HD radio
About a month ago, I ordered the Boston Acoustics tabletop HD radio intended to replace the PAL FM radio in our bedroom.
I ordered it because HD radio seems to be the coming thing, and the local public radio classical-music station we listen to, Dubya Hex Hex Hi, is broadcasting a three-part HD signal.
One part is a digital send of their usual analog FM signal, and is what I’m tuned to.
The other sends are their all-news AM signal, and a radio reading-service for the blind.
The HD radio arrived a week later, and then sat a week until I had a chance to set it up.
I’ve had to dicker with it a little.
Its display was so bright it lit up our bedroom at night, but I was able to dim it.
I also had to back off the base-boost.
It has ports outta the back aimed at the wall.
Without a wall it would need a lotta base-boost, but a wall reflects the porting.
Base-boost is adjustable too, so I backed it off.
But New Years Day it didn’t work. Tune it to Channel One and nothing.
(Actually, it would come on at first, and then die after about five seconds; but that’s because the radio tunes the analog signal at first, and then switches over. Tuning the analog signal gives it speed of tuning.)
So I turned on our old PAL radios.
Their sound is not as good as the new HD radio, but it’s better than nothing, and way better than our old gigantical boombox.
Our PAL radios (we have two) seemed wonky too.
Sometimes WXXI falls back to a low-power signal. Ya can tell because the radios go ballistical if ya stand just so.
So maybe the low-power signal had taken out the HD send; although Channels Two and Three were working. —Or maybe Channel One was just off the air.
WHATEVER; I’m back to Channel One, and have been for a while.
I was thinking I’d have a PAL to get rid of, but maybe not. I returned a PAL to the bedroom in case the HD tanks again.
And my HD radio is about a second ahead of the analogs. Ya only hear that in our laundry-room.
I ordered it because HD radio seems to be the coming thing, and the local public radio classical-music station we listen to, Dubya Hex Hex Hi, is broadcasting a three-part HD signal.
One part is a digital send of their usual analog FM signal, and is what I’m tuned to.
The other sends are their all-news AM signal, and a radio reading-service for the blind.
The HD radio arrived a week later, and then sat a week until I had a chance to set it up.
I’ve had to dicker with it a little.
Its display was so bright it lit up our bedroom at night, but I was able to dim it.
I also had to back off the base-boost.
It has ports outta the back aimed at the wall.
Without a wall it would need a lotta base-boost, but a wall reflects the porting.
Base-boost is adjustable too, so I backed it off.
But New Years Day it didn’t work. Tune it to Channel One and nothing.
(Actually, it would come on at first, and then die after about five seconds; but that’s because the radio tunes the analog signal at first, and then switches over. Tuning the analog signal gives it speed of tuning.)
So I turned on our old PAL radios.
Their sound is not as good as the new HD radio, but it’s better than nothing, and way better than our old gigantical boombox.
Our PAL radios (we have two) seemed wonky too.
Sometimes WXXI falls back to a low-power signal. Ya can tell because the radios go ballistical if ya stand just so.
So maybe the low-power signal had taken out the HD send; although Channels Two and Three were working. —Or maybe Channel One was just off the air.
WHATEVER; I’m back to Channel One, and have been for a while.
I was thinking I’d have a PAL to get rid of, but maybe not. I returned a PAL to the bedroom in case the HD tanks again.
And my HD radio is about a second ahead of the analogs. Ya only hear that in our laundry-room.
posted by BobbaLew at 7:37 AM
1 Comments:
HD channel programming is bland, repetitive material from the main analog channels. HD Radio is a farce:
http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/
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