Got An HD Radio? Here's A Cheap One...

The Insignia pocket-size HD Radio available at Best Buy is actually a very nice portable radio at a fairly cheap price ($50); here's why:

• It's small.
• It sounds rather nice when you're listening to regular FM stations.
• It sounds very nice indeed when you listen to HD radio stations.
• If the HD radio station is running separate audio streams (HD2 and HD3), it lets you hear them.

...but it's got some negatives:

• It only has a USB charging cable, so you need to have a USB port to plug it into. That said, there's probably one on the computer you're reading this on.
• You've got to have a pretty good signal coming from station to receive its HD version. The HD signal is only 1% of the station's analog signal, and while that 1% goes pretty far, it's still kind of only 1%...though I hear they may bump up that percentage a bit.
  
• One problem with HD2 and HD3 streams is that they evaporate when you get out of range. If you tend to do your listening in a particular place (as opposed to while driving) you should be okay as long as you get the HD2/HD3 station in the first place. Thos of us who are used to hearing our favorite radio station only when we stand exactly the right way with the radio in one hand and a piece of tinfoil in the other should be used to this sort of thing.

But it is a very nice little radio, and in my opinion, if you actually want to hear a daringly different rock playlist at some point on an actual radio as opposed to a computer, you're going to need one of these, because it's more likely that broadcasters will experiment with one on an HD2 or HD3 signal than on the main signal these days...

(Now to figure out how to make that happen.)