Sirius XM Premium, portable Insignia HD Radio hit flat notes
— -- You love your HDTV and MP3 player. But your heart belongs to radio.
For a commercial medium that dates to the early 20th century, radio is still going through a metamorphosis. This week, Best Buy started selling what it says is the first portable HD Radio receiver, the $50 Insignia HD Radio Portable Player I've been testing.
HD radio, which made its debut in 2005, is kind of the high-definition radio equivalent of HDTV. Think AM and FM without the snap, crackle and pop sounds that tarnish standard broadcasts.
I've also been testing the recently released Sirius XM Premium Online application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app is free, but you'll have to pay for a Sirius XM satellite subscription.
Both offerings fall short, albeit in very different ways. The Sirius XM app is missing top draw Howard Stern, and play-by-play broadcasts of Major League Baseball, the National Football League and NASCAR races.
Meanwhile, HD coverage on the Insignia in the outskirts of New York City, where I tested, was poor. Tune in for details:
•Insignia. If you want to sample HD radio, the Insignia radio is small, light and cheap. Just maintain modest expectations.
Until now, to listen to HD radio, you needed a special unit for your home, car or boat. None of the 100-odd receivers on the market was the type you'd carry in your pocket. That changes with the Insignia, the house brand of Best Buy. And Microsoft has said it's adding HD radio to the next Zune player, due in the fall.
There are more than 2,000 AM and FM stations around the USA broadcasting in HD. Broadcasters can "multicast" or compress a digital signal so that FM stations can offer one or more subchannels at the same frequency. For example, you can tune into 95.5, 95.5-2 or 95.5-3, and hear different content on each. AM stations can't be split into subchannels.
Alas, the Insignia radio doesn't include its own AM band, because producing a portable with good AM quality is difficult. Zune won't have it, either. For AM junkies, some stations broadcast a digital version of their AM channels on an FM subchannel.
