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Any Stores Selling HD Table Radios?

B

Barry

If someone wanted to buy an HD table radio now, it seems they are harder than ever to find in a store. I've seen none in the usual suspects, such as Radio Shack, Best Buy, Sears etc. The only ones I've spotted are for cars (a relatively small percentage, mostly JVC), and that tiny portable Insignia set at Best Buy.
Has anyone seen an HD table radio in a store, over the past few weeks?
 
Pardon me for intruding into your topic, but let me ask a parallel question: If someone wanted to buy a TABLE RADIO of ANY gender... what does the market place offer? There have been a few WI-FI radios for streaming, but even those are getting harder and harder to find. This is NOT just a HD issues. It is a radio issue for EVERY version of radio.
 
Here in Austin, the local Frys still has a few Sangeans. But I really think it's the very same stock it's had for years.

Actually, Frys is really an excellent place to find table radios, HD or otherwise.
 
There are several table radios to choose from at my local Target store. Many have ipod docks, but that doesn't prevent anyone from listening to the radio if they want to. On the other hand, it has been a while since I've seen any HD table radios in a retail store, with the possible exception of Fry's.
 
Certainly no HD radios of any kind beyond car radios for sale anywhere I've been lately. No table or portables at Best Buy or Radio Shack anymore. As with Chuck, the only place I see table radios of any kind anymore are Target and Wal-Mart, and they all have iPod docks (which does the 60% of us with mp3 players but without that one brand a whole lot of no good.)
 
I've noticed that Walmart and other stores don't have as many radios as they used too. Even the jam boxes are being sold mainly as IPOD docks, that may have a radio tuner (not a very good one) built in.
 
You can still find alarm clock radios, radios boomboxes, etc in stores the last I checked. Don't expect them to get any weak FM signals or any AM signals since the ferrite antennas are usually small and cheap. I've found myself doing most electronic shopping online in recent years as there is more selection and the prices are usually the same or cheaper. HD Radios are getting hard to find except in car radios it seems.
 
spunker88 said:
You can still find alarm clock radios, radios boomboxes, etc in stores the last I checked. Don't expect them to get any weak FM signals or any AM signals since the ferrite antennas are usually small and cheap.
Click to expand...

Other than a religious FM that does not program to my interest, I am about 20 miles from the nearby transmitters and 40 to 50 miles from THE STATIONS for my market.

When I go into all of the stores mentioned in this thread, I see a few table radios or clock radios, but when I look for a radio that would work at my house, there are ZERO radios available to me at retail.
 
I just picked up Best Buy's Insignia brand "boom box" HD Radio over the weekend. It LOOKS more like a table radio than a boom box. Which is good as that's the use I was planning for it. It's smaller than the pictures would have you believe. I DID have to ask for it as there wasn't one on display and it took the employee a couple minutes to figure out where it was. He also tried to push me to a Pandora box, but that was $100 more.

Tuner sensitivity is better than the radio it's replacing as this box picks up an FM transmitter I have attached to an XM receiver one floor and three rooms away. My other radios won't lock in on the signal that far away.

NS-BHDIPO1
 
If you want a decent FM table radio, I suggest the Sangean WR-2. There is no HD, but it does have RDS. It actually sounds nice and has decent sensitivity and selectivity. It also has all the right inputs and outputs. I've purchased them on Amazon.com for about $120. They are well worth it.
 
What the hell is a "table radio?" An alarm clock? Who would be interested in such a thing and on what table would it be placed? An alarm clock I understand, but at 5 or 6 in the morning you give a crap that it spits out hiss HD? Why? A table radio? Really? Some kind of centerpiece for your Thanksgiving dinner table? Does it hold flowers and make HD hiss too? Sounds horrid to me. Whatever happened to bookshelf systems or full fledged high fidelity stereo systems? Oh sorry, forgot, there's no such thing as full fidelity anymore. Table radios are the next cool thing, except no one can find one for whatever purpose I can't comprehend. 32 mbits highly compressed and distorted audio anyone? Bet The Beatles sound great on one of those. Urp.
 
RadeoEngineer said:
What the hell is a "table radio?"
Click to expand...

There are some awkward moments, some painful moments in the process of growing old. And one of them is when someone asks the question you just asked!!!!

A table radio is something I might place on top of my desk, either at work or at home. A table radio is something I might carry into whatever room I am in if I want to listen to a baseball game or listen to Prairie Home Companion or some light classics while I sort through a couple of boxes of family pictures or organize all my financial papers as I get ready to prepare my annual income tax report.

A table radio could also be a clock radio, but a table radio usually carries the concept of looking like a piece of furniture. A clock radio is usually plastic and looks cheap enough that if it get stolen from a hotel room it won't break them financially, and a clock radio is usually a radio of such poor audio quality that no one would want to steal it, and it sounds so bad you will gladly wake up to shut the noise, the buzz, the distortion OFF.

A table radio is a descendant of what was back in the 30's and the 40's the family radio in a home where you could not afford one of those nice floor console radio.

A table radio is something your wife will let you keep in a room where she is particular about the decor and the style of the room. Bring a typical plastic clock radio into the room and when she is preparing the house for guests, she will tell you to take the ugly thing out to your workbench in the garage where the rest of your tools live.

A proper table radio is also as much a speaker cabinet as it is a receiver.

Boston Acoustics, Tivoli, and Sangean offer some nice models. Some of the Bose radios are a bit too much plastic and clock-radio in appearance, but some of them look quite nice.

A table radio probably has a connector to allow for an external antenna.

A table radio with wood finish could sit on the same side table or window seat with your Gibson guitar and look like a pair of young lovers.

I can't imagine what emptiness there must be in the life of a person who has never had a romantic attraction to a nice table radio.
 
Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
I can't imagine what emptiness there must be in the life of a person who has never had a romantic attraction to a nice table radio.
Click to expand...

I'm 56 and have never owned a table radio. I've owned stereos, ham gear with general-coverage reception, lots of portables, including a 1960-vintage Commodore AM pocket radio that I still have, a couple of boom boxes and clock radios, but never a table radio.

In fact, I don't remember my folks ever owning one in my lifetime either. All I remember were the living room stereo (the kind in the big, fancy wood cabinet with a cheap turntable included), one cheap All-American Five (I don't call those "table radios" since they weren't fancy enough) and portables in our house.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll plug my earbuds into my smartphone and listen to "radio" the new-fashioned way. ;D
 
The only table radio I have any love for is this one. And it's not a special radio by any stretch of the imagination. It's only dear to me because it belonged to my great uncle, who was a true tinkerer, ham and all around great guy. Unfortunately he died before I came to appreciate amateur radio and electronics so it was a connection we never really got to make. So I keep it in my room to remind me of him.
 
KeithE4 said:
.....All-American Five (I don't call those "table radios" since they weren't fancy enough)...
Click to expand...

Funny, I think of the All American Five as the Poster Child for the "table radio." They worked pretty well. If you got one in a well designed wooden, plastic or bakelite cabinet with a decent speaker, they could sound quite pleasant. I even have a "Detrola" in a metal cabinet that sounds amazingly good. Go figure...
 
Chuck said:
Funny, I think of the All American Five as the Poster Child for the "table radio." They worked pretty well. If you got one in a well designed wooden, plastic or bakelite cabinet with a decent speaker, they could sound quite pleasant. I even have a "Detrola" in a metal cabinet that sounds amazingly good. Go figure...
Click to expand...

This one was a piece of junk. I remember it quite well. It wasn't particularly sensitive, a failing power supply filter cap so it sounded like a frog, and very hard to tune. It was a Philco, in a white or ivory cabinet. AM only, of course. It was my dad's bedside radio, and got tossed in 1964 when he bought a Sears AM-FM-SW portable.

After doing a Google search, this 1949 model 49-500 looks like it was that radio I remember.
 
KeithE4 said:
It was my dad's bedside radio, and got tossed in 1964 when he bought a Sears AM-FM-SW portable.

After doing a Google search, this 1949 model 49-500 looks like it was that radio I remember.
Click to expand...

Too bad, that would be pretty collectable today. If you'd replaced the filter capacitors and peaked up the IF transformers (an easy job) you might have been surprised at how well it worked, especially at nignt.
 
A 5 tube All American can sound really bad or really good.
They often skimped on the parts count, making that filter capacitor do the job
of bypassing rf in screen circuits, etc, so they can get whistly, etc., besides humming when it goes bad.
They'll never pick out a weak dx next to a 50kw adjacent, but 20 khz off they could do OK.
There was an awful lot of rf gain in the 12SA7-12SQ7-12SK7 combination.
I have maybe a dozen such examples.

The important thing about a table radio is that it's big enough to hold its power supply, AM antenna, and speaker internally,
and the cabinet is large enough for the speaker to couple sound into the room.

Anything smaller and I just want to figure out how to plug it into something larger.
My daughters had me put jacks on their portable radios to play an ipod through.
They say it sounds much better. The radios are the Crosley 50's leatherette case style,
about the size of the old steel rectangular lunchboxes.
 
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