HD Radio

[speedfreak]

Does anyone here have HD radio? Just curious if it is all that it's hyped up to be. I looked into getting the tuner for my Eclipse 5435 and it's around $450. Sucks since its almost 1/2 that for the Kenwood and Alpine HD tuners.

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[stsausser]

Check your area to see how many HD stations there are. Some areas only have a couple and its not really worth the money.

[shtrdave]

I agree with the above, I looked into it and there were only maybe 2 stations i would be interested in checking out.

http://www.hdradio.com/stations_on_the_air.php

[dmitt30]

Honestly from what I can gather, it's no better (quality wise) than Sirrius or XM. The only good part about it is that it's free (no monthly subscription) So, if you don't mind spending the montly fee, Satellite radio is the way to go. 100+ stations of clear music vs. 2 or 3 stations with the same crappy talk shows and commercials... you choose.

[TXST8tj]

look at it like this.....for $450, you could buy the sirius radio device HERE to hook up to your h/u and have like 3 years of sat. radio service. and sat. radio signal is going to be as good as HD radio, and you'll have more channels than you could ever listen to.

[shtrdave]

Yea, i wouldn't drop 450 on it. I was thinking about it as my Kenwood is hd ready, it would have cost me 100 or 200 bucks for the decoder or whatever it is.

[WBSCLariat]

Be patient. For the reasons stsausser and TXST8tj mentioned the price of these units will have to drop to under $100 to attract any real interest. I imagine most are collecting dust on dealer's shelves at $450.

Back to the old days of long distance interstate travel searching for a HD channel when you out distance the coverage of the one you were listening.

[EW_]

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.