Ah... the Kenwood remote has gotten another person besides me!

I just yanked mine out and replaced it with an Alpine CDA-9831

I ran my Kenwood for two years and the last straw was the eject mechanism
wasn't pushing the CD's out consistantly (it was skipping too & the
annoyance of the remote!)

What sold me on the Alpine (besides sound quality, flexibility of media
format ~ does MP3 and WMA + the remote actually turns the thing off) is the
variable angle face.  I couldn't read my Kenwood in broad daylight no matter
how I set the contrast on the display.  I can set the face to about 30
degrees and read every thing in bright sun now.

I hope you have better luck with your player than I did with mine.

Brian :-)