http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/ Engadget Comments for Alpine's TUA-T550HD tunes HD Radio, supports iTunes tagging http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/Nov 14th 2007 1:44AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/Nov 14th 2007 10:49AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/14/alpines-tua-t550hd-tunes-hd-radio-supports-itunes-tagging/
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.
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