Here’s a convoluted way to get HD radio, via your iPhone or iPod Touch

RadioShack has just introduced an add-on tuner for $79 from iBiquity that brings HD Radio to your iPhone or iPod Touch. Now, I checked out this HD radio thing just recently at Best Buy and the only thing that would add free HD radio to my stereo system was a $100 receiver. Seemed a bit much given there is only one station in my area. Now this new little add-on to your iPhone/iPod connects to the dock connector on the bottom of the device, leaving the microphone hole open. I’m thinking, then you just take the cable from that to the stereo and voila, HD radio on your home stereo or your car stereo! Really having an iPod Touch or iPhone around is just unbelievably cost effective. First you can use it to add internet radio and Pandora to your home system, and now we get HD radio. Did I mention this will also give your Apple device multicast FM radio (HD2/HD3)? I’m sorry but I think leaving out FM radio altogether is an unnecessary flaw especially for the Touch which isn’t always connected to Wi-Fi every moment of the day. (Yes, yes I know Zune includes all this without a kludgey add-on and for free so by all means buy one of those if you must.)

Part of this tuner is a wired remote with a click wheel and a tag button. With an iTunes App, the iPod/iPhone display will show title and artist, and the iTunes Tag button will let you tag the song so you can buy it from iTunes. The in-line remote click wheel gives you play, stop, pause, forward, backward and scan controls. Remember, this is a RadioShack exclusive and can only be bought there. Now if they can just lower the price so it is worth it for that one radio station, and I’m there.