Alpine's TUA-T550HD tunes HD Radio, supports iTunes tagging

The natural successor to the TUA-T500HD does more than just enable a slew of HD Radio-ready Alpine head units to tune into HD Radio, as it throws in that recently unveiled iTunes tagging feature for good measure. Hailed as "one of the first in-car applications combining HD Radio with iTunes tagging," this accessory will team up with Alpine's latest lineup of in-dash players to let users bookmark over-the-air tracks for purchase at a later time, effectively eliminating the "Now what was that song?" syndrome. Sadly, we've yet to see a definitive price or release date, but you can rest assured that the TUA-T550HD is on the way.

[ugg.tryptophan @ Nov 14th 2007 1:44AM]

each tag tickles steves wallet

[James Baker @ Nov 14th 2007 10:49AM]

As long as you're actually buying the songs from iTunes.

[Krellan @ Jan 5th 2008 8:45PM]

I have the previous Alpine HD Radio adapter, installed with an Alpine head unit.

Have they fixed the bugs in this new version?

It's important to point out the bugs that existed in the old unit:

* No way to set a preset to a HD Radio subchannel. You *have* to tune into the analog station first, then wait for HD to be detected (8 seconds), then hit another button to enter the subchannel. Very annoying when driving.

* If there's a dropout for more than about 2 seconds or so, HD Radio subchannel tuning will be "forgotten", and the unit will lock back onto analog. It won't enter HD again until you repeat the above manual tuning process.

* HD subchannel availability isn't indicated in the display anywhere. You have to hit the buttons and guess. There's no way to see at a glance how many subchannels a station has.

* The currently selected subchannel is drawn in a very small font, very difficult to read when driving, and doesn't integrate well with the other HD Radio display features (name of track playing, and so on).

* Auto Scan feature can't automatically build up a list of local presets that are broadcasting in HD. You can set Manual Scan to skip over analog-only stations, but you can't set Auto Scan to do this.

* No display of signal strength. HD Radio should have this, since because it's digital, there's no way to tell by just listening, until it drops out completely.

* No defeat switch for the HD feature. In fringe areas, it can be annoying when the station rapidly switches in and out of HD mode. Most analog FM radios have a stereo/mono switch for the same reason. This radio badly needs a 3-way defeat switch: HD/stereo/mono).

* No AM Stereo. Since HD uses the same modulation technique as AM Stereo, it would have been trivial to add AM Stereo support to the unit, since the necessary receiver circuits are already in the hardware. This would give another listening option, since there's big interference problems with AM HD at night. Several stations, I've heard, are AM HD only during daytime, and revert back to the old analog AM Stereo system at night.

Fix these bugs and I'm happy. I don't really need iTunes tagging.