tgrbaseball13
Member
So I use to have the radio shack pro95. I am in the market for a new digital scanner. What would y'all recommend?
I have a PSR-500, a 396T, and a 396XT and I rate them in that order. The GRE is far superior to the Unidens in the most important quality which is audio. Uniden tries to make up for the lousy audio by giving you useless bells and whistles. This is strictly my opinion and others will certainly give you their opinion.
The 396T is better than the 396XT? I don't have the latter but it sounds like I'm glad I saved my $$$
I agree with you on the 800 and GRE in general...
The 396T is better than the 396XT? I don't have the latter but it sounds like I'm glad I saved my $$$
Is the 396t really better then the 396xt? I was thinkin on selling my T an upgrading to the XT .Mabey i shouldent.
Is the 396t really better then the 396xt? I was thinkin on selling my T an upgrading to the XT .Mabey i shouldent.
If you want to stay in the "396 family", the XT is a great radio - I have used mine since they were released and they've done a great job. But, quite honestly, the HP-1 is, without question, a superior radio.
Shell
My 396T does a better job of decoding the local simulcast system than my 396XT. The 396XT was supposed to be better than the 396T. Hence, I have lost all faith in Uniden and would never gamble $500 to find that the HP is equal to or worse than the 396XT.
I can assure you that the HP-1 is most certainly not worse than the 396XT! In fact, in several aspects it does do a better job than my 396XT - one of those being the simulcast systems in the St. Louis metro area. It also handles interference MUCH better than both the 396 radios and the front end is far superior. (And one can buy the HP-1 for a better price than the full retail price from several other dealers!)
Shell
No offense Shelley but I heard all of that with the 396XT and I'm not falling for it again. Fool me once......
I don't doubt your opinion Shell. There are several very credible people on this board that are very happy with their 396XTs. There are also several people here who are not so happy with their XTs. I am one of them. My 396XT's audio on my local system absolutely sucks.
In my opinion this points out a problem with Unidens one size fits all approach. With no way to manually adjust the P25 threshold, you are at the mercy of their auto adjustment mechanism. My 396T is just as bad as my 396XT until I set it for manual adjustment mode. Then the 396T gets a bit better.
I believe that even Motorola radios are tweaked for optimum performance on a system. What makes Uniden think that they can build a scanner that doesn't need fine adjustments for each system?
P.S. And how can you say that Uniden doesn't make adjustments? They've been the ONLY scanner manufacturer which has consitently released (for many years now) firmware updates for many of their scanners and, in particular, for the 396 series! Maybe it doesn't fit exactly what you want but they've been extremely responsive to user feedback for a very long time - significantly moreso than any other manufacturer.
The 396XT has been without a firmware update for quite some time and some of us are asking for just that. I keep asking for a firmware release with a manual P25 level adjustment like the 396T had but so far we have been ignored. It seems that the resources are all tied up doing bandaid releases for the HP. See this thread: http://forums.radioreference.com/uniden-scanners/218460-bcd996xt-still-ver-1-04-a.html
Yes, it has been a while - I believe over a year, in fact. And I did go over and read the thread you pointed me to. Unfortunately, as I'd hoped it wouldn't be but sadly it clearly is - Paul pointed out that the 396XT/996XT (and this is not the case with the 396T) there would need to be a hardware change in order for the two scanners to be able to properly receive the P25 Phase II TDMA transmissions...this clearly is not a firmware fix! (I'm obviously assuming this IS the P25 Phase II TDMA systems which is causing the problems in the XTs.)
I don't believe Uniden or any other manufacturer would pull their radios back to make a hardware change such as that. The "XT Series" has been out for quite a while and I wouldn't even begin to venture a guess as to how many have been sold! Nor do I know if a hardware fix like this is something worthwile for Uniden to agree to, even if owners were willing to pay for it themselves...I'm saying this only because I have absolutely *no idea* what parts and how much time would be invested in doing the project (Just my personal opinion, of course.)
Shell
I couldn't care less about TDMA. I just want decent audio on the Moto II mixed mode system I listen to.