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My HD Radio experience

S

sathman01

After much reading and thinking, I decided to buy one of those portable HD radios from Best Buy to give it a shot in the D/FW area. I really was hoping I could get many of the stations I listen to on my home radio but in HD.

Sadly, I was sorely disappointed. The radio barely picked up anything in the house and what it did pick up was the same old non-HD I can get from my tabletop radio. I thought about it for a second and decided to take the HD radio outside. Sadly, I was disappointed outside too. I picked up maybe half of the listed HD channels and of those the info provided was just call letters and not the extended info that is HD radio regards as so vital to the experience.

I live about 30 miles east of Cedar Hill and I guess what people are saying is true that HD signal does not reach as far as standard signal.

I was hoping to get rid of the cost of XM but I after the bad HD Radio experience I had, I might even pay more for the XM premium.

Overall, I would give HD Radio a 3 out of 10 and not recommended to others. The big radio owners just need to abandon the HD radio idea and put the money into getting some real talent for their stations.
 
You were lucky, you saw the light for only 50 bucks, me 84.00, some others, much more than that. I also like Sirius-XM, it works and works just about everywhere. I like that and I like analog radio, why? Because they work and give me what I want. Analog FM sounds the best out of the three but Satrad has by far much more choice, and AM has good talk shows and some very good oldie shows. Between satrad and analog radio I have all I need for radio.
 
I spent over a 100 on mine for my truck and I was really disappointed. The reception even for analog was very poor. Well I had a Dual radio, but still it wasn't worth it. I'm going back to analog radio.
 
I'm roughly 60 miles from Orlando Fl, and can pick up a few HD1's & 2's. They're 100,000 watt boomers.
In Palm Coast, we have one HD station that's 6K and it's loud and clear. Though traveling just a few miles from the tower site the signal just disappears..

It's a curious thing..

HD as sold, delivers a cleaner signal and better sound. But when the analog and digital syncornize you get a few seconds of echo. That's cool?

When the stars align HD can sound a little brighter.. a little?

With HD2 when the signal drops, instead of a little shhhhhh you get silence, as in nothing!

As for formats, I've found one oldies station.. who knew Orlando had an oldies... And the rest sounds typical, like what you'll hear on old school FM...
 
"But when the analog and digital syncornize you get a few seconds of echo. That's cool?"

Not cool. Poor adjustment of the delay by the engineers. Set properly, you will not be able to hear any time delay during the switch.
 
I agree it's not cool. As a new user to HD radio, the next generation of radio broadcasting our product has some flaws. This is supposed to be better! I heard the time delay on more than one station.
 
Wrong, K6JHU. Color TV always worked fine. NTSC color never required constant technical revisions to get the system to operate properly a la HD Radio.

First of all, it only took about ten years for Color TV to get into widespread use, roughly 1955-1965. And that lead time was only due to the time it took networks to convert to color program production - a massively expensive undertaking - and receiver tech had to catch up so simple, reliable receivers could be mass produced at reasonable cost.

Stable, easy to use Color TV didn't make it to market until solid state technology made it possible in the late 60s.

HD has already been around for 7 years. Its trajectory doesn't remotely resemble Color TV, or FM radio, as HD's proponents have insisted lately. The "it just takes time" is just another attempt to distract from the fact that HD is circling the drain.
 
Savage said:
HD has already been around for 7 years. Its trajectory doesn't remotely resemble Color TV, or FM radio, as HD's proponents have insisted lately. The "it just takes time" is just another attempt to distract from the fact that HD is circling the drain.
Click to expand...

The start of "Project ACORN" to develop an in-band system actually goes back 21 years to 1988. There's a timeline on the last page of this brochure, following the part about "Future-proof", "no-compromise" IBOC transmission "solutions". (Gag me with a spoon)

http://broadcast.harris.com/product_portfolio/prod_media/EXtreDigitalbrochureIBOC.pdf
 
KB1OKL said:
Color TV does not and never did interfere with other channels.
Click to expand...

No, but if you're going to be nostalgic about it, it did cause interference with the same channel.

It wasn't until the invention and wide adoption of the comb filter (in the early '70s ?) that the chrominance stopped interfering with the luminance. And the change in frame rate from 60 Hz to 59.94 Hz caused interesting beat effects to roll vertically.

- Jonathan
 
jhardis said:
It wasn't until the invention and wide adoption of the comb filter (in the early '70s ?) that the chrominance stopped interfering with the luminance.
Click to expand...

That's true, but NTSC worked pretty well before the wide spread use of comb filtering. Even in its early days, it was a very noticeable improvement over black and white. The biggest barrier to wide acceptance was the cost of a TV, which ranged from a low of $500 to well over $1000. That’s in the days when starter homes were $10-12,000 and a perfectly good new car was around $2000.

jhardis said:
And the change in frame rate from 60 Hz to 59.94 Hz caused interesting beat effects to roll vertically.

- Jonathan
Click to expand...

Again, that was a very minor problem that most people never experienced. NTSC was certainly not perfect, but it brought color TV to the US well before anywhere else in the world. If you will check, you will note that PAL, which is a superior way of doing things, was based on NTSC fundamentals. NTSC was a workable solution using the technology that was economically available at the time. Moreover, it was compatible with existing black and white TV’s and did not cause undue problems for people with existing TV’s

That is quite unlike HD Radio, where the adjacent channel interference can and does cause analog signals to be degraded.
 
I've have no issues with HD radio. With the HD 100 I can received all of the Columbus Ohio Hybrid Digital signals. I can pick up some out of market HD AM stations. For the example KMOX and WLW.

I have no issues receving distance analog AM and FM as well.

With my HD 100 I can receive WCRS LPFM on the main tower and the translator. All the previous analog radios with the exception of the Eton 5OO I can't pick up WCRS. The majority of the analog radios with or without the PLL tuners are design to pick up the strongest signals.
 
The one very positive thing about HD radio is it has resulted in some very good tuners coming to market. The Sony and Sangean models immediately come to mind. They seem to work more or less "as advertised" for HD, but the real stand out is their analog performance. They show amazing sensitivity and selectivity that previously would have been beyond the reach of most consumer products.
 
Chuck said:
The one very positive thing about HD radio is it has resulted in some very good tuners coming to market. The Sony and Sangean models immediately come to mind. They seem to work more or less "as advertised" for HD, but the real stand out is their analog performance. They show amazing sensitivity and selectivity that previously would have been beyond the reach of most consumer products.
Click to expand...
It seems like all the HD radios have either very good to excellent selectivity on FM. Including the new Insignia portable HD (FM only) radio and the Sony XDR-F1HD appears to have the best FM selectivity of all the HD radios I tried.
 
ddsparxx said:
Chuck said:
The one very positive thing about HD radio is it has resulted in some very good tuners coming to market. The Sony and Sangean models immediately come to mind. They seem to work more or less "as advertised" for HD, but the real stand out is their analog performance. They show amazing sensitivity and selectivity that previously would have been beyond the reach of most consumer products.
Click to expand...
It seems like all the HD radios have either very good to excellent selectivity on FM. Including the new Insignia portable HD (FM only) radio and the Sony XDR-F1HD appears to have the best FM selectivity of all the HD radios I tried.
Click to expand...
I have a Sansa Clip MP3 player. It's one of those ones that has FM but it's much smaller than the Insignia HD radio. The sansa clip works the same way because you have to plug it into a usb cable to recharge. It has 20 FM presets while this HD radio has 10. I don't know why they have make what would be a good radio with only 10 presets. I live in the Los Angeles area and can find more than just 10 stations I would like to be able to preset. I would think my Sansa Clip recives FM pretty well but its like one of those I-Pod Mini's really small.
 
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