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DIGITAL AM?

DavidEduardo said:
It's discontinued. That should tell you something...

And you can fit a decent but not great AM antenna in that size; just a few loops of wire embedded in the case will do it, or part of the case can be made to function as a ferrite core for the same purpose. It's been done a lot before for small novelty radios.
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Go search Amazon for Portable HD radios, you'll find more than one.
 
AnyHuman said:
Go search Amazon for Portable HD radios, you'll find more than one.
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They are not small, for sure. And a couple are downright ugly.
 
I've had an Insignia portable since 2008. If it's the one being discussed here, I'm amazed that anyone would bid it up to $100 on eBay. It's a shoddy, buggy piece of you-know-what, with no tuning dial -- just clumsy up/down buttons that skip or revert to other frequencies when you don't push them quite right -- and horrible sensitivity. I keep it around for an occasional listen to WDRC-FM's deep oldies stream, but if it should become completely inoperable, I'm sure not going to look for a replacement if that's all that's now available.
 
CTListener said:
I've had an Insignia portable since 2008. If it's the one being discussed here, I'm amazed that anyone would bid it up to $100 on eBay. It's a shoddy, buggy piece of you-know-what, with no tuning dial -- just clumsy up/down buttons that skip or revert to other frequencies when you don't push them quite right -- and horrible sensitivity. I keep it around for an occasional listen to WDRC-FM's deep oldies stream, but if it should become completely inoperable, I'm sure not going to look for a replacement if that's all that's now available.
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I ended up getting a SANGEAN HDR-15 on Amazon. Looks decent.
 
CTListener said:
I've had an Insignia portable since 2008. If it's the one being discussed here, I'm amazed that anyone would bid it up to $100 on eBay. It's a shoddy, buggy piece of you-know-what, with no tuning dial -- just clumsy up/down buttons that skip or revert to other frequencies when you don't push them quite right -- and horrible sensitivity. I keep it around for an occasional listen to WDRC-FM's deep oldies stream, but if it should become completely inoperable, I'm sure not going to look for a replacement if that's all that's now available.
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I think I found one of those for around $30 around that time. I don’t think that was the price on the shelf, but I would’ve been able to coupon it down to about that. I think it was at a Best Buy, and the manager and I tried it out and couldn’t get it to lock on a single HD station. Her response was, “I wouldn’t even buy it for $1.00!”

I ultimately found one of those HD Radio dongles for the iPhone that would allow me to listen to FM HD. I got it on clearance for about $10. It actually worked reasonably well for what it was. I was disappointed to find the app used to control it was no longer being supported when Apple forced all of its apps to update a couple years ago.
 
BamaTX said:
Overpriced technology. You could have bought an Amazon Echo for less than that.
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Sidebar: in the sale days Amazon had last week, I bought at 40% of the regular price an Echo that has an 8" screen and a free one-year Amazon recipe service for the kitchen. We liked it so much we are waiting for it to go on sale again to get two more. It's going to be our intercom, our agenda, our encyclopedia and, of course, our replacement for a radio.

Of course we can ask for a station stream. But the really nice thing is to be able to say, "Alexa, play Go Your Own Way" or "Alexa, play the Rolling Stones" and, instantly jump to Alan Jackson or Miranda Lambert and then Los Corraleros de Majagual without touching the dial.
 
CTListener said:
I've had an Insignia portable since 2008. If it's the one being discussed here, I'm amazed that anyone would bid it up to $100 on eBay. It's a shoddy, buggy piece of you-know-what, with no tuning dial -- just clumsy up/down buttons that skip or revert to other frequencies when you don't push them quite right -- and horrible sensitivity. I keep it around for an occasional listen to WDRC-FM's deep oldies stream, but if it should become completely inoperable, I'm sure not going to look for a replacement if that's all that's now available.
Click to expand...

Insignia has improved their portable HD radios since 2008. I did have one bought back then, it was terrible.
In 2011 I got another Insignia from Best Buy, and the exact same radio had a much better internal antenna. I'd look for newer models of the HD radios, made after 2011.
 
BamaTX said:
Overpriced technology. You could have bought an Amazon Echo for less than that.
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Smart speakers aren’t my cup of tea. I have a huge Sony speaker that is Bluetooth equipped. Not looking for a streaming device All i need for that is my phone or iPad. , I was looking for a radio to play music at work. And wanted something different than analog radio but did not want to stream or use my stored music for that.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Sidebar: in the sale days Amazon had last week, I bought at 40% of the regular price an Echo that has an 8" screen and a free one-year Amazon recipe service for the kitchen. We liked it so much we are waiting for it to go on sale again to get two more. It's going to be our intercom, our agenda, our encyclopedia and, of course, our replacement for a radio.

Of course we can ask for a station stream. But the really nice thing is to be able to say, "Alexa, play Go Your Own Way" or "Alexa, play the Rolling Stones" and, instantly jump to Alan Jackson or Miranda Lambert and then Los Corraleros de Majagual without touching the dial.
Click to expand...

In the summer of '94, just before starting my sophomore year (and only semester) at the University of Arkansas Little Rock, I bought an Emerson home stereo. I used it for over 20 years, and, throughout multiple moves, it was always one of the first devices I would plug in. After all, I was usually waiting for internet and/or phone, and I had something to listen to while unloading and unpacking boxes.

When I moved into my current house about four and a half years ago, I connected my iPhone to a Bluetooth speaker and never bothered with the home stereo. My now ex-wife had friends who bought us two Amazon Echos. I got another one free for subscribing to SiriusXM at $5/month. She couldn’t take them to Europe with her after we split up, and I use them almost daily. That Emerson home stereo still sits in the corner of my basement and hasn’t been plugged in since the late Spring of 2016. When I went back to college in my mid-to-late 20’s and worked in radio, I used that Emerson to record my voicetracked shows while listening and doing homework, but it’s now collecting dust while its speakers sit in my garage. My boombox, which I bought over 20 years ago, hasn’t even been unpacked from its box in the move. I can’t remember the last time I played a CD either. Today, I wake up to the same station I woke up to (until I slept through it for two hours after going from third to first shift, arrived late to work and lost my bonus that month!) 24 years ago when I lived in Dallas. Now, however, I'm roughly 500 miles away, and it’s an HD2 signal that I don’t listen to over the air, even when I go down there.

Radio does indeed have a digital future. It just may not be HD Radio!
 
Mediafrog+ said:
I think WTAW still has HD, or at least did recently. I have occasionally been able to get a lock on it while near 290 and the Grand Parkway.
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Updating my own post: I was in Brenham and Chappell Hill yesterday and checked WTAW. They are still using HD and I was able to get a lock on it about 50% of the time on the car radio, about 35 miles from the transmitter.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
Updating my own post: I was in Brenham and Chappell Hill yesterday and checked WTAW. They are still using HD and I was able to get a lock on it about 50% of the time on the car radio, about 35 miles from the transmitter.
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Seems redundant for Bryan Broadcasting to have AM HD now that they have an FM translator for WTAW. KZNE never got HD IIRC.
 
BamaTX said:
Seems redundant for Bryan Broadcasting to have AM HD now that they have an FM translator for WTAW. KZNE never got HD IIRC.
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We might find out very soon if WTAW switches to pure digital, as the FCC approved all-digital "AM" today...might be better to call it DMW, or "digital medium wave." The station owners were among the groups pushing for this.
 
WTAW will not go all digital. The equipment is expensive and the number of radios in actual use is near zero. From a business perspective: do I spend $100,000 to go digital to have 2 or 3 listeners or stay analog, not spend $100,000 and have perhaps a thousand listeners?
 
b-turner said:
WTAW will not go all digital. The equipment is expensive and the number of radios in actual use is near zero. From a business perspective: do I spend $100,000 to go digital to have 2 or 3 listeners or stay analog, not spend $100,000 and have perhaps a thousand listeners?
Click to expand...

They already have the HD transmitter. All they need to do is operate in MA3 mode. And they are definitely interested in doing this. https://www.radioworld.com/tech-and-gear/digital-radio/takeaways-from-the-am-digital-order
 
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