XT-100HD
3.5
5
1
2
Disappointed
I purchased this unit to combine with my Sony XNV-770BT Head Unit. The unit itself works fine and does a good job receiving HD Radio stations. Where the unit fails is in it's integration with the Sony XNV-770BT. The HD Tuner only offers a minimal subset of the features available from the normal non HD Tuner built into the HU. Since the Sony XNV-770BT was released in Fall 2010 this tells me that Sony doesn't really try to support the HD Tuner.
For example, via XNV-770BT standard Tuner when you store a station it shows the Preset station # and the station stored. For the HD tuner integration it only shows you the preset button # 1-6. The standard tuner offers a PTY List that allows you to select stations based on categories like "Adult Hits", "Soft Rock", "Top 40", "Country", etc. This feature isn't even offered by the HD Tuner. The Tuner is thus very very out of date when compared to Sony's current line of radio tuner feature set.
If you know what stations you want to listen to and they come in HD then this may be a worth while investment. But you'll probably still want to use the standard radio tuner too. For this you'll need an antenna splitter like Metra 40-UV44 Female to 2 Male Y Antenna Adapter.
Sony's customer support will tell you that you don't need it. but you probably will since they don't disable the tuner selection on the XNV-770BT if it has no antenna signal. This means you'll get static. If you really want to purchase this unit buy a refurbished unit as it's not worth the $ that's being asked for a new unit.
April 4, 2011
