Kenwood KTC-HR300 HD Radio Tuner Box with Itunes Tagging

One Comment

1. Pecan Barn says:

   September 21, 2009 at 6:06 am

   I bought one of these to attach to my new Kenwood DNX6140 DVD/navigation head unit. I’ve never tried HD radio before. As it turns out I haven’t tried HD radio since.
   
   First thing to note is that you can either use one of these HD receivers or integrated satellite XM/Sirus receivers, but not both. It’s one or the other into the back of the head unit but not both and no pass-through. That’s probably okay because I suppose there would be no reason to have both at the same time? In my case I didn’t care because I still have an old reliable Delphi portable XM radio I plug into the front bezel aux port.
   
   Back to the KTC-HR300. I would appear to not be compatible with autmobiles that use a power retracting antenna. In my Toyota Sequoia the antenna would go up and down automatically when the radio tuner was selected as source. This was true for both the OEM Toyota head unit and the new Kenwood DNX6140. The rub came when I “upgraded” my DNX6140 by adding the KTC-HR300 HD Radio tuner. When you add this tuner into your system it basically takes over and replaces the internal analog tuner so that when you select radio you’re going into “HD Radio”. Okay, that makes sense and is fine. However, the new HD Radio module doesn’t seem to send a power extending antenna signal to tell the antenna to go up. The antenna worked great with the DNX6140′s original built-in analog tuner; it just stops working with the KTC-HR300. I removed the KTC-HR300 and the power antenna started working again. Pluggin in the KTC-HR300 made the antenna inoperative.
   
   So I have no idea what HD Radio sounds like because I received absolutely no signal. When I called Kenwood they were stumped. They did make the remark that if I could get the antenna to go up I would still probably want to add an active antenna amplifier to help the signals. Upon further research I found that HD signals are much weaker than the good old-fashioned analog signals. Also, you need to take into account where you live as my local area only has two stations with HD content and they are 40 miles away. Where I live in the sticks we don’t have cable TV, DSL or other modern necessities. Thus no advantage to me there of any sort. Couple this with the fact I already have XM radio and a 20gig iPod Touch hooked into the head unit and to heck with it.
   
   While Kenwood cust. support has been responsive and timely they cannot figure out what is going on with the unit. They had me try grounding the antenna lead shielding and other things. Something tells me that they have not run into this problem before; which could likely be the case since very few new automobiles make use of power extending antennas.

   I’m not sure HD Radio is what it’s cracked up to be and would encourage any prospective buyer to do some research on the topic and investigate the availability of HD signals in the areas in which they drive. And with a modern iPod or iPhone attached via the KCA-iP301V interface cable you’ll never miss HD Radio.

   Rating: 2 / 5