Why no HD radio on most receivers?

I agree. I'm looking for decient component tuner with HD Radio that won't cost me an arm and a leg. ... A Boston HD receptor will set me back $300, it's got a reputation for having BAD sensitivity. I'm looking into a vintage 70's reciever to hook up to my 200" long FM antenna when I get it installed (I'd be able to get 15 HD Stations).

I'd be willing to fork over $300 for a really sensitive component tuner with HD Radio, but the closest thing is a $2,000+ Rotel model... grrrr

Like all new technology the first generation is expensive and won't work as well as what follows. Thats the price of being an early adopter. Having the "latest thing", regardless of the penalties of being one of the first, has a strong appeal to me...how about you?....If you said no don't get a HD radio for awhile.

Yea, I'm probably going to be part of the "last adopter" group of people.

I'm just a little bit frusterated because I've heard of HD Radio for more than three years now, and I can recieve a dozen HD stations. ... however, I can still count the number of HD Radio enabled recievers on two hands.... grr.

I live in Burlington, MA outside of Boston. Radio reception at my house is ok to really good
(stations: 92.9-2, 93.7-2, 100.7-2, and 102.5-2) I was able to tune in.
If you live in an area where reception of radio is somewhat difficult...you are dead in the water if you have it built in to a 30-40lb dead weight (refering to a receiver). If its a Boston Acoustics HD radio (or similar)...at least you can try a few spots in your home to get a better signal...
I tried the BA piece and had some diffculty with it pulling a constant signal. Once I got a signal, it cut in and out occasionally. It reminded me of your favorite CD skipping....not good.

if they don't compress the thing to death i would
consider getting it.

Bit-wise or volume-wise?

bit-wise

Eh, it's not that bad. But yes, the only AVR on the market right now is the yamaha that has HD builtin. The rotel i do believe is finally shipping, but yea, $2k for a freaking tuner?!

The radio stations here in Orlando are advertising for HD radio ALL THE TIME. Being obsessive compusive this is not a good thing. A week ago the ads started and now I am on the internet doing research everyday. Crutchfield is sponsoring a part of them (so everyone I would think is getting similar Ads). I REALLY want HD Radio now.

I may have to start with the car (boooo) instead of the house. Hopefully this takes off with automakers including it in every new car within a year or two.

there is an xm,hd-rds card avaliable for the
integra-research
integra 10.5
onkyo 1000
should be shipping soon

Okay, lets look at the breakdown of the items posted by oztech...

Onkyo is going to be a $3.6k beheamoth
Integra 10.5 is $4k

Sooo.... the yamaha 4600 is only $1700... these are the only AVR's on the market that have HD radio built in... Again, the bite that iBiquity has on the HD radio market. Stupid royalties... They won't put any HD tuners in sub-300 dollar AVR's anytime soon due to this reason alone, and this reason is why HD radio will die very quickly. Greed Kills.

What amount of royalties are they charging?

Last i had heard it was 3% of net sale, or $50 (i think), whichever is greater. That's for the receivers, the radio stations have to pay a flat fee per year to even broadcast it, which has a scale constantly going up for the next 10 years. (this year it's $20k, next year it'll be 25, year after, 30, and so on)

Greed will definately kill this guy unless someone tries to take down ibiquity with some monopoly laws?

When some electronics hobbyists asked Ibiquity in January what they would need to pay to make HD receivers, they were told the royalty was only $6 for each receiver with a dealer cost above $150 and 4% for receivers with a dealer cost below $150 (in U.S. dollars). That sounded reasonable, except they wanted $25,000 upfront before they were allowed to manufactuer any HD receivers. That eliminated the hobbyists but it's probably a reasonable expense to major consumer electronics manufacturers.

It's something like that... Pretty assinine actually. The earlybird manufacturers get the $6/set, as of july this year though, it's now a percentage afaik.

Dev kits are still $150k though. :/

How does the car unit JVC KD-HDR1 come in under $200??

I know the thread is about home equipment, but I would think the same royalty system would play out here.

I do see they are out of stock at many places right now though.

I haven't played with the JVC unit, alot of people do like it, but it is an "entry level" deck for JVC, just has HD radio in it... Don't expect too many features, but it's been a good deck for the people i've talked to... Look at the Kendwood EZ900, HD built in, but the kicker of it is, you HAVE to have a sirius subscription for the deck to even turn on! (kinda stupid if you ask me) But, it's a mid-level deck.

Integra's TUN-3.7 is a card based tuner which can accommodate either an AM/FM card or AM/FM/XM/HD radio card. List price with the second card should be around $550 I'd guess.

I was just at Best Buy today - still no HD radios of any kind, but PLENTY of Satellite radios (to include, in-dash units and the really cool, new hand-held Stiletto) and radio-enabled cell phones. There is no way HD Radio is going to be able to compete with these new technologies - these new technologies are being developed at a blistering rate, while HD Radio is still waiting to get out of the starting gate.

Crutchfield is currently selling it at that (reduced) price.

Don't know whether it's in stock or not though.

Rotel is promising an HD and Sirius stand alone tuner!!

I am of the belief that JVC is deliberately discounting the cost of their KD-HDR1 by assigning a higher price to their newest entry: the KD-SHX900. Since I have the KD-HDR1 ( and paid the original $300.00 or so for it back in March) I had contacted Crutchfield to see if there was any performance difference that their experts had noted. I thought to myself "surely no one would fork over all of that extra cash just for a pretty full color display without a performance boost in HD receiver design!" but I was wrong. The useable sensitivity spec are virtually identical, and they may have tampered with the highest EQ center frequency by lowering it from 16K to something below that ( maybe 14K but I can't verify with my latest copy of Crutchfield). The new set does boast a hefty 5 volt preamp output, but that has nothing to do with pulling in better HD reception.
That said, my hat goes off to JVC for POSITIONING their initial effort KD-HDR1 into the consumer-friendly pricetag ballpark of $200.00. It's thinking like that which can potentially boost initial car audio sales of the "All in one" head-unit approach for those serious HD radio enthusiasts that prefer to take their "plunge" into this technology via their automobiles.

Yes they are. Being a "budget" audiophile, I see absolutely no reason to shell out thousands for a box that receives 96k compressed HD radio, and extremely low-bitrate Sirius satellite radio.

The samples of Sirius posted on OpenGeek.com have fully convinced me NEVER to get the service! For one, I can hear the compression garble clear as day. Secondly, The codec they use TOTALLY and UTTERLY destroys any harmonics.

Listening to Sirius is like watching analog TV through a good HDTV which is hooked up to an old antenna with twinlead taped to the mast [which causes color shifting and other junk].

HD Radio at 96k sounds more or less like a 128k MP3, and 48k sounds, well... bad (noticable garble).

Why not get a $200 Sangean?

Buying a $3000 HD Radio/Sirius tuner is like buying a $500 tape deck to listen to sun-baked homemade cassette tapes from the 60's

To me HD radio is terrestrial's answer to satellite. Give it up already. There's room for FM and satellite radio. Satellite (XM for me) is great since I travel all over the province regularly where I don't want to listen to Podunk Radio from a 1000 watt transmitter broadcasting from a town of 10,000. Talk about hack DJs!

There's lots of decent terrestrial radio that satellite will never pick up, so I switch between FM and XM all the time. When I'm tired of that, I listen to one of the 6000+ songs on my Creative MP3 player that's also wired into the car.

I can't see HD catching on bigtime.

My $.02.

It depends on the station. The only 96 Kbps station in my area is simply the best OTA radio I have ever heard in my life. I'd be happy to listen to 96 Kbps stations for the rest of my life until someone comes up with something better.

The 48 Kbps stations vary all over the place. Many stations don't know or don't care what they're doing yet. Some have been completely messed up but an email to the engineer has always quickly solved the problem, at least until they break it again (software updates seem to wipe out their adjustments). It sounds like few if any of the engineers have gotten any training with the HD Radio equipment they're programming and are they're just filpping through the manuals and guessing at what the best settings are.

Most stations around here are trying to make their 48 Kbps feed sound exactly like their analog FM which is a waste of bits, especially when their HD2 stations sound so much better than their main station. Other stations have excellent sounding 48 Kbps feeds that are clearly better than analog FM with only an occasional swirling artifact.

It's still all just digital, and to any audiophile (budget or not) it will always sound like crap. Then again, some of those audiophile type people spend $600 on power cords that "eliminate ground hum".... Man i'm in the wrong line of business.

HD sounds okay, Sirius sounds not bad (not great mind you), XM isn't horrible either, considering the constraints ALL these technologies have upon them. (Ever seen Apollo 13 where they all come into a room, dump out a box of crap and say "This is how we have to make them live."? This is how i view most digital audio technologies.)

I'm an audiophile, and I think digital is the best thing that's happened to audio, so don't generalize. I just don't think that 96K is high quality audio. I spent the weekend listening to CDs on pedestrian McIntosh equipment driving Quad 989 electrostatics in my living room. Actually put me in another world. I then played some 128 Kb music from my Ipod over the same system and wasn't impressed. This wasn't double blind, so I might have some built in prejudices, but well known objective reviewers have documented differences.

Bob

I can't say if my dad was an audiophile but Lord almighty he had a lot of expensive audio equipment. Reel to reel decks, FM receivers from the 60's through the 80's, professional turntables and huge speakers. The back of his set up looked like a telephone exchange. He had graphic equalizers with the sliders at seemingly random positions and you didn't dare touch anything or he'd freak. The only time he ever used this stuff was when he had guests over.

So why did he have so much stuff and why did he keep on buying stuff? Because he had to have better equipment than everyone else. Whenever one of his friends bought a new Mackintosh this or a Marantz that, he'd have to get one that was better and out went the "inferior" component. Our garage was full of stuff he said was "broken" but I found all of it either worked perfectly, or needed a simple repair like a tube replacement or had some cosmetic defect. By robbing his "junk" I was able to piece together a pretty good system myself. I still have the Marantz 2325 he replaced around 1980 (I taped a broadcast of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" off of it!) and the thing still sounds better than any other FM receiver I've owed and I used it all through college. I think he replaced that one because the light behind the strength and multipath meter (yes, a multipath meter!) burned out. Oops, it's still burned out.

But 96K HD Radio from this first generation B.A. Recepter sounds better than anything I've gotten on that receiver. As long as HD Radio can continue to do this, it will continue to be the superior transmission method. If you want to hear the best sounding radio, this is what you'll have to buy. If my dad were alive today, no, he would NOT buy it because it's digital and digital is garbage. He thought a CD was something you got at the bank, not something with music on it. He called me an idiot when I told him TV stations receive digital feeds from the networks. If a clock didn't have hands, he couldn't tell you what time it was. Yes, we disagreed on many other things.

Unfortunately, I'm down to only ONE 96K station in Portland now so things aren't looking good. Fortunately it's my favorite jazz station that sounds pretty bad in analog but I have a feeling the clock is running out on this station's great digital audio. Even the public broadcasting stations are adding useless 48K channels for no logical reason.

As I said, I love digital, I don't mind the mistracking/clicks and pops/warpwow/or any of the other 'attributes' of vinyl. I remember getting ready to cringe when the soprano voices on the Messiah came on because I knew that if the tracking/antiskating adjustments weren't perfect, it would be like fingernails on the chalkboard.

It is so cool to be able to listen to a CD and have nothing but undistorted sound.

I agree, I haven't heard a good FM signal in a long time. There is always distortion due to multipath, or a residual noise level. The compression ruins dynamics, there's a lot wrong with it. A true digital broadcast medium that takes the same bandwidth as a conventional FM station is the answer, but with the 'chicken and egg' situation of broadcast radio, it won't happen for years. Wouldn't it be nice if the 20 Mb/s bitrate for commercial DTV could spare a megabit or so for clean audio. One 6 MHz television channel could provide 30 high quality radio channels (if each were 700 Kb or so). There are ways of doing it, but I don't see it happening for a while.