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I sell car audio. I have had a HD Radio since April. In DFW, there are many channels available even on HD2. Sound quality is much better than FM and the AM HD channels sound better than current FM brodcasts. New channels are being turned on all the time. The HD Alliance has agreed to leave HD2 channels commercial free until mid 2007. IMO, HD sounds better than Sirius or XM. There are obvious advantages to satellite radio over HD. HD has a smaller broadcast range than FM so as you get further from the tower, the tuner switches from HD to FM and then FM will trail off as usual. If the tuner you're looking at is not a multicast tuner (Alpine is NOT multicast), I would wait until you can get one. The HD2 channels are cool because a channel can run a different type of music on the same frequency. For example, in DFW, the smooth jazz FM channel plays traditional jazz on HD2. AM HD sounds so good, I think there will be a resurgence of AM music channels with different types of music than traditional FM. If you want better sound quality and more local channels to choose from, HD Radio is the answer.
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