My requirements were clear since the beginning. As far as my experience goes with car audio head units, it is the CD drive that goes bad first. It is the only moving part in the car stereo, has to be very delicate (much more expensive than normal CD drives) because it has to withstand all the vibrations and shock when the car is in motion, and goes bad first (well my first one died on 13th month just after the warranty expired). Still then, major vibration will cause a skip. Hence my decision was "I don't want a CD drive in my car stereo". All these salesmen in Bangalore would tell me "well you don't have to play the CDs". "Yeah, right, but I don't want to pay for it, either". They would back off. "Sorry sir we don't keep such a thing".And I'd be back to square one again in the next shop. Finally I gave up searching in Bangalore, and decided to get one from US. In this recession market when most of my money is underwater, thanks to a patent incentive I had ~12K of throwaway money to upgrade my car audio system. Well I am not an audiophile, I listen to music instead of equipment, so I divided the bonus in 2 equal parts and decided to upgrade the HU and front pair of speakers. The existing head-unit was an insult from Toyota anyway (believe me they bundled a cassette player in 2007) for not buying the top-end variant; and none wanted to buy it back (including the dealer). The speakers were ok, but I wanted a pair of components.
125 USD wouldn't fetch too many car audio even in USA. After some light searches, I decided on Boss's 750DI, which can play from a SD card, USB stick, has an AUX in; and most important, has an iPod dock. AUX in would have been ok to play iPods, but then you have to control the iPod separately, you can't charge it, and a dangling iPod is a serious hazard in the cabin of a speeding car. The iPod dock holds it securely, charges it and the HU's control (including the remote) would control the iPod. Now I have a SD card with my favourites for casual city drives and the nano with 8GB songs comes into action for long drives. The AUX helps if we connect the mobile phone; and now I think I could have opted for the Bluetooth version to make it a handsfree. Thanks to ol' buddy Atanu, who bought and shipped to our US office and @kmanuj who carried it back here, I resolved my logistics issues.
The following weekend was installation time, and though I was confident I could simply plonk in the HU in place (just have to carefully follow the color coding in the wiring diagram), I took the car to a shop nearby, who did a fairly fast and good job (I observed that my own toolset would have been inadequate for a DIY job). Especially installing the tweeters and crossover box wouldn't have been possible.