HD Radio just got yet another sale!

[nd2023]

I dropped my second Insignia HD radio and the screen cracked, and it won't display anything. So I bought yet another portable HD radio.

I dropped my iPod touch a while ago and nothing happened. The HD radio should be more durable. But as the ads for HD Radio said repeatedly, if I have $50 burning a hole in my pocket, what better use for the money than to buy an HD radio!

 

[Savage]

Hey, Nick - seriously: there are actually HD Radio promos running suggesting they're good purchases "if you have $50 burning a hole in your pocket?"

Assuming this actually to be the case: incredible, if true.

I agree - simply dropping a small, hard and presumably slippery (and thus easy-to-drop) portable device should not cause catastrophic damage. The Insignia should have been able to stand up to a minor mishap like that. As a design issue, the build quality should have been high enough to withstand forseeable normal-use impacts. That tells me the radio, overall, is a cheap, flimsy piece of crap.

 

[tomservo]

Of course the radio's a cheap, flimsy piece of crap. It's the Best Buy house brand. All house brand electronics are going to be a crapshoot, made by some unknown Chinese lowest bidder. I've never laid hands on a Dynex or Insignia or whatever and had them feel anywhere as sturdy as name brand hardware.

That's not HD radio's fault, that's Best Buy's fault. Unless you believe the inane licensing fee is what jacks up the price to the point they HAVE to use cheap shortcuts to keep the thing under $50. Then you may have a point. But personally I bet it's $10 to make and $40 profit for BB.

 

[Savage]

Admittedly I don't know any specifics about the licensing arrangement between BB and iBiquity. But certainly the "inane" (your word, and apropos) licensing has been a major obstacle at getting HD receivers out there among the public, and at popular prices. (Defined as: the price a casual consumer would actually be willing to pay.)

In producing a low-priced item with high fixed costs, something's gotta give. Guess what gets trashed? The build quality of the final project. Result: a flimsy piece of crap which fails to make believers out of the few people who buy HD Radios.

I've experimented with the Sony, the Jensen iPod docker, the Accurian, the Insignia portable and the BA Receptor HD. Every single one of them is total crap, with the exception of the Sony - and judging from posts here even those radios exhibit problems despite an apparent good build quality. That track record is not good for HD's fortunes, no matter how much the manufacturer deserves blame.

 

[KB1OKL]

You can just about cook a hot dog over the little grates on the back of the Sony, I don't think that bodes well for longevity, of course at the rate I use mine it will last forever.

 

[nd2023]

I bought 3 portable HD radios so far since the end of 2009. 2 of those are broken. It would be reasonable to assume that half the Insignia HD radios sold to date are broken.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

I bought 3 portable HD radios so far since the end of 2009. 2 of those are broken. It would be reasonable to assume that half the Insignia HD radios sold to date are broken.

Not mine. It was only used twice then put away.

 

[local oscillator]

This discussion leads me to believe that if we industry insiders would just stop buying these pieces of HD crap, sales would plummet; regular folks are too smart to buy them. I admit I'm guilty -- a know thy enemy kind of thing, but I'm quitting right now, cold turkey. I feel better already!

 

[KB1OKL]

I stopped at one ;D and it's in storage.

 

[nd2023]

I'm probably responsible for 10% of the HD radio sales in my market.

 

[Savage]

And I would suspect that the return rate on HD Radio sales to non-radio-industry civilians exceeds 50%. (Can't prove this, of course - "just a little hunchback at the office" - but I find it highly likely.)

Not that I've actually seen any HD Radios (other than car-audio head-end units) on display lately, but I can't recall ever seeing any HD Radios out in stores that didn't include open-box clearance pieces. The returns on these things must have been horrible. It's been two years now since I've bothered to pursue it, but store managers always had attitudes of "make me an offer on that clearance thing," nobody wants these or knows what they are, or - in the case of dearly-departed Circuit City - actually tried to talk me out of buying one. Guess he didn't want to deal with yet ANOTHER return.

 

[radiogooroo]

So we're actually debating the ability of HD Radio products to withstand abuse?

I dropped my old iPhone 3G several times, and never had it in a case. Once even, I accidentally sent it skidding several feet across asphalt, which only made a small indention in the plastic housing on one of the corners.

Believe it or not, the drop that did my old iPhone in came at a restaurant. I was sitting in a booth, the phone slipped out of my hand, bounced on the seat cushion and hit the floor, shattering the screen - a drop of approximately 1 1/2'. I had an iPhone 4 on order already, so I simply made due with a lesser phone for a few days.

I've dropped my Insignia several times at the gym. Usually it happens when my arm hooks the headphone cable while I'm on the treadmill, sending the thing flying backward toward the ground at high speed. No ill effects yet.

 

[BRNout]

I've dropped my Insignia HD radio a number of times too without breakage. But what did the first one in had nothing to do with gravity, it had to do with workmanship: the contact at the headphone jack apparently came loose because I'd lose the left channel and had to move the jack around to get it back. Eventually it never came back and because useless to me. Had nothing to do with a drop, it just developed.

My second one still works well, though the battery dies by itself after a period of non use, frustrating my attempts to simply pick it up and turn it on after a while.

As far as my iPhone goes, I bought a ballistic case for it because I know myself. And, I have dropped it a number of times with no ill effects. Then again, why not compare a laptop with a $50 Insignia radio too? Because a smartphone and a little, relatively cheap, portable radio are quite different from one another. Apples and oranges, really.

 

[Savage]

I've done that treadmill thing at the gym, gooroo! But my experience was with my iPod Nano. Once I hooked the cable with my finger, it flew out of the cup holder and bounced off the elbow of the chick running on the machine next to mine, then bounced back onto my track - and I tromped on it!

Worked just fine after I recovered it. I still listen to it daily.

 

[JJS]

it had to do with workmanship: the contact at the headphone jack apparently came loose because I'd lose the left channel and had to move the jack around to get it back. Eventually it never came back and because useless to me. Had nothing to do with a drop, it just developed.

The 3.5mm TRS is a cartel standard that should have been abandoned decades ago. Waste and obsolescence is deliberately engineered into every device that uses it; but the design is so ubiquitous that the consumer has no real alternative. In TRS, of course, the springiness is built into the jack, leading invariably to metal fatigue, lost connection, a crippled device. In an RCA pair, by contrast, the jack remains rigid, and the springiness is built into the plug, which can be easily tightened or replaced.

Sorry, pet peeve.

 

[Chuck]

In an RCA pair, by contrast, the jack remains rigid, and the springiness is built into the plug, which can be easily tightened or replaced.

Sorry, pet peeve.

Actually, the spring tension in an RCA jack is on both the male and the female connector. The center pin "spring" is in the female jack and the outer shell (ground) is part of the male connector. The good news with an RCA jack is there is a lot more surface area, thus a better chance of making contact.

The RCA jack is actually a fairly awful design; since it makes contact with the "hot" pin before the ground connection is made. To be fair to RCA, it was never intended to be much more than a "set it and forget it" connector. Constant plugging and unplugging will make them go bad too.

I will say I've had a lot more problems with the 3.5 mm TRS connector than I have with RCA jacks, but I suspect that's because they get plugged in and out much more frequently. Add that problem to the use of today's surface mount technology, which is almost impossible to repair economically speaking, and you have truly disposable electronics.

I guess that is what the public wants; Cheap, disposable electronics. Putting things in perspective, back about 1965, an average AM table radio sold for about $12-$20. That would be at least $120 to $200 in today’s money. Today, you can buy a lot more technology for well under $100. In fact, you can still buy a radio for $12.00 or even less. Although it has more technology and features, it’s too bad it isn’t the same build quality as its predecessors.

 

[JJS]

Actually, the spring tension in an RCA jack is on both the male and the female connector. The center pin "spring" is in the female jack and the outer shell (ground) is part of the male connector.

Thanks for that tech correction. I guess that dashes any hope of making RCA plugs and jacks the new standard for mobile headphone devices. But I'm still convinced some 21st century design that moves the wear and tear on to the cable, rather than the costly electronic component, would be an improvement. Or, if the jack must bear the burden, turn it into a removable core on higher-end devices, so the user can treat it as the 6-month consumable it really is.

 

[Savage]

Maybe the RCA jack and plug also incorporate "spring" contact surfaces, but they're physically larger and stronger than the contacts in a 3.5mm 1/8" TRS set. That makes the system - which dates from the 1940s - far more robust and trouble-free.

I can't remember the last time I had an RCA connection fail (the only exception being when an employee yanked a cord apart by the cable instead of the plug.)

 

[Chuck]

Maybe the RCA jack and plug also incorporate "spring" contact surfaces, but they're physically larger and stronger than the contacts in a 3.5mm 1/8" TRS set. That makes the system - which dates from the 1940s - far more robust and trouble-free.

I think I said that. One of the big problems, and why you won't see them on many miniature devices, is it takes two for stereo. That takes up a lot of real estate. The average consumer wants smaller, not larger. Having two jacks for your headphones, one for left and one for right would be a real pain in the a$$.

I can't remember the last time I had an RCA connection fail (the only exception being when an employee yanked a cord apart by the cable instead of the plug.)

That's probably because you don't plug and unplug them very much. Truth be known, they are both very poor excuses for audio connectors. My preference would be RCA's over mini-plugs for most purposes. They do tend to last longer, but none of us get to make the rules....

 

[tomservo]

My phone is relatively large by modern standards and is still thinner than an RCA barrel connector, so it wouldn't even fit. If they were on there, people would probably only connect one cable anyway; I see a lot of teenagers with one earbud in their ear and the other in someone else's, each listening to half a song, or the other just dangling down. :

If anything, connectors will have to get smaller and even more fragile as miniaturization marches on. As it is, the USB charger connection I have now is only a few mm thick, and different than the rest of my mini-USB connectors.

There are a lot of headphones/cables formed for the iPhone, and they all have excessively narrow surrounds, no thicker than the jack itself. I can't see how they are at all reliable.

I've been lucky on that front so far; my mp3 player is truckin' on towards 6-7 years old and all the connectors are fine. It has three 1/8" jacks: headphones, line in and line out. All are still holding solid. My minidisc portable's buttons are all shot and the optics are wonky, but the headphone jack feels as good as new.

Come to think of it, I don't know of any headphone jack failing on any device yet. If anything, the wire will disconnect on the headphone plug itself, not the receptacle on the hardware.