Hello all! New here but not entirely new to scanners. I bought my first Regency when I was a teenager. It had 10 red blinking lights on the front that slowly scanned the frequencies they were "programmed" to. Programming was done with silver combs. You broke off different teeth from the combs depending on who you wanted to listen to and then plugged them in the back. A few scanners since then were all regular programmable units but preceded trunking. My wife did a nice thing and bought me a BCT15X for Christmas this year. She searched Amazon for a scanner that would handle trunking and it came up. Bit of a learning curve but with help on this site and some free software I managed to set up some fire frequencies including the station I worked out of many years ago as a paid on call firefighter. But when I tried to program police into the unit I quickly found out that Livingston and Oakland county are digital. I live on the border of these counties. So the decision was made to return the little 15X and find a digital scanner. But then it occurred to me to do some more research and I believe these same counties are also encrypted and, as such, cannot be accessed on the digital scanners. So as it stands right now, the 15X will go back and nothing will be purchased to replace it.
I guess my question is then, why buy a new scanner? The old Radio Shack Pro 2036 unit gathering dust on my shelf receives fire frequencies just fine for now. I had originally thought I would just replace the 15X with a BCD996P2 or even a BCD536HP as it claims it receives pretty much everything...but then the encryption specter raised its head and rumors that maybe all transmissions might be encrypted in the next few years sort of scared me off. I already have a few scanners around that are basically paperweights, don't need another expensive piece of obsolescence. Will the 996P2/536HP get me police? Or just fire and eventually....nothing? Any help appreciated.
I guess my question is then, why buy a new scanner? The old Radio Shack Pro 2036 unit gathering dust on my shelf receives fire frequencies just fine for now. I had originally thought I would just replace the 15X with a BCD996P2 or even a BCD536HP as it claims it receives pretty much everything...but then the encryption specter raised its head and rumors that maybe all transmissions might be encrypted in the next few years sort of scared me off. I already have a few scanners around that are basically paperweights, don't need another expensive piece of obsolescence. Will the 996P2/536HP get me police? Or just fire and eventually....nothing? Any help appreciated.
