[BC] Add one to the HD Radio return statistics

[Kevin Tekel]

There's been talk lately about Best Buy's house-brand ("Insignia")
bookshelf CD/DVD stereo system with HD Radio.  At $149.99, it sounds like
a great deal -- but according to my experience, it may be an example of
how adding HD Radio to a junky radio still results in a junky radio.

I took the plunge and bought one of these Insignia HD Radio shelf systems
today.  They had three boxes on the shelf but none set up on display, so I
had no chance to try it out before I got it home.

Here's the quick overview:

Pros:
* Seems well constructed, good appearance and finish.
* Speakers sound good for their size.
* Includes coaxial input for FM antenna.
* It does decode C-Quam AM Stereo, despite the user manual's claim that
stereo on AM is only available on HD stations.
* It does have a Stereo indicator for AM Stereo and FM Stereo, although
it's a tiny "curly-cue" indicator which doesn't make much sense (what
happened to plain ol' "ST"?).

Cons:
* You need to use the remote control for almost all functions... and its
response is painfully slow.  You push a button, and there's no response
for a second or two... THEN it does what you asked it to.  Tuning in a
station is frustratingly slow.  When switching from AM to FM or vice
versa, I count three seconds of no response after pushing the button,
before it switches bands.
* Buttons on the remote are tiny and poorly labelled.  Many have the label
BELOW the button, completely opposite of the industry standard, leading to
many wrong buttons pushed.
* No headphone jack, and the audio output jacks only work when using the
CD/DVD player, making the radio useless for personal listening or
recording airchecks.
* Reception with the included antennas is poor on FM and medicore on AM.
* HD Radio reception is intermittent or not available at all unless you're
within the "city-grade contour" of a signal.
* Mono/Stereo button only works on FM.  There is no way to force the AM
tuner to Mono when listening to a C-Quam AM Stereo station.
* Analog AM audio response is sharply filtered at 4.6 kHz, and sounds
shrill (it's probably not following the NRSC de-emphasis curve up to that
point).
* The CD/DVD looks exactly like a slot-loading unit, and you can stick a
CD into it, but it's actually a slide-out drawer.  I got a CD inserted
almost all the way in before I realized the mistake.

With the included FM antenna, it had trouble decoding HD from 99.1 WAWZ,
a super-local signal that usually pegs the signal strength meter on most
radios even with no antenna attached.  It displayed the PAD scroll (HD
Radio's equivalent of RDS) but most of the time it didn't actually decode
the digital audio.

On AM, it did decode digital audio from 710 WOR, but it was flakey at
best.
I had to hold the included loop antenna in my hand in a certain position
or else it wouldn't decode the digital audio.  But yet I could just let
the antenna sit and it was giving me C-Quam AM Stereo from 1450 WCTC, a
much weaker signal!  However, getting it to tune from 710 up to 1450 was a
real chore.  Every button push felt like the radio had to take my request
to a meeting and have its committee approve the action before it would
respond.

Needless to say, I returned it.  It LOOKS like a good little shelf system,
but it's just so frustrating to use through that HORRIBLE remote with the
reaction time of a 95-year-old person, and the lack of a headphone jack or
usable line output is a real killer for me.

I tried the Sony tabletop HD Radio in the store and it seemed to have
better reception and a MUCH better user interface, with instant response
to the buttons and dials -- plus the Sony has RDS, which I'm not sure the
Insignia has (it didn't show any RDS scrolls from the FM signals which are
transmitting it).  However, $179 is a lot for just a radio.  If it came
down to around $99 I would definitely consider it.



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