I'm thinking about putting an HD Radio receiver in my Armada and was also thinking about putting the Sirius or XM factory head in as well. I've worked in radio for almost 20 years and find the arguments for terrestrial vs satellite radio interesting on both ends. With HD radio growing and units becoming more affordable, I thought I'd get everyone's thoughts here ... and no, I didn't forget about you who are going to say @#$'em both IPOD ROCKS .. My thinking is HD Radio, simply because, call me crazy, I believe a) you shouldn't have to pay for radio and b) the FCC will have it's hooks into satellite soon enough. Also, the sound quality is better on HD radio than it is on Satellite after going to a couple of places that have both, it's kind of like listening to the difference between an mp3 at 128kbs and 192. What are your thoughts either way. Thanks:)

Tough call. I have neither to be honest. But I spent about a week and a half in a rental with XM radio. My biggest beef with XM was the claim to have near CD quality...which of course it doesn't. But having used XM a lot lately, I really enjoyed all the channels and the lack of commercials. I can't stress how much I hate commercials (both TV and radio). On the down side; I became annoyed when trying to jam to a tune, but a Sonic Drive In overhang blocked the antenna's reception.....booooo! lol

I don't know if FCC will actually get their hands on the satellite radio franchise.....I don't think it will happen personally. But there is the whole possible Sirius XM merger. For me though, I'd go satellite, if only for the lack of crappy commercials.

My thoughts are that they are all still in the VHS vs. Beta stages and everything on the market right now is still priced a bit higher than it will be in another year or two and the dust is barely beginning to settle down and it's tough to know where it'll stay.

Think of this, everyone's out buying HDTV's right now and I think we all know the reasons are due to wants and the prices becoming lower and "Everything being digital in 2010" is an excuse because that only affects air wave TV that can be fixed with buying a cheap little Digital Receiver Box. Now, the kicker is that there's now UHDV that'll put HDTV to the curb and there's still room for improvement beyond that.

So, it really boils down to how much you want to spend for what. Personally, I think that once an accepted digital format is decided on for TV and Movies, then Radio will follow that format next.

Both will probably survive, and yes I understand the disdain for commercials (I write and voice a lot of them for our cluster of stations), but if you ever get a chance to listen to a station that has an HD broadcast (which btw, stands for "Hybrid Digital", not High Definition), the sound quality far surpasses satellite, HD can broadcast multiple stations on the same frequency.

One of the main reasons I'm looking into this is in the NY area there was CD101.9, a smooth jazz station and a format which I'm a fan. It changed to a rock station at the beginning of the year ... but it does broadcast the smooth jazz format on 101.9 HD2 ... same thing's happening for a lot of the oldies purests. Most of the oldies stations have changed to "Classic Hits", but the ones that broadcast in HD have the "true oldies" as a secondary channels.

Also, HD receivers for cars are starting to come down, JVC, Jensen and Dual have HD built in units for about $150 and hopefully, that should start to drive the price of the add-on HD tuners down from where they're at now which is around $300. I'm not a big fan of the look of any of them but hopefully some more attractive units will be out soon. In the meantime, I may look for a portable I can run into the aux input.

satellite all the way, why would you like to listen to commercials?

It's not that I love commercials, but sound quality is important too, and then there's the whole "free radio" thing. mp3's have kind of numbed the appreciation of great sound quality in exchange for the allure of bringing your whole library with you and being able to download anything you want, which I have to admit is kind of cool. But I still love the way a tenor sax, played on vynil, on a really good turntable, through a pair of killer speakers (like AR-1's) sound. If you've heard that, then for a lot of people, mp3's, AAC's, even CD's don't come close. Didn't mean to get off track, but my point is there is a difference.