I was in Dallas today for the NAB Radio Show. Since it got over about noon, I decided to stop at Fry's on my way home to see what they had in the way of HD radios. For those not familiar with Fry's, it is a chain of electronic stores that moved into Dallas a number of years ago. The store I visited on Northwest Highway, was their first in the area, and it is absolutely HUGE. It is probably 80-100,000 square feet of electronics and everything related. They have tons of stuff. Some is garbage, some is pretty good.
There were two aisles of table radios, and a similar selection of portables and boom boxes. Not seeing any BA Receptors, I decided to ask a salesman. The first one was clueless when I asked about HD radios. He referred me to another sales guy. Ironically, as he did this, the analog radios on the aisle were running a spot for HD radio and urged listeners to call Crutchfield. (Really).
The second guy took me directly to some boom boxes that have XM capability. I explained that was not what I was looking for. Once again, I got blank stares. He suggested I go see "the guy with glasses" who was pouring over a computer terminal. It seemed he was the department manager on duty. He told me that I must be mistaken, because "HD" referred to TV, not radio. They had at least 75-100 HDTV sets to choose from. Maybe more. HD radios, were nowhere to be found and certainly not on this guy’s radar screen.
Since I really wanted to hear one of these things in a non trade show environment, I decided to visit the car stereo department. The first sales guy took me to the satellite radio compatible car radios. He made the previous three people seem like Einstein. I moved on, but eventually found that they had three of the $199.00 JVC HD car radios in stock. They were hard to find because they were mixed in with a pile of other stereos in similar looking cardboard boxes. Finding yet another sales geek, I asked if they had this radio on display so I could hear it. He wandered through several displays and finally found it on one of those "wall of stereos" types of displays. I was beginning to get excited. I shouldn’t have.
The radio didn't work. I guess they never connected it up. Off hand, it didn't appear to be very user friendly, but that's just me. I still like knobs, like "on - off - volume" and "tuning." I'm sure if it would power up, you could get used to scrolling through a bunch of soft keys. Doing it at 70-80 mph might be challenging, but to be fair most other modern after market radios are that way as well.
Anyway, I never got to hear the radio. I believe was a lot more persistent than most people would have been. On the other hand, If I'd wanted an iPod or satellite capable radio, that would have been easy. They had tons to choose from.
The sales experience will have to be radically improved if anyone is going to buy these things. That may be harder than it sounds.
