Visteon HD reception woes

**rock99rock** · 04-23-2008, 09:57 AM

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED!

The problem was using the aftermarket antenna. When moving to the oem antenna from the dealer, the issue was resolved. Mitch resolved the issue in 1 hour. You da man!

Original Post:

So i have the Visteon HD radio installed and using Mitch's cable (which is awesome and cheap to boot!), the thing is i have reception dropout every few seconds. It will be fill strength HD, then analog crap, then HD, then crap. It goes back and forth every 5-10 seconds. The reason could be a multitude of things; shoddy antenna, bad reception area, bad visteon box, etc.. So i wanted to ping the forum to see if anyone else has come across this issue?

I have not performed the ground fix for the visteon box, but i dont think that fix was geared toward my issue.

The reception when it works, shows full signal strength on the interface software, so i dont believe that reception in my area (northwest Houston) is shoddy.

I have an aftermarket "Euro" type antenna to match the look of my vehicle ( '02 Hyundai Elantra GT), it is half-height antenna with a rubber casing that i purchased off ebay some time ago. I am tempted to believe that this might be part of the problem.

The Visteon box is using the same ground as the lilliput stereo/screen (gl701).

Any ideas? I appreciate it

**mitchjs** · 04-23-2008, 11:00 AM

ANTENNA!!!

thats my guess

ONLY use OEM antennas or expensive german ones... good rule to live by

mitch

**mitchjs** · 04-23-2008, 11:01 AM

ps... that signal strength indicator, is really only good when in HD
when in analog its not meaning full
it could be, but its not for now

mitch

**jjakes24** · 04-23-2008, 12:29 PM

hmmm, I have my HD hooked up to my factory antenna on my infiniti since I kept the stock radio. Now here is the funny thing i get, it works fine when using mitch's HDRadio program, I get HD locks most of the time. But, when using the HD radio inside of RoadRunner and the digitalFX skin, my reception is not as good and its harder to lock in on HD. But, I would say it has to be your antenna. I have a glass antenna which is suppose to be horrible for these things and it works pretty good, but I think it has to do with me keeping my factory radio to power it too.
By the way, do not ground the RCA on the unit. When in a car, it will cause a ground loop and drive you insane. The grounding method is only good if its installed on a bench outside a car.

**rock99rock** · 04-23-2008, 12:44 PM

thanks Mitch for chiming in, i do believe it is the antenna, but curiosness strikes when jakes mentioned that he has issues with lock-on using the dfx skin, as that is what i use. When i get back to the car i will try out the stand-alone app of mitches to see if that makes a difference.

Thanks for the help guys!

**mitchjs** · 04-23-2008, 03:51 PM

technically they are both using the SAME code to access the radio

could be that RR is enabling some other electronics, gps, something
and that is generating RFI

mitch

**rock99rock** · 04-23-2008, 09:57 PM

Well, i tried the standalone software and couldnt even get hd to tune in, even though the analog came in, however staticy.

So off to 3 auto stores i go.

Apparently, Korea deemed it necessary to create a whole different size of antenna not compatible with any generic antenna set out there.

I never woulda thunk this was gonna be difficult.

**jjakes24** · 04-23-2008, 11:08 PM

ha, you don't have a infiniti. The japanese did the same thing, I needed two adapters for my antenna. I do have GPS running with roadrunner, didn't know that can cause some interference. It actually is directly below my window antenna too.

**PocketRadio** · 04-24-2008, 07:56 AM

HD Radio suffers from dropouts, interference, poor reception, and the HD2/HD3 channels have no analog backups. There is a nasty delay, as the HD channels are acquired. This system has been in development for more than 10 years, so don't count on any of this getting fixed. The 10db power increase, being talked about for FM-HD, if approved, will require replacement of all of the broadcasters' HD hardware, so it isn't going to happen. HD radio is nothing but a farce:

http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com

**Nola111** · 04-24-2008, 11:03 AM

Originally Posted by PocketRadio

HD Radio suffers from dropouts, interference, poor reception, and the HD2/HD3 channels have no analog backups. There is a nasty delay, as the HD channels are acquired. This system has been in development for more than 10 years, so don't count on any of this getting fixed. The 10db power increase, being talked about for FM-HD, if approved, will require replacement of all of the broadcasters' HD hardware, so it isn't going to happen. HD radio is nothing but a farce:

http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com

That's great PocketRadio. But the Visteon unit is also a normal analog AM/FM radio unit as well. If you choose the option for it to not even tune in HD stations, the reception is still horrible.