High Definition Radio?? A Farce??

Question

I work in a warehouse where I can not get my favorite radio station on my headphones. I'm like in some sort of dead zone. What exactly is HD radio & is there such a thing as satelite radio headphones?? . . .or any other ideas please . .thanx

Answer 1

Do you have a computer at work? Perhaps you can stream their audio (or Yahoo Music Launch) feed using your computer and your work's internet.

HD radio is digital radio and it is free reception, but you need to buy a new HD radio receiver (pricey right now). You need to make sure that there are stations transmitting in HD in your area.

There are portable satellite radios, but you need to pay a $10-15 monthly fee. But you can use it at work, home, or in your car.

In your case, I would go first to RadioShack and buy a good FM radio antenna (about $10-20) and see if that helps, before I spend more money on other alternatives.

Answer 2

The reason you don't get regular radio is the warehouse is a steel building or else has a lot of steel re-inforcement. This is good, because you don't want it to collapse on you, however it blocks all radio signals, which includes HD and satellite.

There is one solution. That is to get a small FM converter (see eBay) of the kind sometimes used with portable ipod or mp3 players. For the audio you can either take a stream off the Internet or use a receiver that you can run an antenna outside the building with. Check with your boss first to see if they would allow such a set up.

Answer 3

This is a website describing HD radio (http://www.hdradio.com). Basically it is transmitted similar to "standard" radio, but the sound quality is supposed to be better and it can include non-audio information. Normal radio tends to be at the sound quality of a mid-quality MP3, while HD radio is supposed to be full CD quality. You need a special tuner for the HD radio.

Satellite radio is a separate thing altogether. I've seen the "MP3/ipod" player type tuners for satellite radio that you use with headphones. That would probably work, of course you have to pay for satellite, and you won't know if you can get reception until you try it.