RS HD Home Tuner / Insignia HD Home Tuner clone

[JohnnyElectron]

Radio Shack has a clone of the Sangean HD-1 tuner which also looks just like the $100 Insignia home stereo TUNER unit - AND - guess what - the AM section in the RS HD home tuner is total crap - it has a a very weird AGC or DSP where the volume is very very low, the tuner receives self-interference with the loop antenna, and even with an external antenna, the analog AM is total trash on 50KW WJR ! IF you can ever get it to lock into HD on AM, then it's half way decent HD audio, but until then, forget it. Built cheap, feels cheap despite the high price - this is no Sony tuner. FM is the usual from these HD tuners - decent selectivity, but sensitivity is 'nothing to write home about'. Only redeeming feature is the digital output on the unit. Do not waste your money on this one.
Why can't somebody make a nice double-DIN car radio like the beloved Sony HD home tuner (with fixes) and/or the Sangean HD-1X updated tuner?
If the Radio Shack HD home tuner was like the HD-1X, I would have been thrilled to get that version for $99, but it is not. Another HD disappointment - imagine that.

 

[spunker88]

I wish Sony would have put the XDR-F1HD into a car radio. The display would have been perfect for a car radio since its bright and has a clock. Sony does make an HD car radio. Its the CDX-GT700HD. I wonder if it has similar DSP hardware as the XDR-F1HD and is just as good in the analog department.

 

[Darth_vader]

"The mediumwave section in the RS HD home tuner is total crap: it has a very weird AGC or DSP where the volume is very very low, the tuner receives self-interference with the loop antenna, and even with an external antenna, analog MW is totally trashed on 50KW WJR!"

Yeah, that's to be expected. Wth the exception of their Uniden OEM police radios, one must never buy a private-label broadcast receiver at Rat $hack these days--analogue or Ibiquity--and reasonably expect it to be even of halfway decent quality. Anyone who does hold such expectations is a bloody fool--they're almost half a step above a Coby.

@s88--
Sony didn't do it, of course, but I sure did! ;o)

 

[Tom Wells]

The RS Accurian also had a bizarre AGC effect... on MW AM, the bandwidth narrowed as the signal got
stronger, so local 50kw analog-only station were perversely the most muddy sounding.
Weaker signals somehow were given more IF bandwidth (or that impression) through DSP.

I can't listen to it at all on MW, and it probably hasn't been powered up for more than two hours total.

I've gottten more use out of the 12v power supply for temporary use powering car radios on the bench than I
have the Accurian.

 

[muiscmike]

My Accurian is total garbage on AM, but the FM sounds good. I have been using an indoor VHF/UHF antenna that did not quite do the job. I hooked a loop antenna into the rabbit ears with alligator clips. I was able to get 96 K- Rock in Ft. Myers and the ESPN on K-Rock's 96.1-HD 2.

 

[satech]

The RS Accurian also had a bizarre AGC effect... on MW AM, the bandwidth narrowed as the signal got
stronger, so local 50kw analog-only station were perversely the most muddy sounding.
Weaker signals somehow were given more IF bandwidth (or that impression) through DSP.

Some HD Radios are stupidly designed on the AM band to consider any RF energy more than +/- 5 kHz away from the carrier -- even the desired station's own audio modulation! -- to be "adjacent channel interference", and will respond to it by narrowing the bandwidth. Probably the design was modeled after iBiquity's and Clear Channel's suggestion that all AM stations, even those not transmitting IBOC, should restrict their audio to 5 kHz.

But obviously that is not the case, so the HD Radio tuners with this design actually sound better when receiving a station with 5 kHz audio, because then it opens up the bandwidth to the full 5 kHz, while if you tune in a station transmitting full NRSC 10 kHz audio, the tuner considers those extra highs as "interference" and responds by clamping down the bandwidth to 4 or even 3 kHz.