Where Are the Radios?

You'd think with this bold new technology, and the fact that every radio station in St. Louis (where the editor of this blog lives) saying "Broadcast in HD", that there would be some reasonably priced receivers out there.

Amazon.com lists only a few radios available. The first is the component system that NPR mentions - the Sangean HDT-1 HD Radio Component Tuner. This one costs 170 which is, oddly, the cheapest way to get into HD Radio. Most of the standalone radios are too expensive for many people.

First is the Sangean HDR-1 Table Top HD Radio Receiver. Again, there's that company - Sangean. Whoever heard of them? That radio is about 230 bucks. The Boston Acoustics standalone radio - Boston Acoustics Receptor HD Clock Radio (Platinum) is a bit cooler, plus it comes with a generally trusted name. Both of those have nice remotes, but the sound you're going to get from those will be limited because of the nature of a standalone radio. The Boston Acoustics model has detachable speakers which can usually just be annoying and cut down on the ease of portability of such units.

Finally, there's the Radiosophy MultiStream HD digital radio which looks a lot like those docking systems for an ipod. The cool thing here is that you can detach the radio from the speaker system, take it with you and use headphones. The reviews so far are mixed from Amazon shoppers, and there's no way this blog will order one at that price to test.

So far, we haven't found an HD Radio Tuner card for a PC, but we're still looking.