HD & Sat. radio questions

Actually all these questions have been asked and answered on the v forum over the last year. There are lots of technical details regarding HD radio, so here goes:

1) Buy a longer antenna, it will help. I used one that fit a 2008 Prius.
2) HD radio is transmitted at 1% power of the normal analog station. So a 30,000 watt station on FM will be transmitting 300 watts on HD. Auxiliary HD2 and HD3 channels, when available are even less power and are often in Mono.
3) HD is true digital which means it's all or none.
4) The primary HD channel will fall back to standard FM when necessary
5) HD digital processing takes more time than analog processing so there is often a noticeable shift unless your station is totally high end and provides an analog delay on FM so that the shift in is sync. This is not required by the FCC so most don't do it.

Bottom line, buy a better antenna and listen to the strongest station. Otherwise you can turn HD off at the button to the right when on a given station. Long term solution: ask your favorite station to upgrade their equipment from 1% power to 4% or even 10%. These have been recently allowed by the FCC after hearing the issues you and thousands others have expressed.

Yes you get 3 months of free satellite radio. You can reprogram the preset buttons anyway you want, and can mix and match AM, FM and Satellite which will then work from the steering wheel buttons.

Finally, I like HD radio because of it's typically excellent low and high end frequency response. I think it's sound quality is better than Satellite, although satellite has much more variety and does not get affected by distance. You can listen to the same satellite station non-stop from Seattle to Miami. The cost is high but many think it is worth it. Some report that SiriusXM will give you a deal if you don't buy it immediately after the 3 month trial.

 

I would add a warning that SiriusXM has mandatory auto-renewal.

 

Yes any longer one that works on a Prius, primarily because it has a coil in it, not just a piece of wire. The satellite guys know who you are, probably from the dealer.

 

You'll be getting letters, lots of letters from the satellite people.

 

Sirris has a A-La Carte which is the least expensive. It costs $8.00 per month + Taxes and Royality comes in about $10 and you can select any 50 stations. You can visit on the web site and sign up or learn more about it you will need your sirius account number so they can assign it to the right car. Best to create an account thus you can cancel at any time but probaly on the year anniversary is the effective date. I also believe you can ask them to stop sending you soliciations. Where I live there are only 6 or so good radio stations that I may like, and frankly those are not that good with to much talking and or commercials. Sirus has good Jazz Stations, Vintage Rock, Pop, and the talk radio is great in the morning with CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Fox and others. $10 heck I spend that on lunch so it won't break the bank. Than again if your looking to cut expenses this is good to not sign up.

 

It's illegal for them to charge you without your permission. Of course, it's always possible to you signed away your rights in the fine print when you signed all of those documents when you bought the car. In my case, satellite radio stopped working 2 weeks after the 3 month period ended (so I had it for 3.5 months). When I try to tune to a satellite radio channel now, I get a voice advertisement telling me to sign up for the service. Not thanks. It's way too expensive for what I get out of it.

 

We also got letters and phone calls when our 3 months were up. We just told them the sat radio cut in and out too much and was NOT worth it for us. Ours was also on when we bought the Prius and the dealership supplied SiriusXm with our name, address and phone #. When it did work it seemed that the songs repeated about every 3 hours. Not for me.

 

Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. You can get rid of the SAT presets. If I remember correctly, there are a total of 36 presets available. You can set any of them to SAT, FM, or AM. And, you can overwrite any of the presets at any time. On the audio screen there are two buttons: Options and Source. Press Source. Then select either SAT (no point if you don't subscribe), FM, or AM. Now, tune in a station using the tuning knob. Press and hold the preset button where you want to store that station. Whatever used to be in that preset will be erased and replaced with the station you just tuned in. So, just overwrite the SAT channels with either an FM or AM station.