Are Headrest Monitor Worth it?

If you are anything like me, you hate spending money on things you don’t use or need. However, sometimes, to get what we want to have a bundle, we’ll eventually use less than 50%. In general, bundles are a way for manufacturers and companies with crappy services to get rid of the stuff they don’t want or can’t sell. The best example is internet and TV bundles, where you can get internet service for $30 when you sign up for TV. This would not be much of an issue if we got to choose what channels we wanted! After all, we all watch TV! However, this is not the case. Very few of the channels you like or want are in the package. The rest is crap like fake news on CNN, something I would not want my kids to see, like MTV, and so on. The same thing happens when purchasing a new vehicle. We often pay a lot extra for trims with all-wheel drive and other mechanical extras to get the correct leather interior or color choice.

Although many options are available as aftermarket accessories, only a few consumers trust car stereo installation stores like Best Buy. Taking apart a seventy or eighty-thousand-dollar vehicle requires experience and the right tools. That is especially true regarding headrest monitor installations and other car accessories. At Car-Alarm-Miami.Com, we have no issue cutting or modifying any headrest simply because our custom upholstery department often produces work that rivals many OEMs.

Headrest monitors are a perfect upgrade if you have kids and travel or commute a lot. They come in a variety of sizes as well as options. In larger vehicles with plenty of headroom clearance, you can also mount a larger screen on the roof. You also have various input and video source options along with screen size.

Off-Air Antenna – Generally, an off-air antenna is always a good thing to have! It can be used to monitor local news broadcasts during a storm. You watch the pregame show as you tailgate at a UM or Dolphins game. But antennas don’t work overall as you travel sixty or seventy miles per hour down the road, even within the city. While your FM radio starts to get sketchy as you are thirty to forty miles from the station, it only takes half that distance for your TV signal to start acting up.

DVD or BluRay – The future of BluRay is questionable because streaming services are killing it! Samsung, the inventor of BluRay, is discontinuing its Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray player lines. However, the number of DVDs and BluRay media available and coming to market is still substantial. You can later walk into any Publix and find a RedBox rental dispenser. Why this type of media? Well, you don’t need an internet connection; you can watch it at your leisure, and regardless of where you are or how fast you are going, you will always have a good picture!

Satellite – DirectTV – Sadly, Dish Network has not developed a satellite antenna for cars and SUVs, although they have one for RVs (the TRAVELER SK-1000). That means that DirectTV is the only valid national provider. I am not a fan of DirectTV, even less now that AT&T owns them, primarily because of the picture quality. They compress the signal quite a bit, making it look vector-like, where you lose resolution or definition in color gradients. It’s doubtful you can see these defects on a small headrest monitor or even a roof-mounted one.  Unless you have a 9000 Series Samsung 4K LED, it is doubtful you can see what I am talking about! However, if you want ESPN, FS1, and many nationally syndicated radio shows on the go, the DirectTV satellite system for cars is ideal for you. To my surprise, the system works very well and tracks very well. I have driven all over the US and up to ninety miles per hour without any picture noise or loss of signal.

We will not sit here and tell you that installing a good headrest monitor rivaling the OEM look and feel is tough! However, we will warn you that it is a very labor-intensive job that often takes up to 8 hours of shop time.

That is at a shop with experience and all the right tools! Oh, yes, tools! You will need access to various tools to remove the seats, take the dash apart, remove the radio, etc. It is also important to note that off-the-shelf headrest monitors come assembled entirely. When you use this type of unit, there is no need to cut the factory headrest. You remove the factory ones and replacement with the aftermarket units. These units are usually only available in vinyl or leather and may look a little off on vehicles with fabric interiors. Also, know that we have seen quite a bit of deviation in color. If the car does not have tinted windows, it is more than likely the headrest color will be darker since leather and vinyl interiors seem to fade in as little as six months under the Florida sun.