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Typical Purchasing Experience for HD Radio
Radio World reports on a test of trying to buy a darned HD Radio receiver: Joe Milliken writes of his attempt in the San Francisco Bay Area retailers to see what was in stock, whether salespeople knew about the technology, and whether there were promotional materials around. The best score is a B- at a old-style retailer--which didn't have any units in stock.
For car audio, it's particularly bleak because while there are multiple radio head units that pair with HD Radio modules, but this writer couldn't find any store that had hooked any of this up for demonstration. In one store, the Boston Acoustics tabletop radio was listed with its January 2006 $499 price; the staff changed the price only when he asks. Sounds like indifference.
This is quite bleak, but the turnaround is coming, as many radio makers will have units out as early as this summer. Once many models hit the market and prices on the low-end units drop, HD Radio will explode in a way that I think no other technology but Wi-Fi (another obsession of mine) has seen. HD Radio sounds so good and works so well in its goals that the limitation appears to be entirely on the availability of shipping equipment.
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