HD Radio in central Pennsylvania

[SignalSeeker]

Any great success stories out there. Anyone able to receive anything out of the ordinary. I purchased the Sangean HDT-1 component tuner two months ago. I thinks its great. Best of all, it only cost $ 199.99! There's nothing wrong with radio in our area, but I'd much rather tune to Philly to the East or Baltimore to the South. There is just something about urban radio stations. For instance WOGL, oldies 98.1 in Philly. Nobody can match their library of music. Harvey Holiday and Bob Pantano have been DeeJaying so long, those guys are legends.

HD has come to the rescue for me. I have a roof mounted antenna and swing it to optimize individaul stations. The Sangean has a numeric signal strength meter plus a carrier-to-noise meter for aiming the antenna. I normally am blasted by WIOV, 105.1 when I try to listen to the quiet storm on Philly's WDAS 105.3. With the Sangean HDT-1 I have no bleed-over artifacts from WIOV. This is a great feature of this unit, incredible selectivity! Beats my Technics STS-6 in this regard.

This Hybrid system (IBOC) seems to really increase the dynamic range and frequency response. When it kicks in you really can hear it. The best thing about HD is the ability for multible formats on the same frequency. Philly, DC and Baltimore are loaded with mixed formats on the second and even third HD channel. Everything from big band to Spanish.

I live just north of Lancaster, and am wondering who else is receiving quality wide frequency digital HD?

 

[vetguy]

The key to HD right now is the fact that you have an outside antenna and can optimize it for the direction of the transmitting tower. The average mom or pop at home, first if they would even spend that much for a table radio, will not put an outside antenna up and optimize just for a particular station. That goes back to TV technology of the 60's. They will expect to turn it on and get the HD signal. For a 50KW station, you had better be within about 10 miles of the tower to reliably get HD. I live west of Lancaster city and can't get a solid HD signal from WARM using the supplied dipole antenna or the long wire antenna from the Radio Shack sold Accurian nor the Boston Acoustics. Harrisburg does not come in at all in HD. Analog signals yes. HD no. HD coverage in a car with the best JVC radio has shown to be half the coverage of analog. What GM is going to accept that after spending $100,000-250,000 for the upgrade? HD radio so far is a joke. The stations going to 2 or 3 channels are chopping the audio bandwidth down in each channel to make it work. That is the only option you have. Why don't we all just broadcast in mp3 format and be done with it. Heck with quality.

 

[MoreDecibels]

Finally got a demonstration of HD radio. I didn't understand what all the hype was about until I heard it. Someone is not doing a good job informing the public. This is actually a good thing. Nobody in my area is demonstrating it. Demonstrations in stores is the key. Tweeter is too busy making a kickback from their satellite installations.

If it wasn't for these boards I wouldnt know anything about it. I hear the ads on every sattion but didn't get it. I took the advice and bought the Sangean Tuner. I get all of the HD stations here in the Susquehanna Valley. There actually a lot. I did'nt need an antenna on the roof. The dipole that is supplied allows me to listen to at least 20 stations with HD. That is 20 times 2 which equals 40 stations I can hear in HD. Just about all of them are streaming a second format on HD2.

I didn't know I was missing all of this programming! Finally album oriented rock again. Better sound too! This HD thing has real potential, somebodys got to get the word out. There are things on the air that nobody knows about unless you have one of these new radios. Its clear, no multipath, and sounds much better than the digital satellite radio.