Garbage out of the box, but useful with some soldering

Author's Rating:

Pros: When modified (and fixed), it's a pretty nice unit.

Cons: Very low volume, VERY low quality internal parts, didn't work out of box.

The Bottom Line: 
Do not buy this unless you're handy with a soldering iron or have really low expectations.

Author's Review
I bought a Home Dock off of eBay from some guy in Hong Kong. The remote is slightly different, but it's the same base unit as in the picture.

What you get in the box:
One Home Dock docking station
One remote control
One power adapter
One USB cable
One (rather short) S-Video cable
One SUPER CHEAP set of RCA cables (Left, right, video).
One plastic brace for iPod

My problems started right after I opened the box and plugged the HomeDock into my amp, slapped my Nano onto the docking connector, and pressed play. I got nothing. No music at all. So I plugged the Home Dock into the wall with the power adapter, and there came the music.... but at a really low volume. What's more, the left speaker would fade in and out when I jiggled the connector.

Since I only spent $36 (shipped) for this thing, and it took over a month to get it in from Hong Kong, rather than try in vain to get a refund, I opened it up and took a look inside.

First thing I noticed is that the ground leads for the RCA jacks WERE NOT SOLDERED!! I must have gotten a unit built on a Friday or something. I soldered the ground leads, and the problem with the left speaker fading out disappeared. (and the music sounded altogether better too).

However, the volume level from the Home Dock was still considerably below all of the other components in my stereo system. My normal listening level is about 4... I had to turn the amp up to 9 to get the same volume level out of the Home Dock. (dial only goes to 11!)

Upon further inspection, it seems that the iPod always outputs Line Level from the docking port. The volume control on an iPod only effects the headphone jack - the dock connector still outputs line level. Turns out the HomeDock takes the signal from the iPod and processes it, allowing you to change the volume up and down with its remote. This is bad... sound quality is lost, and the processing reduces the overall volume to about half of normal line level.

I was able to go in with a soldering iron and bypass all of the volume control circuitry (I attached the L and R leads from the docking connector directly to the output jacks on the back of the HomeDock). This worked perfectly - I have a line level output and good sound, whether or not the HomeDock is powered. All of the remote control functions except volume still work perfectly.

I have documented this modification (with pictures) on http://ChopperCharles.com/HomeDock. (Hope it helps someone!)

Oh also, the HomeDock has two dinky speakers in the bottom that sound absolutely terrible. They're little more than headphone speakers, very tinny, and just bad sounding. There's a button on the remote that switches from the line outputs to these dinky speakers... that feature no longer works either. But you'd never actually use that feature - the whole point of the home dock is to play your iPod through your stereo. (and again, the speakers sound terrible).

Would I recommend this HomeDock? Well... for the average joe, absolutely not. Spend $100 or more on a dock from a name brand company. But if you're handy with a soldering iron, and you can get this docking station really cheap, go for it. The mods are simple, the remote is really convenient, and the whole setup looks really nice.