The frustration of buying an HD Radio

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: Tech buzz: Buying car stereo can be frustrating : Eric Benderoff | Tech Buzz : March 26, 2009 : My car was broken into last week. It happened during lunch after I parked in a bustling Chicago neighborhood. : Broken was the passenger-side window. Stolen were a GPS unit, a stereo and the iPod attached to that car stereo. I made the mistake of leaving the GPS suction-cupped to the windshield, a come-and-get-me signal for brazen smash-and-grab crooks. : I was mad and distraught. But I saw a chance to make the best of a bad situation. Instead, more frustration followed. : My car stereo, optimized for an iPod, was more than 2 years old. Because newer models offer more features, I started to get excited about the possibilities. : For less than a month's car payment, aftermarket car stereos boast the same perks found in new cars. That includes satellite radio, HD Radio, hands-free Bluetooth calling, a CD player, iPod controls and an auxiliary jack for any portable music player. : One problem: It's nearly impossible to walk out of a store and have all those features working. I'm not referring to satellite radio, which requires a subscription. But HD Radio doesn't need one, which I had to explain to the sales teen at Best Buy. : That was just one of the annoyances encountered as I tried to untangle the mixed messages conveyed by the product descriptions. : My first choice was a $159 Sony deck with built-in Bluetooth. Many autos have Bluetooth as a standard feature. Also, the stereo could stream songs wirelessly from a music-playing phone or MP3 player. : But I wanted HD Radio more than Bluetooth, and this unit was "ready" for that. The sales teen thought "ready" meant I needed a subscription, like satellite radio. But it meant that a part was needed to make it work. Best Buy didn't carry that part, I was told, making the HD Radio function moot. : (HD Radio is free, but you need the right tuner. It significantly expands the number of local radio stations as broadcasters multicast different programs over the same frequency. There are 21 radio stations in Chicago multicasting programs. They offer specialty content, such as disco, '80s and deep cuts.) : Then I looked at a $117 deck from JVC—the brand stolen from my car. : It had a built-in HD Radio and was Bluetooth-ready, the opposite configuration of the Sony deck. Did Best Buy have the JVC part so the Bluetooth would work? Of course not. : I bought the JVC deck because I wanted HD Radio. I also could plug in any portable music player—an iPod, Sansa, Slacker, Zune—into the auxiliary jack and it would work. (The deck will display iPod song data if I add a $50 accessory. I had one in the stolen unit. Best Buy didn't have the part in stock anyway.) : Was it possible to walk out of a store with a reasonably priced deck—let's say, for less than $200—where every listed feature would work? : Rob Cummins, merchant director for Best Buy's mobile electronics, said my experience was unfortunate. : The Sony HD Radio adapter is offered by Best Buy, but was not at the store I visited. (He searched local inventory before talking with me.) With the JVC model, the Bluetooth part is not yet available from the maker, he said, adding that Best Buy put the deck into stores sooner than planned to satisfy demand following Circuit City's demise. : More to the point, he acknowledged that the word "ready" (as in Bluetooth-ready) is "not a word customers understand." : "We clamor for the same thing you do," Cummins said, "to offer a pretty good unit without having to include add-ons." : If that HD Radio add-on for the Sony were available, I probably would have passed because of the price. Cummins said it sells for $105. : He believes I could've gotten a deck for about $300 that would've had all the features I wanted in working order. : Perhaps, but I didn't want to spend that much. : I did get the key feature I wanted in my new deck, but there should have been more. That's what the display offered. : I just hope I don't leave my Bluetooth earpiece sitting on the dash the next time I park on the street. : (Chicago Tribune)

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