HD Radio headunits?
 

I heard the Tweeter commercials on TV advertising the HD Radio headunits... so far only Alpine has come out w/ that technology for car audio. The guy at Tweeter told me there's no static and it produces CD-like sound quality, since it's broadcast digitally. The rest of the headunit is exactly like a regular one, but it requires this little windshield antenna. Whatcha guys think of this? Anyone have any experience w/ it? And I'm guessing the other manufacturers will soon follow w/ this, and it'll become standard technology in car audio headunits, huh?

~Ramy

I bought the Kenwood Ez900HDs for the [3] a few months ago. It adds HD Radio & a Sirius tuner to a CD/MP3 and regular FM tuner. The built in amp sounds decent for my moderate listening volume. Going from the stock radio to this (with some 6.5" MB Quart 2 ways ) it's a HUGE improvement.

You have the extra antenna for the sirius but it uses the FM antenna for HD Radio. This unit requires you to activate sirius before the unit works at all.. so I did, but canceled after a month. I kept the antenna in the glove box and when I was using it, the magnet on it would hold it on to the center channel speaker.

What's nice is that radio stations multi-cast FM & HD, so when your HD signal fades, the FM picks up seamlessly. The sound is very crisp and has a greater range than FM. Basically sounds like satellite.

My guess/hope is that once they phase out FM, they will be able to increase the signal strength of the HD Radio since it shouldn't bleed across channels like FM does. Until that happens, the signal strength seems a little weaker than FM.

..dave

Dave, thanks for the 411 on that. It seems that everything's going satellite... I figure it's gonna be a while until all the manufacturers come out w/ the technology and it's considered normal (ie inexpensive).

No problem. For a decent head unit, it's reasonably priced.

I absolutely hate the idea of paying a subscription for freaking radio content though.. particularly when for the month I has the sirius service, it was full of old, tired music.

HD Radio is definitely a step in the right direction but if the cutover goes anything like the HDTV switch, we will never get rid of FM.

I'm hardcore Pioneer when it comes to headunits, so for now, I'll pass ;)

I feel you there. But the HD Radio is free, right?

Not following you...could you elaborate?

'k.

100% free

I was just commenting on the fact that years ago, when our government mandated the development of a higher definition TV standard and gave the manufactures a deadline, they fell short by a good bit. As it is now, through m shitty cable company (adelphia) I only have 4 or 5 HD channels. The goal eas to replace the broadcast standard but everyone seems happy to just meet the minimum. By now we should be well on our way to having HD broadcasts on every channel. We are no where close to that goal. And the cutover is an easier proposition for cable TV since most everyone uses a cable box. The box can enable non-compliant hardware to still function. There is no such device for HDRadio. Once they decide to pull the plug on FM, everyone's car radio will cease to function. It's going to take 20 years to fully make the cutover, and only if the auto manufacturers begin installing HDRadio into cars today.

Sorry for the rant. I'm just impatient, particularly with HDTV.

Haha...it's cool. Thanks for explaining the whole deal :) And I def. agree w/ you; it's gonna take auto manufacturers making it a standard feature to kickstart the changeover. Many offer XM radio as an option, and while it's gained a lot of popularity, it's still quite a ways from being the radio venue of choice.

I like my Xm, but that's cause I tore out the Fm Stereo bit, and put in a PC.... So I lost the FM alltogether, and needed something I could controll via a PC....