Category: accessible Devices
Hey everyone,
As a person that's interested in all things electronic, I was thinking about getting an HD radio. The thing is, I don't know where to begin. We've gotten into the digital age so I was wondering about the accessibility aspect. I've used analog and I don't know if analog HD radios are being made. Or is it better just to get a satelite radio. If anyone can recommend a good radio or has had some experience, I would appreciate the help.
I think before you consider one of these, you have to think about whether you want to pay a monthly subscription fee of about $12.95 or more if you want to buy things like premium sports packages, or if you want something that's free to listen to with no subscription. I think in either case, I have not heard of any radios built specially with the blind in mind, but I bet you can at least tune to stations you like in either case. For HD radio, you might consider going to www.hdradio.com and checking out the listings for stations in your area to find out if anything they offer on the HD2 and HD3 channels is of interest to you. I have two HD radios, and I like them, although I don't listen to them a lot. The thing I'm still curious about as for Satellite radio is if the music channels, no matter what the genre, offer more than what local radio is willing to play. If programming is pretty much restricted to what's popular and familiar, there's no point in paying $12.95 a month just to hear music that'll be played on standard radio anyway. Consider also that internet radio might even be more adventurous than either HD or satellite radio if you're looking for new and/or unfamiliar music to listen to. No point in buying technology just because it's technology if all you're going to get is stupid crap.
Sattelit radio does play newer music not heard on local radio. It's so awesome!e
I wouldn't mind paying a subscription if I'm getting a good variety out of satelite.
Oops, I should have clarified myself a bit. My tastes tend more towards much older music, because I'm old, so I'm unfortunately not interested in who plays the latest songs first. My complaint with most commercial oldies and classic rock formats is they play things much too safe and stick to a limitted playlist when there are many good album tracks or songs by some bands that just don't get played probably because some suit who probably doesn't even like music decided people didn't want to hear that. Hahahahahaha! If satellite radio took more chances than commercial radio in that regard, I'd consider it, but if they're just going to play it just as safe as local radio. there's no point.
If you don't mind classic rock, sirius xm does a channel called deep tracks which is album cuts and stuff like that, and they do a couple of standerds radio stations and stuff like that. What's more, the satelite stuff is all comercial free. HD radio stuff tends to be simalcasts of am news talk stations in a better quality, or a some what specialist station. Some times, you get some of the bigger fm stations having a couple of branche off stations on hd that play some specialist stuff, but it's more specialist as far as the type of music goes rather than weather it's played else where if you know what i mean.
This will nt be helpfull to this topic but since i stumbled apon it i'll ask my question here. Is there someware online I can look at the availible plans because i tried looking on xm's wesite and sirius's website and they don't seem to give very good discriptions. I love sattelite and so i have been tryng to find something good to spend money on and this may be it. I like the music stations play and I like how cumorcial free and new the music is.
I've also been interested in hd radio. Our classical station has aditional stations, as well as our jazz station. I noticed at Christmas time, the hd stations would have holiday music.
For the person interested in older music or more rare tunes... You may want to consider something like live365 mobile. I don't know a whole lot about the mobile service, but I believe you can listen to it on cell phones and PDAs. Live365 is brilliant for more customized taste. More so, than satelite, in my opinion.
I know that npr.org offers some hd radios and there are some great reviews out there.
Maybe hd radio accessibility would make a good article for access world or one of the other magazines.