as it will likely be way more costly than just repairing this one, and to do so, you will probably need to visit a local repair shop and have them take a look at your phone. Prices will vary depending on the issue and what the particular repair shop charges– but it seems like that would help, because you’re still able to receive calls, meaning your phone is not entirely dead and could likely — hopefully — be fixed.
The more tedious but pocket-friendly solution is to order a repair kit for your phone
The more tedious but pocket-friendly solution is to order a repair kit for your phone, finding good instructions and doing it yourself. It may sound difficult, but plenty of people — including me — have been able to save money by doing this. Our intern had an issue previously with a broken phone screen and before paying $100 to a repair shop to fix it, his father was able to order a repair kit on Amazon that came with instructions and after it arrived– it was fixed within an hour. He thinks that if his father, was able to fix a phone, just about anyone could do it too!
About your TV, you’re probably better off not fixing the port, a 9 year old TV is probably not worth an awful lot today. If you have another working HDMI port, you could buy an HDMI switcher and just use that to plug in whatever was connected to the dead port. We’ve seen estimates of about $150 to replace a broken HDMI port, a switch can cost you as little as $5.