I've recently picked up a Sangean HDT-1 for a song ($70 bucks
shipped), and have hooked it up to my stereo. I have noticed several
stations here in the Twin Cities that do not utilize the display
features of HD Radio, and was wondering if it was due to a)
incompetent engineers, b) incompetent listener (me!), or c)
incompetent corporations (Ibiquity or Clear Channel?). Here's a list
of most of the stations I received during the day on Jan. 26, 2010;

88.5 KBEM RDS only

89.3 KCMP HDx2

90.3 KFAI HDx1 (not 24/7)

91.1 KNOW HDx3

92.5 KQRS HDx2 ###

93.7 KXXR HDx2 ###

94.5 KSTP RDS only

97.1 KCTZ HDx2 ***

98.5 KTIS HDx3

99.5 KSJN HDx2

100.3 KTLK HDx3 ***

101.3 KDWB HDx2 ***

102.1 KEEY HDx2 ***

102.9 WLTE HDx2

104.1 KZJK HDx2

105.7 WGVZ nothing detected

106.7 K294AM (KFAI translator)

107.1 WFMP RDS only

107.9 KQQL HDx2 ***


Observations - using an RCA VHF/UHF amplified antenna works extremely
well here near Little Canada, with the caveat that the amplification
level needs to be at the absolute minimum, or else the front end gets
swamped.
I've also noticed that there are varying degrees of info passed on via
the display; for example, the stations marked with (###) only show the
station name and HD channel (KQRS-1), with absolutely no song/artist
data to speak of (yet it is showing up via RDS on my Grundig Ocean Boy
510); and the stations marked with (***), upon HD lock, only show the
following repeating text; "hd radio...www.HD-Radio.com"; what's
interesting about that is my Sony XDR-S3HD *does* show artist/track
info on those (***) channels... incidentally, most, if not all, of the
latter group are Clear Channel stations, so maybe they have decided to
save some money by eliminating engineers? Then again, for as much as
they have tried pushing this on the public, no one really seems to
care, so their engineers must not care too much either.

My questions would be this - is it possible that the Clear Stations
are just not implementing their display data correctly, or have there
been changes to the data stream that my rig isn't capable of decoding?
I've read several accounts of radio staff using this model as their
off-air monitor equipment, since they are built so well. I am quite
impressed with it so far. If anyone is interested, the firmware on
this rig is Ver. 1.3f 061227.

Does anyone know why the display error is happening? Thanks for any
info you might have.