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IS THERE STILL A 50 DOLLAR REBATE???

M

Mike Walker

Guest
I'm about to buy a new radio. Is there still a fifty dollar rebate? I thought it went until sometime in September, but I don't see anything about it at Ibiquity's website.

Can you point me to it? This won't be a deal-breaker, but 50 dollars (after rebate) for a new "super-tuner" sure sounds sweet!
 
I called J&R last night, and they confirmed there's still a rebate on the Sony tuner I want.

I'm dismayed at Sony calling it a "receiver", however (at their website). Shocking, stupid, and surprising...for a company like Sony that has actually offered great TUNERS through the years! This ought to be a legal issue, I think. Calling a device with no preamp (or inputs) and no power amp a "receiver" is quite misleading, and while I'm no lawyer, it seems to me that this would be actionable legally! Mitigating that is the fact that it's a great TUNER, and it's surprisingly cheap!
 
Yes - the local Fry's is offering an aftermarket HD car radio for $10 - after the $50 rebate. I went down there yesterday - they had only sold a couple of them. The sales person gave me the same story - they keep getting returned so they are closing out HD products as fast as they can. I looked at the boxes - sure enough they had the return stickers all over them. And in the next flyer, they may be free after the $50 rebate.

The Sangean HDT-1X display is now nowhere to be seen.
 
Sounds like there were no nearby HD stations to receive, or they weren't properly installed! My local Best Buy and Circuit City report no such returns (Hickory NC, in the Charlotte Metro, but within earshot of most Greensboro HD stations (and a couple from Greenville Spartanburg as well, plus at least one from the Asheville market...WMIT on 106.9...which anyone from this part of the country knows has a MONSTER signal!)
 
Mike Walker said:
Sounds like there were no nearby HD stations to receive, or they weren't properly installed! My local Best Buy and Circuit City report no such returns (Hickory NC, in the Charlotte Metro, but within earshot of most Greensboro HD stations (and a couple from Greenville Spartanburg as well, plus at least one from the Asheville market...WMIT on 106.9...which anyone from this part of the country knows has a MONSTER signal!)
Click to expand...

I believe RBruce's local Fry's is in the Dallas area. Nes Pas?

There are a ton of HD stations in Dallas. Most of their analog counterparts are 100,000 watt flame-throwers on very tall (1500-1800 foot) towers. Let's not forget that Dallas is flat as a pancake. I lived at the top of a hill in Dallas for about 18 years. It was about 20 feet higher than the water level in a creek at the foot of the hill. That is about all the deviation in elevation you'll find for miles. Go north into the heavily populated suburbs like Plano, and you could cut it up and make billiard tables. ;)
 
rbrucecarter5 said:
Yes - the local Fry's is offering an aftermarket HD car radio for $10 - after the $50 rebate. I went down there yesterday - they had only sold a couple of them. The sales person gave me the same story - they keep getting returned so they are closing out HD products as fast as they can. I looked at the boxes - sure enough they had the return stickers all over them. And in the next flyer, they may be free after the $50 rebate.

The Sangean HDT-1X display is now nowhere to be seen.
Click to expand...

How lomg until they pay you to take an HD receiver..."We'll give you ten bucks to take it, as long as you promise not to bring it back."
 
If it's the same unit I saw at Fry's, It may be HD but doesn't have multi-cast capability... so what's the use? I would take it back too.
 
What??? :eek: :eek: There are actually HD radios available that can't get the multicasts? Incredible.

From the typical listener's perspective, this is the sole reason to even BUY a freakin' HD Radio. Let's face it, the typical consumer can't tell the difference between FM analog and digital, nor is it very apparent even to a trained ear on the typical bookshelf-tabletop units being sold.

Even if you can get the radio to work in the store - itself highly debatable (see Radio World this week) if the HD unit can't get the subs, it's like trying to sell a new car that comes without an engine or wheels.

But, hey, "the styling is great! And look at that interior room!"
 
I think the real question here is how many thousand HD radios does Mike Walker own? ;D
I think he's single handedly trying to inflate the number of radios sold to perhaps hit the magic half million mark.
 
Very funny! :D :D Don't get mad, Mike, I'm sure KB1OKL is just joshin' ya.

But I do have to wonder. If you took all the radio engineers and execs, and the hobbyist-first adopter techno-fans out of the equation - now no kidding - how many HD Radios are actually in daily use for regular listening to hybrid digital broadcasts?

My guess: somewhere around 20 to 30 thousand. In the WORLD. Even that guesstimate might be high.
 
I bought an Accurian a few months ago, laughed at it's behavior awhile and set it aside, as it sounds AWFUL on AM analog.
I noticed it last sunday night as I was getting ready for a trip to Fargo, ND.
It was under a box with CDs, the cover of an old JVC cassette deck, and some books.
I realized it wins the prize for "most useless radio I've ever owned", or "radio most quickly silted over by other junk".

This is because the AM analog is horrific. If it sounded as good as one of ANY of my other radios, I could use it,
but I won't listen to a radio so muffled as to be unintelligible.

In other words, they ruined the chances for me to be accepting of the digital reception, because they deliberately
made the analog sound so bad. There is no reason for there to be such huge, artificial difference between the two,
unless they are "sandbagging" the AM analog audio. I don't trust people who are dishonest, and presenting
AM reception that cuts off at 2.5 khz is dishonest unless you are selling a communications HF receiver with selectable bandwidth.
I have dozens of radios that sound better. They get used all the time.
The Accurian got used about 7 -10 days. I listened "at" it for a while, but never could listen "to" it.
 
"... But I do have to wonder. If you took all the radio engineers and execs, and the hobbyist-first adopter techno-fans out of the equation - now no kidding - how many HD Radios are actually in daily use for regular listening to hybrid digital broadcasts?

My guess: somewhere around 20 to 30 thousand. In the WORLD. Even that guesstimate might be high."

I think there's a ton of truth to that! I have found one good use for HD radio. Most of the FM sections are much better analog tuners. See... There's always a brigher side! :)
 
Tom Wells said:
I bought an Accurian a few months ago, laughed at it's behavior awhile and set it aside, as it sounds AWFUL on AM analog.
I noticed it last sunday night as I was getting ready for a trip to Fargo, ND.
It was under a box with CDs, the cover of an old JVC cassette deck, and some books.
I realized it wins the prize for "most useless radio I've ever owned", or "radio most quickly silted over by other junk".

This is because the AM analog is horrific. If it sounded as good as one of ANY of my other radios, I could use it,
but I won't listen to a radio so muffled as to be unintelligible.

In other words, they ruined the chances for me to be accepting of the digital reception, because they deliberately
made the analog sound so bad. There is no reason for there to be such huge, artificial difference between the two,
unless they are "sandbagging" the AM analog audio. I don't trust people who are dishonest, and presenting
AM reception that cuts off at 2.5 khz is dishonest unless you are selling a communications HF receiver with selectable bandwidth.
I have dozens of radios that sound better. They get used all the time.
The Accurian got used about 7 -10 days. I listened "at" it for a while, but never could listen "to" it.
Click to expand...
This came from a review at Amazon.com for these:

Pioneer Car GEXP10HD HD Radio Tuner for use with ""HD Radio Ready"" Pioneer Headunits

"The built in analog tuner is less sensitive than the tuner in the base radio, so I lose sensitivity in order to gain HD."

Looks like iBiquity dumbed-down the analog to make the HD portion appear superior -
 
That would seem to be a problem with 3 of the HD radios that I use (sold 1) kept 2.

The FM analog is superb, and when multicast stations switch from analog to HD, the audio quality actually goes down (which it's not supposed to do by FCC decree). The FM analog 1st adjacent channel operation is suberb, and RDS is very decent; but on AM, oh boy.

On all 3 HD tuners, the AM analog is horrible at best, very narrow bandwidth, and strange AGC that lowers the level down to nothing when there is any interference whatsoever on channel or even adjacent channel. If they had a way to open up the AM bandwidth (force it) to 7.5KHz or 10KHz, that would be sweet for LOCAL music AM stations. The only good thing about the AM on HD is that you can still listen to analog AM stations 20Khz from an AM-HD station without all the buzzing -it is magically filtered. They really missed the ball with these radios as they could have put a really nice analog AM tuner in them to keep their AM listeners. I can't reliably lock onto any regional 50KW stations 60 miles out (one 40 miles I can during the day only), and my local 5KW-DAN fades in and out of HD lock at night. I wish, I wish, I wish the radio makers realized that this was an opportunity for RADIO, not just HD Radio, to shine.

Can somebody from NAB convince the boys to make decent RADIOS, not just HD Radios??
 
Buy the Sony tuner!!!!!! If you only listen to analog FM, buy it anyway. It's that good!

Now I know how Charleton Heston felt about his guns ("from my cold, DEAD HANDS!")

And with HD in tons of inexpensive receivers, table radios, shelf systems, and car radios, from major brands, I'd wager that you'd be shocked how many people have it and don't even know. I can't prove I'm right. Neither can you. But it just makes sense. The freakin' radios/tuners/receivers are everywhere now!

Oh, and as for audio quality going down when the radio switches to HD, I've noticed that a few times myself. But only on multicast stations with three streams (nobody has more around here, thankfully. Does anyone anywhere?) WFAE in Charlotte has music IN MONO on their HD3. REALLY! Geez, why bother? If you can't provide a CLEAR signal that's at least as good as your analog ON EVERY HD STREAM, you've got too damn many streams!
 
Savage, isn't it time to get behind the guys wanting to give AM channel 5 and 6 TV spectrum? Isn't that the RIGHT way to actually fix the problem? I think AMs aught to be given 10 years at least to dump the analog AM signal though. At some point pick either a powerful AM signal or the new band only. Then the remaining AMs could iBuzz away at each other down there and not bother adjacents because adjacents could be eliminated from use (after moving stations around in the band a bit).
 
Sure, the only sane way to launch digital radio is for it to appear on new spectrum, TV-style. But there isn't the political will to get it done. Nothing happens at the Commission regarding spectrum allocation without powerful lobbying - read, "cash" - and the only entity that lobbies effectively for radio at the FCC is the NAB.

That would be the same NAB whose prime radio movers are investors in iBiquity through that stooge-stuffed blundering media Cub Scout troop known as "the HD Alliance." The whole genesis of this thing has been extensively set out at www.stopiboc.com, but essentially and briefly HD, from the political viewpoint, is a combined (a) land-grab by big group radio and (b) fantasy to get pioneer-investor big group radio to recoup its investment in HD on the backs of independent radio broadcasters.

They thought they could express-lane force a new digital standard on the industry, while protecting - some say enhancing through FCC-sanctioned adjacent-channel interference - their competitive positions in local markets. The problem is big-group radio (Alliance investors) forgot the people they always forget - the audience, which has never cared about HD, even if it were to work properly, which it does not.

So there's no self-aggrandizing, quick-buck prize involved in launching digital on new spectrum. In fact, expect big group radio to actively block it, because it would kill whatever feeble pulse HD still has. You're talking about "industry leaders," such as they are, who are reflexively xenophobic, paranoid, anti-growth morons. They'd rather watch their companies die on the vine than embark on industrywide improvements which benefit everyone. After all, if someone else is making a buck, that's a buck that COULD have been mine. That's the corporate mindset we're talking about here.
 
When a man has nothing to lose he’ll bet the farm. When a man has much to lose he won’t give an inch. Big radio believes they have something to lose, but their lack of vision and courage are the very things that will make their empires crumble.

Another example is SoundExchange, a company that works for the record labels and artists. A copyright decision implements a burdensome financial formula on Internet streamers to pay outrageous copyright fees. Pandora.com a company that get’s a million listeners a day may have to pull the plug because of these fees. I believe SoundExchange is trying to force streamers out of business,
and flushing their futures down the drain too.
 
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