digital scanners cost too much

[nec208]

Do you even think digital scanners will cost $200 or $300? You would think they would have trunk tracker 4 or 5 out by now?


It seems there is a lack of digital scanners out there..And you would think the first digital scanner BC296D would be very very very old by now and cost 3$!!


Also not to say the comments on the BC296D are very bad .How can they bring out a scanner that do so bad on sensitivity and selectivity

 

[jakegday]

Do you even think digital scanners will cost $200 or $300? You would think they would have trunk tracker 4 or 5 out by now?:

they do have trunk tracker 4, my scanner has it....

 

[fireant]

I don't think they will ever go that low what I have heard is the is a license fee for the decoder to decode the digital and that is the reason they are so expensive. I cannot say thats 100% accurate for the major costs difference however that is what I have been told.

fireant

 

[rdale]

Also not to say the comments on the BC296D are very bad .How can they bring out a scanner that do so bad on sensitivity and selectivity

Uhh, refresh the cache :> The 296 is years old, there's over half-a-dozen digital scanners out now...

 

[nec208]

they do have trunk tracker 4, my scanner has it....

spelling it was trunk tracker 5 and trunk tracker 6..

 

[nec208]

Uhh, refresh the cache :> The 296 is years old, there's over half-a-dozen digital scanners out now...

huu?

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/BC296D

Articles in category "Digital Scanners"
There are 12 articles in this category.

B
BC250D
BC296D
BC785D
BC796D
B cont.
BCD396T
BCD996T
P
PSR-500
PSR-600
Pro-2096
P cont.
Pro-96
U
Uniden Handheld Scanner Comparison
Uniden Scanner Comparison

http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Category:Digital_Scanners


These are the Digital Scanners out there !!

 

[nec208]

The BC250D and BC296D did horrible at at picking signals up and is very easy to interference..

 

[n2mdk]

spelling it was trunk tracker 5 and trunk tracker 6..

Since there are only 4 types of trunked systems that can be listened to, LTR, EDACS, Motorola and Project 25, don't expect a Trunk Tracker 5 or 6 anytime soon.

 

[nec208]

Since there are only 4 types of trunked systems that can be listened to, LTR, EDACS, Motorola and Project 25, don't expect a Trunk Tracker 5 or 6 anytime soon.

If it was Microsoft we would be at 30 by now!!

 

[mdulrich]

The BC250D and BC296D did horrible at at picking signals up and is very easy to interference..

I must have got really lucky with my 250D. It is still in use everyday and doing an excellent job.

Mike

 

[blackbelter]

My 296 D is one of the best scanners that I have used and perhaps 396T would even be a better unit.
98% of my monitoring are based on digital and analog 800 and 296 does an awesome job of picking up the frequencies.

 

[rdale]

huu?

These are the Digital Scanners out there !!

Note that I said "more than half-a-dozen" which means "more than six" and you listed ten... I don't think that's too confusing???

 

[n1das]

It seems there is a lack of digital scanners out there..And you would think the first digital scanner BC296D would be very very very old by now and cost 3$!!

No lack of P25 digital scanners out there as others have correctly pointed out.

The first P25-capable digital scanner was the Uniden BC250D handheld, which first shipped from Uniden around 1/1/2003. I still have mine (one of those first units shipped) and it works great although I don't use it much because I'm using a RadioShack Pro-96 and a Uniden BCD396T as my main digital handheld scanners. The 296D ended up being the replacement for the 250D.

My #1 complaint about the 250D is P!$$ POOR battery life. It's a battery hog even while on and not listening to anything . The standby current is around 200mA, which drains the batteries down in a couple of hours. With the digital option board removed, the standby current drops to around 135mA but the radio is still a battey hog.

My #2 complaint is the low audio output. I've listened to the audio through a good audio system and the quality is actually good but there's just not enough of it to hear the scanner in a noisy environment. I want LOUD receive audio out of my portables, like what a good commercial handheld 2-way radio has. I want at least 500mW output into 8 ohms at 5% or less distortion and driving an efficient speaker.

I generally use my RadioShack Pro-96 scanner as my everyday beater scanner. It blows the other digital handhelds away in terms of audio and battery life.

 

[mciupa]

Do you even think digital scanners will cost $200 or $300?

Buy used if that is your budget.

 

[CAPTLPOL1]

If you can talk DVSI into lowering their license fees, then maybe you can have a $200-$300 digital scanner. I suggest you check into the used market.

 

[Zaratsu]

I agree that the digital scanners cost far too much right now. For me, it is not worth the extra cost where I live as not many services besides the state PD (which is hinting at encrypting anyways) and the boring yuppietown to the south of me are digital. Hardly anyone is even trunked for 40 miles around me, and this is Central CT. A very densly populated, and RF-intense region.


Even on the used market, the Pro-96 and the 396 fetch a high price. The reason is that supply is currently meeting demand. And no one is having trouble selling $400-$600 digital scanners. The only digital scanner that no one really wants much right now is the 250D, and those sell very cheaply on ebay and other classifides.

Once a new generation of digital scanners come out, you will see a quick drop in the Pro-96 and BC 396 prices out there. You already can see some of that as many Pro 96 and 396 owners trade up for the GRE 500.

Also, the added complexity of these early digital scanners have removed some of the "fun" out of just being able to open the box, mash some buttons, and start hearing things. Its not that you HAVE to have a computer to program the things. I think everyone has one ( or 12) by now. But not being able to do much of anything until you figure out the computer program kind of flys in the face of how scanner enthusiests enjoy their toys. (turning knobs, and mashing buttons in a more analog way.)

Wait until a second (or maybe it is a third gen now) digital scanner is released. You will get one of the current ones cheap, but the improvments will probably be so great that you will just want to buy the new one anyways

 

[bpckty1]

I agree, the scanners are a bit expensive, but if you price the original 4 crystal scanners and price them per crystal/channel to today's CPU/computer controllable scanners, the price drops from $15-$20 plus per channel to pennies per channel, retail. It's all in how you look at the costs.

 

[scannergoduk]

hi all so are there actual "digital" scanners around then? because i want to pick up my local pd and they are on the digital tetra systems so i cannot pick them up on my scanner now if i bought a digital scanner i take it i would pick them up
but saying that there are people claiming to sell "digital" scanners when they aint even digital or even scanners cos there are multiband radios
are there any websites i can look at which are actually digital scanners that pick up digital signals as in digital radio transmissions please

 

[gmclam]

Yes digital scanners exist, but they don't work with absolutely every system. What you're describing are digitally controlled trunk tracking scanners that only receive analog signals.

One of the earlier digital scanners is the PRO-96. I believe they are currently on sale at RS as there are some newer designs. Uniden has several digital scanners as does GRE. Check out the GRE forums (http://www.radioreference.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=117) here at RR and you can read about the latest GRE scanners.

 

[n2mdk]

hi all so are there actual "digital" scanners around then? because i want to pick up my local pd and they are on the digital tetra systems so i cannot pick them up on my scanner now if i bought a digital scanner i take it i would pick them up
but saying that there are people claiming to sell "digital" scanners when they aint even digital or even scanners cos there are multiband radios
are there any websites i can look at which are actually digital scanners that pick up digital signals as in digital radio transmissions please

No scanner will pick up a TETRA system so your just out of luck.
http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/TETRA