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 - Wonderful Addition to My Home StereoI will make this short and sweet. I have owned the HDT-1 since Dec. '06 and find myself actually listening to radio again. Before I would listen to my library of over 2,000 songs and 500+ CD's or other digital music. Although I have an extensive collection I found that I was not being introduced to new music and loosing touch with the modern music and culture. The HD Radio changes that since I can now listen to new music in digital quality and sound comparable to my own digital music collection. I feel that the HDT-1, although with its obvious drawbacks and the drawbacks of HD Radio, the technology is quickly improving HD Radio will have a permanent placement in my home, office, and hopefully soon my car. Thumbs up to Sangean, iBiquity and the stations working so hard to keep me in the know of new music as well as the music I come to enjoy over the years. Rating:  - HD Radio is NOT Cost Effective !HD Radio reception is problematic, even with AM-loop and external FM-dipole antennas. The HD channels are just repetitve programming, as copies of their analog parents. Save yourselves $250 and just listen to HD Radio on-line, if you have to, or just buy cheap analog radios. HD Radio jams our airways with adjacent-channel digital interference and will destroy the AM band ! Just Say No to HD Radio ! Rating: - Sangean HDT1 is the best tuner on the market, adds new digital life to an old stereo system!This tuner will amaze you. It outdoes any audiophile tuner made. The selectivity and sensitivity are outstanding. You will pick up stations you never knew existed. Then you will pick up the second and third channels of new digital audio. No noise no interference from close stations! This component tuner has brought new life to my living room. I can sit across the room and not only hear a new sound, but see it too. The Sangean has a cool large blue display, so that I can see station information, song title, and artist. The thing even has RDS text for regular analog FM stations. The remote control allows me to move up and down the band, seek all stations, or seek just the ones that have the extra HD channels. Want a second opinion? check the on-line forums for the topic "HD radio", like AVS or Yahoo FM tuners. You will see that the tech heads are battling it out over the specs this tuner presents to their test equipment. No one can believe they get all of this technology for $ 199.99. The Sangean HDT1 even has a frequency spectrum display. My favorite screen on the display is the numeric signal strength meter, now I can aim my antenna with precision. You won't be dissapointed with this tuner. You will truly be amazed. Can't wait till Sangean adds HD to one of their large portables. Rating:  - Good value, awkward controlsThe original tuner that I bought from Amazon was apparently defective because it exhibited high distortion and a long delay in the sound. This was painfully obvious when another FM was turned on in a nearby room. Sangean kindly sent me another tuner which worked much better, and only exhibited a very slight delay. The slight delay in the sound could be annoying to families which tune to the same station in adjacent rooms, as it sounds like an echo. The sound of the replacement unit was very similar to my NAD 4150. The local NPR station (KUHF) apparentely broadcast with more energy in the top high audio frequencies than they did on the regular FM signal. However when closely comparing HD with regular FM the HD had a subtle distortion and a very slightly more vague stereo image. I can not say if this is due to the station, the tuner, or to the HD format. The audible noise in HD was very similar in HD and regular FM. This is probably because of the signal processing by the local station. The Sangean did have excellent reception from the supplied look antenna while my regular FM tuner needs a directional roof antenna to get rid of multipath distortion. So the Sangean should be just the ticket in bad reception locations. The clock does not keep time when the power is remotely tuned off, and the bright display might be obtrusive in a bedroom. There is no way do defeat the HD and listen just in FM. I found tuning between HD-1 and HD-2 awkward because it accomplished by the tuning button, but some may like it. Also the station selection buttons must be preceeded by an extra button push, which is also awkward. The box is fairly high, and it would have been nice to have a thinner one, as it is mainly empty space inside. If the sound had been noticably better on the station that I listen to most, or the box had been much thinner, I probably would have kept the unit. Users with lower quality FM tuners or who are in poor locations will probably love the quality of the Sangean. The inclusion of extra channels on FM is also a plus, but they may degrade the sound on the primary HD-1 channel. The cost is quite low for a tuner capable of this quality of performance. But, I will wait until some of the transmission bugs are fixed before I consider buying again. Rating: - AT Last... An Affordable HD Tuner !This is the first affordable tuner on the market that makes use of a new DIGITAL broadcasting system, developed by Ibiquity Digital. In a nutshell, local FM and AM stations can now broadcast a digital signal along with their analog signal. The digital transmission "fixes" a couple of long-standing reception problems, i.e. "multipath" distortion on FM and "static" and noise on AM. In addition, AM can be broadcast in stereo using this system. Additional information such as song title/artist etc. and Secondary channels may also be transmitted. For more info on this system visit Ibiqitys' website. In the Portland area, for example, there are now 12 FM stations and 2 AM stations already transmitting in HD digital, and 9 of the FMs transmit a (for now, commercial free) secondary channel. See the Ibiquity website to obtain a list of stations transmitting in digital in your area. In addition, there is now a HD station in Eugene (slightly over 100 miles away) that I can receive in HD about 80% of the time (using an outside FM antenna). KZEL (96.1) is the FIRST non-Portland HD station in Oregon. I have had the Boston Acoustics "receptor" table model for almost a year. While the receptor is a fine table radio, I really wanted a tuner to plug into my audio system. The HDT-1 is a perfect choice for this application. This tuner is very selective and sensitive. Remember, however that due to FCC restrictions, the transmitted power of the FM HD signal is only 1/100 of that of its "host" frequency, so tuner sensitivity and a decent antenna are both important in receiving HD signals. Sangean HDT-1 tuner does a fine job of decoding the HD signals, including the secondary channels. When a station is selected, the normal analog signal is first heard for a few seconds, while the digital "buffer" is filled. When the radio switches over to digital, the improvement in reception is many times quite dramatic. AM reception is not as good as it could be, but IMHO, it is better than the AM reception on the BA receptor. An external antenna can improve this. If the AM reception were slightly better, I would upgrade to 4.5 stars rating. In addition to AM HD Stereo, my HDT-1 DOES seem to support the old analog Motorola C-Quam AM stereo, at least I hear something that sounds like stereo on one station in Portland that is still using this system (KBPS-AM 1450).
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