I'm about to order my Mini and am torn. Is the HD option something I should get? Seems that it is not very big yet but might be in the future. Will I kick myself five years from now if I don't spend the $500 today? Rick 67 Austin Mini Cooper S

 

If you've heard HD radio you wouldn't even need to ask this question. It's going to be around for a long time, much longer than XM. HD will give you many more station options, as well as on-screen station info, and in the future interactivity with your iPod. Definitely go for this option.

 

I find the HD radio in my 07 sounds the better than any other audio input, CD, mp3, aux in. Super clarity. I would definitely get it. You might also check out www.hdradio.com to find stations in your area. The Mini's HD radio is the first time I've heard an HD station. I was surprisingly impressed with how good it sounds.

 

Depends on what you consider to be "worth it". HD radio in itself does have value, but $500 is an outrageous price (actual cost for BMW is probably well under $50).

 

The now gone Audio package was worth it for me. I don't know if I would spend $500 on it now unless there were stations I liked in my area that used it.

Now that TV is going digital, I wonder when analog FM will be doing the same?

 

I'm curious, too. I guess it's possible, but I don't think it's likely. It's one thing for a family to have to upgrade a few TV sets (or just get converter boxes), but can you imagine having to replace every FM radio you own or face them becoming obsolete? Car radios, personal music players, home stereo receivers, clock radios, and the list goes on.

Also, analog FM radio occupies such a small slice of the lower end of the RF spectrum (about 20 Mhz wide, centered near 100 Mhz), that it's frankly not good for much else. You could fit maybe 3 HDTV channels' worth of data in that space, but that's all. So that spectrum will probably belong to radio for a long time. The stations are putting more and more digital content "in between" the conventional analog FM stations, but I doubt they'll axe the conventional analog FM broadcasts any time soon - there's just too little to gain and too much to lose.

 

Digital TV was an FCC mandated change that was announced over 10 years ago, to give the industry time for the changeover. There are currently no plans to mandate that radio change to digital, and I doubt there ever will be. But even if the FCC announced something tomorrow, it probably wouldn't take effect for 12-15 years. Are you going to keep your MINI that long, and how many miles will it have?

 

Yeah I'll have my Mini for at least that long. I buy cars once or twice in my lifetime. My other car is 17 years old and still going strong.

I would still get the HD option. It makes non HD stations sound like mono to me.

 

We just dumped XM because of the flat sound (only way
i can describe it) and I'm working on putting HD into
my wife's VW and my mini.

I'll be using the aftermarket kit with remote display
and wired in FM modulator. It's about $60.

I have to wonder how long XM/Sirius will be around.
It was kinda expensive to us for what we got
(have absolutely no interest in MLB), about 6 stations
we listen to, and our favorite station they don't play it
on the weekends. Go figure.

 

XM and Sirius (we have both) "starve" their stations for bandwidth, hence the reason for the flat sound mentioned. They give their mainstream stations on the order of 30-40K of bandwidth, which is a pitiful amount but necessary due to the limited total bandwidth available (from the satellite), and the number of stations they insist on having.

For XM, the saddest - and most infuriating - thing is that CH24 ("Sunny") gets the most bandwidth of any of their music stations (~44K), yet is a station with commercials!!

Same pretty much goes for Sirius, though some will say they have better compressor technology so their stations sound better. Couldn't prove it by me.

The good news is that when the merger goes through, they'll be able to consolidate duplicate stations and maybe increase the allocated bandwidth to each. Of course that will be down the road, as it will require new radios capable of receiving broadcasts from both XM and Sirius satellites.

For now I live with it as it's much better than listening to traditional FM stations.

And I'm looking forward to HD radio in my new Clubman!

 

I went through the thought process on HD Radio (which does not stand for "high definition," BTW) before ordering the Clubman. Was still thinking about adding it today, even with the $500 tariff.

But I wanted more information on the technology. The HDRadio.com website implies that it's the first step toward a conversion similar to the digital TV switchover coming next winter. it isn't. They also tout the fact that the programming is free, implying that it will always be so. Another post directed me to this webpage , and while it's Wikipedia, it seems to be fairly complete. The most troubling section was this:

So, all things considered at the moment, I'll stay with CDs and the iPod interface for quality music; Sirius for reasonable quality and talk/news, and broadcast radio for whatever else. Mebbe I'll use the $500 for adding Sport Seats...

 

Although misleading, I have to admit that naming the technology "HD" was a very clever marketing move.

To promote the technology, the HD Radio Alliance urged broadcasters to provide commercial-free subchannels during the roll out period. It is ironic that the quality of HD Radio will be at its highest while the number of consumers remains low. The more popular HD Radio becomes, the more programming and sound quality will suffer. With popularity, the HD channels will carry the same content and commercials we have on FM today, and sound quality will degrade from increased number of subchannels.

 

So is HD radio essentially all the stations I listen to currently, but much better quality? Can I pick up these stations from a farther distance thans with regular FM/AM?

I'm in the NY/NJ Tristate area if it matters.

 

Go to HDRadio.com. There is a place you can do a station search.

Understand that that's the industry website.

 

after browsing that site it looks like you can upgrade your current car to HD radio for a couple hundred dollars while keeping the factory head unit. Even with install I don't see where BMW/Mini is getting that $500 figure from?

Perhaps it has something to do with the Mini being made overseas and HD radio being in the U.S. It might be expensive for them to import the equipment from the U.S. into England and install it into the cars at the factory. Then again the receivers are probably made in asia anyway :dunno:

 

Well, it's the price you pay for integration. If you do the external receiver, you'll have to have an external control panel, similar to the satellite radio receivers that aren't part of the OE radio, with attendant power and signal wiring. No thanks.

 

You'll want to put on your mental filter, but there's a lot of information as to "why not" at the HDRadioFarce blog.

I don't mean to sound like an anti-HDRadio evangelist. I was set to add it to the Clubman, and decided I'd do some research, and outside the industry website, the information is not positive. HTH.

 

I got the HD option for the coverage initially. I'm about 45 miles from the AM/FM transmitting towers in Houston; and it's rare that I can even get an AM station tuned. I'm loving the quality of the sound of HD much better than Sirius (in my other car). Here we have some stations with 2 additional HD channels; very often a commercial will begin on channel 1 and I'll switch over to channel 2 or 3 to avoid it.

Drawback Alert: You can only store the primary HD channel!!!! Well, that's not exactly true. You can store the alternate channels all day long, and you have to because after you turn off the car - they're gone.

Is it worth $500???? With a 60 month car note that's $8.30 a month for 5 years - you choose.

 

Can HD Radio be added at the dealer after the fact? I live in Canada, but frequently travel down to the US. HD was never offered as a factory option.

 

Don't think so.
Be thankful.

 

I do believe they have digital radio in Europe.

 

What about the new DICE kit being promoted by EAS, is this a way to add HD after market?

 

There are a few annoying quirks about the setup with the HD Radio. If you're traveling in and out of range of the "main stream" (one that is in both HD and analog) station of a particular channel, it echoes, presumably because there is a slight time difference in the broadcast of the two "identical" signals. This wouldn't be so bad if you could just turn off the HD portion when you are in outlying regions, but there's no option to do so... so you're stuck listening to the stadium version of talk radio as the radio bounces back and forth between HD and analog.

The other thing that's annoying is when you select a secondary HD radio stream and then stop at a store, or something similar, and find it back on the primary stream when you get back, which then has to be re-recognized as an HD before you can advance to the secondary streams (about 5 seconds).

The fidelity of the HD is okay... I had a chance to listen to the same song as a 256kb MP3 (via the bluetooth kit) and on one of our local NPR stations and it sounded much better as an MP3. Specifically, cymbals on the track were butchered, but not in the same manner that 64kb mp3s butcher them. Everything sounded a little more like sawtooth waves (vs sine waves) than the mp3 track did. In other words, it sounded "harsh," but it wasn't just the presence of higher frequencies that was the culprit. Of course, this could be due to processing on the radio station's side to combat the attenuation of high frequencies in a regular FM broadcast. Regardless, I haven't been overly impressed with the fidelity.

On the other hand, having extra streams of my favorite radio stations completely makes up for it. :-)

 

I don't get any echoing when it drops the HD and goes to analog FM. Also with the Nav option at least, there is a menu function to turn HD radio on/off.

I've found the HD quality varies from station to station. Not really sure why. One of my local stations sounds super clear while others don't sound nearly as good, but still better than analog.

 

Audio quality varies widely even with analog. Whether broadcasting in analog or digital, it's up to the station to feed it with good quality audio to begin with, and it has always been the case that many don't care.

The same will happen with HD Radio if it ever becomes popular. Stations would prefer to sell more advertising by adding HD subchannels, at the expense of audio quality. Currently the technology is promoted through providing higher audio quality and attractions such as commercial-free subchannels. Ironically, if HD Radio become popular, broadcasters have less incentive to keep up with the things that give HD Radio some appeal.

The way I see it, HD Radio was introduced too late. It might have been well received before the days of iPod/MP3 integration and satellite radio, and now Internet integration is also coming. Not to mention that standard radio is already "good enough" for most people.