My HDR16 has finally been delivered successfully and I have gone through the programming, meticulously.
Though it was not received with a users manual, I was able to find one
here.
As this thread has included some flowering reviews of the receiver, I will take this opportunity to rain some urine on everyone's picnic.
Firstly, as both the bass and treble came set unusually high, I reduced them both to
zero for flat frequency response, and it sounds OK for having such small speakers.
Next, I was surprised that the radio did not come out of the box in the usual
American Exceptionalist mode, FM moved in half-channel increments, so this was the next thing I corrected.
As with many if not all other radios, changing the region erased all memory presets.
I have not found any local stations that would set the clock, so I set it and the calendar manually.
I do not believe it will change for summer and winter times, as there are no timezone settings
The manual makes no mention of and I still have no idea of what "Automatic Multicast Re-Configuration",
"Automatic Simulcast Re-Configuration", and Auto Ensemble Seek are, nor do I know what "No PS", and "No PTY" mean?
Yes, the display is extremely bright and it becomes illegible when viewed from the wrong angle. A photo sensor would be as big a plus as the
Swiss flag.
Why do the two knobs on the right side of the radio have to be angled as they are? Neither of them can be gripped firmly.
As the radio can be set to scan up and down by rotating and pressing on the tuning knob, I see no need to have dedicated buttons under the display to duplicate this function.
The first major flaw happened as I was setting my area for "special alerts".
It took my zip code finely and it took my state finely, but every time I scrolled up through the counties, the radio would reset and lose its memories before I could reach my county.
I eventually resolved this issue by scrolling backward from the last county. Why does the radio need ten alert areas, though? "EA History" means "Emergency Alert History".
The instructions refer to being able to receive alerts in the
standby mode, but what is the standby mode? I do not believe that means
off.
Now for the big one, and I might not have gotten this radio if I had known about this.
Yes, the memories do remember which sub-channels to store, but not when the radio is powered off and on or the band is changed off of and then back onto FM.
All HD radios I have owned in the past, every one of them, would power up on the correct HD sub-channel, but not this one.
In fact, if you have a preset programmed on a sub-channel and you turn the radio off and on or change bands back and forth,
tapping that preset button
will not, I repeat, will not cause the radio to leave the HD1.
You must either rotate the tuning knob up one notch or go to another preset and then return to the one you want.
This is unacceptable, inexcusable, and just plain funky.
To HDR16 or Not? Definitely, "or Not"!