onkyo up-ht1 ?

Originally Posted by iraweiss

I'm also interested as I may be purchasing an Onkyo TX-NR 3007 or 5007. I could either purchase the up-ht1 or look for an additional input for my Sony XDR-F1HD. I'm sorry Onkyo removed the HD tuners from the top end receivers this year.

Originally Posted by hoehand

well i know that it is only available for newer versions of Onkyo receivers.I haven't seen a good price other then 149 but i think this Monday ill pick this up.

Originally Posted by TomF

My UP-HT1 HD Radio Tuner got delivered a few hours ago. I've installed it and set up all of my presets.

Initial impressions: It's a small black box with only a 3-way slide switch in the front lower right corner that can be set to Tuner/Through/Auto. Other than that, not much to tell. There is no display on the tuner itself. What looks like it could be a display is just a decorative treatment. The photos I've seen led me to believe that the display was on the tuner.

I turned off my receiver, plugged the tuner into the Universal Port, plugged in the antennas, set the switch to Tuner, turned the receiver on, and selected PORT. The display on my 707 immediately showed PORT on the first line and UP-HT1 on the second line. Setting up the presets is nearly identical to setting up the presets on the built-in AM/FM tuner on the receiver with a couple of exceptions. One difference is that you can't use the front panel, you have to use the remote. To actually set the preset number you have to press the Setup button on the remote and using the right and left arrow keys select the number you want. If you have an OSD-capable receiver (the TX-SR707 and up I believe) it will also display on your TV.

All of the FM stations in San Diego that broadcast digitally came in as digital with the exception of KPBS. KSDS is a college station affiliated with SDSU and broadcasts at a lower power and this station frequently switched between analog and digital. Both are at the low end of the FM band. AM stations were a complete bust and I couldn't get even one station to come in as HD. The reception for AM was actually worse than the built-in tuner. I also get LA stations and of the two that I sometimes listen to only one came in. On the other one there is just silence but no static. I set 15 presets. Of the 15 only four don't broadcast digitally. Of these 11, five have multicasting with one sub channel. KPBS is supposed to have two but since I could only receive it in analog I couldn't access them.

For FM reception I'm using my old ChannelMaster 4221 4-Bay Bowtie Antenna which I originally put up on the chimney for OTA HD almost 10 years ago. This also worked really well for the built-in tuner for FM. For AM I used the loop antenna that came with the tuner. I'm about 20 miles north-northwest of downtown San Diego but the radio broadcast towers are all over the county.

Most of the HD Radio stations have RDS but not all. The display formats varied quite a bit, but all of them show the call letters or nickname, artist name, and song title. Some will also display the genre of the station. You can press the Display button on the remote to cycle through this information. Otherwise it will scroll on one or both lines depending on the station and the format.

The OSD shows the info in five lines:

[AM/FM] [Frequency, Call Letters, or Nickname] [Preset #]ch
[HD(n) (if broadcasting in HD and which subchannel]
Name : [Artist Name]
Title: : [Song Title]
Other : [Just about anything the station wants to put in here]

The actual data displayed also varied widely depending on the station. The OSD only displays briefly when tuning to a station. When you press the Display button it will also show on the screen as well as the receiver display but the OSD is gone in a second or two. With my TV I'm left looking at a blue screen most of the time so the OSD isn't worth using except during setup.

I was surprised to find out that the non-digital FM stations had RDS but I don't have any cars that have radios with RDS so I didn't know. I was also surprised to see that when a commercial comes on it shows the name of the product or company. I was mostly surprised to find out how inconsistently the RDS data was displayed between the different stations.

Sound quality: It's difficult to do an A-B comparison because the volume of the built-in FM tuner is higher than the HD Radio tuner. Also when you select PORT the reception is initially analog and then switches to HD. I did notice a difference when listening at a louder volume. After listening to the digital signal for a few minutes and then switching I heard more noise in the analog signal from the built-in tuner.

Multicast: See above. The stations that have multicast have a completely different playlist with no dj or commercials. If you briefly lose the digital signal for a multicast channel, the sound just goes silent as there is no analog to fall back on. This is kind of annoying.

Is it worth the currently available price of $150? That's pretty subjective and completely up to you. It depends on where you live, how many HD Radio stations are in your area, what kind of reception you'll get, whether you like the multicast channels, etc.

After I ordered this I've started looking into digital music streaming and ended up with a Logitech Squeezebox v3 (Classic) for the same money. It's been shipped but the shipping info from UPS is sketchy. It will probably arrive next week so I'll have three weeks to compare. One of them will be probably be going back.