I have a shiny, new 2007 Ford Fusion and in this Ford Fusion I have a Kenwood DNX7100.  The DNX7100 is an all-in-one entertainment and navigation package which fits quite well in double DIN dash board openings.

I have been tinkering with the settings on this system for a few weeks now but the thing that really can give the DNX7100 a custom touch is the customizable background (or wallpaper).  This was a feat in and of itself to make a background that would expand across the dimensions of the screen.  The manual merely states that the max resolution on any image presented is 1600 x 1200.  Being a 16:9 aspect screen, a square peg will not fit in this rectangular hole.

I put forth a massive effort into testing fifteen different resolutions in one evening trying to make the background fill the screen.  None of those fifteen (which included standard widescreen dimensions) fit the bill leaving me with letter boxes on the sides of the image.  The next day I picked up the phone and called Kenwood tech support which surprisingly was unable to answer my question.  So my determination merely increased at that point and a slew of images were size across another ten different dimensions.  I was finally getting very, very close to what I wanted.

In the end it appears that the best “screen filling” resolution for a background on the Kenwood DNX7100 is an awkward but manageable 480 x 270.  As I mentioned over at the AV Science Forum I pegged the width but the height could be off a pixel or two.  However, a pixel or two isn’t too noticeable on the DNX7100’s 6.95″ screen.

Tags: kenwood dnx7100, background, resolution