Goodbye To The PSR-500

As GRE fades into history, so does its supply of scanners that are still in the retail channel. Scanner Master sold out of the PSR-500 weeks ago. Now Ham Radio Outlet has sold their remaining inventory of all GRE scanners, including the PSR-500, which was being sold for the fair price of $359.95.

Discouraged customers who wanted a PSR-800 are raiding the inventory of PSR-500 scanners, pushing the current price level to about $399.95. Amazon is selling them for $449.99. Soon the price may climb again as the frenzy to buy the last GRE products continues. Eventually, your only choice will be Uniden or nothing.

what happened to GRE are they going out of business

firerick100 said:

what happened to GRE are they going out of business

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Yep, going out of business.

GRE Reportedly Out of the Scanner Business | SCMA

Why did you provide a link to that that dodgy notice from a former GRE executive ?

NO official word has been made about GRE leaving the scanner market. It does look grim but I like to base my views on confirmed facts - not speculation.

one can only hope that GRE will rebound.im keeping my fingers crossed,and hoping to find a PSR600 in the future.

The PSR-600 is still available. Rather than pay a high price, you might as well buy the PRO-197 and a separate USB cable.

As for the return of GRE, don't count on it. Over a year ago they had plans to open a new factory. Months later they announced that their factory was being closed and most staff were being laid off. Very little of GRE remains. Their existing scanner inventory is being sold without replacement.

When a business has been shut down for this length of time you cannot expect it to come back. An increasing number of law enforcement departments are encrypting their transmissions. Since radio traffic from these departments is the principal reason scanners are sold, GRE management must have noticed the trend and realized they will never sell enough scanners in the future to recover the cost of opening a new facility. This also explains why Uniden has not been releasing new scanners at the fast pace we saw 10 years ago. There is not enough demand, and encrypted transmissions represent a loss of the customer base. Also, RadioShack closed hundreds of stores and is still in danger of being shut down. The loss of RS would have a major impact on GRE sales.

Makes me glad I was able to get in on the PSR-500 when I did. Whew!

GRE SCANNERS

U will have a hard time finding the the pro-197 they where made for radioshack by GRE

nsrailfan6130 said:

Makes me glad I was able to get in on the PSR-500 when I did. Whew!

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may still get a 500,But Happy im holding an 800!

Also..

Im curious as to the status of the radio shack line? GRE supplies RS most if not all the radios RS sells
are GRE clones.

Could we soon see the same sell outs that are now happening with GRECOM?

fourthhorseman said:

Im curious as to the status of the radio shack line? GRE supplies RS most if not all the radios RS sells
are GRE clones.
Could we soon see the same sell outs that are now happening with GRECOM?

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GRE supplied scanners for RS. They haven't made a scanner since last year. My local Shack never had many scanners but are sold out of RS brand and will get no more. They do have Unidens in stock now. I really wanted a PSR-500 but what few I can find have the price up too high.

adkins2005 said:

U will have a hard time finding the the pro-197 they where made for radioshack by GRE

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The PRO-197 is still easy to find. Radio Shack has them in both New ($380) and Refurbished ($300). A lot of used ones are sold on eBay too. But the supply won't last forever. RS currently has none of these for sale on eBay. Their supply must be diminishing.

Sooner or later RS inventory will be depleted. RS has held endless scanner sales for months due to two factors. First, the company is in financial trouble. They want to move inventory quickly. Second, RS knows that GRE is not coming back. They are trying to avoid getting stuck with a large inventory of expensive products for a limited hobbyist market.

you can get them, both used and new, on ebay still. One of the sellers selling new ones has 15 in stock..

I was in a Radio Shack a week ago in my area and they had 4 in stock still. And they had at least 1 Pro 18 also.

David Kb7uns

and before you villifie psr800 owners for taking advantage of the price hikes save some of that for uniden when they realize they are the only game in town and all of a sudden nothing else different for them the price of their scanner goes up as well. Same scanner, same manufacturer, same materials, only difference will be no competition which will trust me result in them pricing their offerings significantly higher.

SquierStrat said:

you can get them, both used and new, on ebay still. One of the sellers selling new ones has 15 in stock..

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true,but when a gre500 is selling for 400-450-500(used) and the 106 is up to 200 -250 less (used)..theyll start getting gobbled up too i imagine.unidens will be available,but im also curious to see,since the competition Was GRE,will Unidens prices in/decrease or stay put..

its a shame GRE is a historical term now,very promising was their 800,would have loved to see its replacement.im sure there were features that did not make the cut before it went into production.

Well not sure if this is a good sign but GRE/Alinco is signed up for SEAPAC in June and signup started Febuary 16.

David Kb7uns

MK said:

As GRE fades into history, so does its supply of scanners that are still in the retail channel. Scanner Master sold out of the PSR-500 weeks ago. Now Ham Radio Outlet has sold their remaining inventory of all GRE scanners, including the PSR-500, which was being sold for the fair price of $359.95.

Discouraged customers who wanted a PSR-800 are raiding the inventory of PSR-500 scanners, pushing the current price level to about $399.95. Amazon is selling them for $449.99. Soon the price may climb again as the frenzy to buy the last GRE products continues. Eventually, your only choice will be Uniden or nothing.

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I suspect that UNIDEN is smiling - big time.

MK said:

The PSR-600 is still available. Rather than pay a high price, you might as well buy the PRO-197 and a separate USB cable.

As for the return of GRE, don't count on it. Over a year ago they had plans to open a new factory. Months later they announced that their factory was being closed and most staff were being laid off. Very little of GRE remains. Their existing scanner inventory is being sold without replacement.

When a business has been shut down for this length of time you cannot expect it to come back. An increasing number of law enforcement departments are encrypting their transmissions. Since radio traffic from these departments is the principal reason scanners are sold, GRE management must have noticed the trend and realized they will never sell enough scanners in the future to recover the cost of opening a new facility. This also explains why Uniden has not been releasing new scanners at the fast pace we saw 10 years ago. There is not enough demand, and encrypted transmissions represent a loss of the customer base. Also, RadioShack closed hundreds of stores and is still in danger of being shut down. The loss of RS would have a major impact on GRE sales.

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It is true that many law enforcement agencies are moving towards encryption and that will hurt scanner sales. However, most other radio comms such as fire, EMS, local government, private businesses, ham radio, etc. are not encrypted and are not really moving in that direction either. There's a lot of stuff out there to listen to. One issue is that many places are going to digital formats that are not supported on current model scanners. Btw as for radio streams, where do you think most of these streams originate from? They come from scanners. No scanners means no radio streams.

I do agree that the longer GRE's production is shut down, the harder it will be to get restarted.


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rfking123 said:

I suspect that UNIDEN is smiling - big time.

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One might think that, but then again look at how long their product life cycle is compared to 10 years ago. Uniden is being very cautious. They know that all it would take is an increase in encryption and the scanner market would be finished for good. With the HP-1 Uniden has established an outstanding first effort in next generation design. It remains to be seen what they do next, if anything.

mlmummert said:

I do agree that the longer GRE's production is shut down, the harder it will be to get restarted.

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Will everyone encrypt their transmissions? Probably not soon. Personally, I enjoy listening to a lot more than PD dispatches. If most law enforcement departments encrypted their transmissions the change would only modify my listening choice somewhat. But sooner or later encryption of everything seems inevitable just as cell phones and cordless phones eventually became encrypted.

There are many reasons why businesses never return after they shut down. For starters, GRE is a technology company. Now that most of their employees are gone so is the knowledge base. Neither technology nor business stands still. GRE already lost 1 year. If by some miracle today they announced plans to re-enter the scanner market, at least another year would pass before customers had anything new to buy. That's two years lost, and it does not take into consideration the user interface of their top models (PSR-800, PSR-900) lags well behind the HP-1.

The writing is on the wall, scanners are a niche item- and now, with the advent of advanced digital radio systems (P25 phase 1 and 2, NXDN, DMR/MotoTRBO, etc), it requires more advanced software, hardware design, and more support. Support and software don't come cheap- and when you add up how many relatively few units are sold, it's easy to see why a company like GRE cannot survive on this revenue alone to open a new factory.

Uniden can, because scanning receivers are just a part of their business- they sell CB radios, marine electronics, security cameras, Bluetooth devices and a ton of cordless phones. I'd venture to say they sell 10 times the number of cordless telephones than scanners any given month.

The continued development and implementation of advanced digital radio systems certainly does have an impact, and yes, that "E" word too on the business of selling monitoring equipment. It isn't 1982. Back then, there were a half dozen companies making consumer scanning receivers (Uniden, Bearcat/Electra (later bought by Uniden), Regency, GRE, Cobra and others). Back then, digital voice was only used by select Federal agencies who could afford it (Motorola DVP/DES)- and trunking was in it's infancy.

I honestly don't see GRE coming back- and Radio Shack was their last high volume customer, the fact that Pro197's still sit in numbers on shelves unsold 1-2 years after being made speaks volumes, I doubt RS will continue to carry scanners at all, and if they do, they will just order them from Uniden.

Sorry to sound like "that guy", but our hobby is not going to be as easy as it was in coming years. You will have to make do with what is available now, or develop your own using SDR chips and software decoders for the new digital formats, which are now ignored by the lone scanner manufacturer, unless someone like Icom gets involved. Or use LMR radios programmed as receivers.

I think GRE has faded into history.