HD Radio?

Is anyone aware of a way to add a HD radio tuner without installing a whole new head unit? I would have expected to see a little stand-alone tuner by now that would plug into the aux jack, but nobody seems to make one. I can add a head unit (like I have done on every other car I have owned) but I would prefer a simple solution if there is one. Thoughts?

 

I'm going to take that as a "No." Which is fine. It did seem unlikely that PriusChat would reveal secrets unknown to Google.

 

After some more open-minded research, relatively low cost seems doable. There are plenty of head units with HD tuners, and some can be had for under $100. The cheap way to go would be one of those in a "stealth" install like some others have done below the stock unit. If the add-on unit has a line-out I guess I could even run it to the line-in on the stock receiver. That would be the clunky equivalent of a stand-alone add-on receiver (like the XM unit that I'm ditching) that I originally had in mind.

But if I'm going to go to all that trouble, it's hard to see why I wouldn't spend the money on a good head unit and gain sound quality and other perks.

Just thinking out loud.

 

Right, SiriusXM is easy. I also don't like it. I have had XM since '04 and I'm getting rid of it due to a number of gripes. I'd rather listen to local programming during my commute, and XM drops out constantly on the routes where I drive my longer trips. My original mission was to find a HD tuner of a similar form factor that I could add in place of my XM tuner. No such option seems to exist.

Fortunately PriusChat'ers seem to be all-over aftermarket stereos. A couple days' research tells me that a new head unit is what it takes to do HD in our cars, and that's completely doable.

 

Thanks for pointing those out! One of those portable units is pretty much what I was looking for.

 

I found the JVC tuner plus "professional" installation kit on Amazon for ~$30, so I'm going to give it a shot. The JVC tuner gets middling reviews on its own, but this kit has the advantage of plugging into the car's stock antenna instead of relying on a crappy internal antenna. That probably gives me the best shot at decent reception without going to a new head unit. I'll report back on the experiment once it's installed and tested...probably a couple weeks.

What was I saying about PriusChat and information that I can't find on google?

 

I have results, and they are mostly good. Once I figured out how to get to the antenna plug on the stock radio, the install was a breeze. The "professional"-type installation kit comes with a splitter box that allows the radio to steal the signal from the stock antenna. Taking the dash apart, running the wires, and buttoning it back up probably took 90 minutes. I could probably do it again in under 30. The radio itself is mounted on the same custom bracket where my XM radio sat, so that was a non-issue as well. (The installation kit also comes with the bracket, and you can either screw it or stick it to your location of choice.)

In terms of functionality, I have no complaints whatsoever. HD radio is not a panacea, IMHO. But sound quality is definitely a step up over analog radio, for stations that support HD. For those that don't, I think the stock receiver sounds better but the JVC unit gets by. Sometimes the HD signal is too weak and it defaults to analog, and those transitions are seamless. I can hear the difference from the sound, but the content is perfectly in-phase. There is one spot (a small valley) on my commute where this happens daily.

The one truly bad thing is the display settings. JVC decided, for whatever reason, that there should be two ends to the brightness setting spectrum: looking at a welding torch, and staring into the sun. Apparently nobody in Japan drives at night with the radio on. The lowest setting (MIG welder, specifically) would be positively blinding if I had the radio on the dash. With the radio mounted near the cup holder, as in my case, it is merely a nuisance. No, there is no setting to shut the backlight off after XX seconds, as the XM radio had. I'm not sure what to do about that, but some modification will be necessary as we head into winter, the season of dark commutes.