Satellite Radio - Kenwood DT-7000S |
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Kenwood DT-7000S
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DT-7000S - Sirius Satellite Receiver |
The sleek Kenwood DT-7000S brings Sirius satellite radio to your
home and connects directly to your stereo system--whether that be a
receiver, a shelf system, or a pair of powered speakers. The
DT-7000S features a 4-line blue-on-black dot matrix display with
dimming control, up to 80 station presets, and a 24-song memory.
Note that the DT-7000S requires a Sirius home antenna in order to
receive satellite radio signals.
You can store a total of 80 presets in 4 banks (20 presets each),
as well as store song title and artist name for 24 songs for easy
recall later. Using the Song Seek feature, an alert appears on the
DT-7000S display when a saved song is playing on another station
(also called a stream). The display shows a read-out of channel
number, name, category, preset bank and number, artist, and song
title. You can control the DT-7000S via the supplied remote control,
or use the two jog dials on the front of the device to scroll
through either individual channels or Sirius radio categories (such
as rock, jazz, sports, or news). The DT-7000S offers both RCA
composite A/V and optical digital audio output.
Sirius satellite radio is a subscription service that provides up
to 100 channels of programming, from digital-quality music to news,
talk, and sports. It is available only in the lower 48 states--not
available in Alaska, Hawaii, or U.S. territories.
Sirius Kenwood Receiver DT7000s click for larger view |
Kenwood --DT-7000S click for larger view |
Product Description Kenwood SIRIUS Tuner |
Do you need to get satellite radio in the house as well as in the car? The current crop of "plug-and-play" tuners (those little ones you can move from house to car to boombox) are definitely convenient, but you've been looking for something with a more "permanent" look for your home system. The DT-7000S is a component-style, full-sized SIRIUS satellite radio tuner with a big blue LCD display and some pretty futuristic styling. The Kenwood DT-7000S brings Sirius Satellite Radio into your home. Not to be confused with portable Sirius Satellite tuners this is a true Home Audio Component. With a 4 Line display you can see the Artist name of the current song playing, as well as Song Title, Radio Station and Category. The DT-7000S has 4 preset nameable banks, that hold up to 20 stations each, meaning it can be programmed to store 80 presets in memory. With features like Song Seek, a song can be entered into the memory and the next time the song is playing on any Sirius channel the unit will inform you it is playing and allow you to switch to the channel so you can enjoy the song. Sirius Satellite services entertain you with 60 commercial free music stations and 40 News and Entertainment stations. The coverage is Coast to Coast and fully digital. Service costs $12.95 a month.
The tuner offers a bank of numerical buttons to the left of the
LCD, for entering stream (channel) numbers directly. To the right
of the LCD, you get buttons for saving songs to memory, scrolling
through preset banks, adjusting the display, and selecting
"direct" or "preset" stream access. Two rotary
knobs located on the top of the unit (check out the photo
above) let you scroll through channels and categories. We loved
the tactile "click click click" of the rotary knobs, and
the LCD was bright enough to read easily, even right below a
window with sunshine streaming in. On the back panel of the tuner, along with the standard RCA analog outputs and optical digital output, there's an RS-232 (serial) terminal. The serial port is not for hooking the tuner up to a computer, but instead allows it to interface with "compatible third-party control systems." Kenwood recommends that it only be used by professional system installers. |
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As shown in the photo above, the DT-7000S also has an optical
digital output for connection to a receiver with a compatible
input. Most receivers sold today are multichannel, for home
theater, and nearly all have optical digital inputs, so chances
are good that you'll be able to take advantage of this feature.
You will probably experience a small improvement in sound quality
if you use the digital output. |
Connect DT-7000 Tuner |
When it comes to hooking up the DT-7000S, we have got one word for
you: easy. The toughest part about the installation was finding a
spot for the tuner on my overcrowded A/V rack. The installation was hardly more involved
than hooking up a CD player. You just plugged in the antenna (not
included), connected a set of analog RCA cables from
the tuner's output to an available input on stereo receiver or
amplifier, and plugged in the power. After a few anxious moments of
"Acquiring Signal" on the LCD screen, you will be ready to
roll with the dog! The DT-7000S making a really cool
stand-alone bedroom or office system, too — you'd just need to
connect the analog outputs directly to a pair of powered speakers.
A note on reception: The three SIRIUS satellites are in a moving
orbit up there in space. So, while a spot where you have installed
antenna can give you perfect reception at certain times of the day, the signal
could faded
out at others. The best location to install a SIRIUS antenna is on
the roof of your house, pointing straight up. We highly recommend the Terk SIR6. It's weatherproof, and comes with a 30-foot
cable and a universal bracket that you can mount to a wall, roof,
or satellite dish. Plus, mounting hardware's included!
Kenwood - Sirius Satellite Tuner click for larger view |
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The Terk SIR6 SIRIUS antenna. |
Feature-packed
SIRIUS
displays 32 characters for song title and artist info, rather than
XM's 16 characters. This is one of SIRIUS' big
advantages, especially now that XM has gone commercial-free on its
music channels. And the DT-7000S does each and every one of those
characters justice. With the display in "large" mode,
the text is easy to see from across the room, and the scrolling is
neither too fast to read nor irritatingly slow.
Kenwood gives you four banks of 20 presets, for a total of 80 —
more than twice as many as most plug-and-play tuners. Presets are
nameable, which is cool, and easy to access using the remote or
front panel. In fact, the remote control is set up to make
accessing presets even more straightforward than accessing
channels by number — just hit the preset number (1-20) and press
"Enter". If you want to access a stream using its stream
number rather than its preset number, you have to press
"Direct" first, then the stream number, then
"Enter" (or just wait; it'll switch to the new stream
automatically in a few seconds). It didn't seem exactly intuitive
at first, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
After all, in most cases you'll be switching to one of your
favorite channels. And chances are, that stream will be in your
presets.
The DT-7000S incorporates a lot of features that portable
plug-and-play tuners have made popular. The favorite is probably
Song Seek. You can store info for up to 24 songs in the Kenwood's
internal memory. When Song Seek is activated, the tuner will
actually alert you and give you a 10-second visual countdown if
one of your saved songs starts playing on another stream! Just
press "Enter" before the 10 seconds is up, and you're
automatically switched to the new stream. While this
obviously doesn't work that well if you're not sitting in view of
the tuner, it's definitely a neat "extra." Not only do
you get to hear your favorite songs more often, you find out which
channels are most likely to play the tunes you like. It's a great
way to get introduced to channels you may not have tried before
— especially since the sheer number of options can sometimes get
a little overwhelming.
The remote control gives you basically the same options as the
front-panel controls, but adds a few exclusive features. It lets
you scan automatically through all channels, allows you to adjust
the brightness of the LCD, and gives you the ability to add spaces
in preset bank names (so you can go with "ERIN B"
instead of "ERINB").
thumbnail to download Kenwood DT-7000s Sirius Satellite Radio User's Manual (PDF 1,672K) |