I have a Best Buy insignia brand home stereo that has an HD tuner built-in. You can tell a difference in the sound quality between FM and HD channels. The HD station is CD quality and offers clearer music. The big downside to HD Radio is that there aren’t as many stations in my area.

Best Buy has announced the first portable HD Radio player called the Insignia HD Radio Portable Player. The device is powered by an internal rechargeable lithium ion battery and has ten presets to store your favorite stations. The device also sports a 1.5-inch LCD screen for viewing channel information.

Plain old radio is hurting a bit of late with stiff competition from satellite radio and digital tracks that are replacing normal radio in cars for many drivers. To try and get back some of the defecting radio listeners HD Radio launched with promises of higher audio quality at a price everyone will like—free.

The catch is to get HD Radio (assuming some stations in your area broadcast HD Radio) you have to get a new receiver. Coby Electronics has announced a pair of new HD Radio receivers including the HDR-700 Portable HD Radio System and the HDR-650 Component HD Radio Receiver. The HDR-650 is intended to be integrated into existing component systems in the home and will sell for $99.

McIntosh Laboratory is introducing a new AM/FM HD Radio Tuner module for its recently unveiled MA6600 Integrated Amplifier. The new McIntosh TM2 AM/FM HD Radio Module will price at around $800.

The McIntosh TM2 AM/FM HD Radio Module, like similar HD Radio products, lets you listen to “CD-quality FM” as well as displaying song artist and title information. It is designed to essential plug into the MA6600 or similar products to add radio functions.

I bring you more CES 2008 goodness. The On Time 200ID lets you wake up to your iPod, iPhone, radio, or a simple buzzer. If you want to connect other devices, it also has a 1/8th-inch line input. The one-piece speaker has a backlit LCD as well as touch-sensitive controls, and a backup battery to preserve your settings if power is interrupted.

The On Time 400IHD is pretty similar, but adds dual alarms and an HD Radio receiver for picking up HD stations. It also supports iTunes tagging; just press a button when you hear something you like, and when you sync your iPod in iTunes, it will let you find and buy it quickly.

HD Radio is looking more and more like it’s here to stay as consumer companies slowly develop products which pick up the radio industry’s answer to satellite radio. The latest of these, and apparently also the first auto manufacturer putting out cars in the United States with this technology, is Volvo.

Volvo said today it will begin offering HD Radio on almost all of its models in fall of 2008. Volvo Cars of North America will specifically be offering factory installed HD Radio receivers as standard and optional equipment in a variety of models, including the S40 T5, V50 T5, C30, C70, S80, V70, XC70 and XC90.

With the increase in HD radio stations around the country and lower costs in making HD radios, Sony has jumped on board and will be offering their version of an HD radio in July of this year.

Sony’s XDR-S3HD will retail for around $200 as a tabletop AM/FM/HD receiver. There are over 1,300 HD radio stations currently nationwide and the number is expected to grow. The HD radio offers free, clear digital sound and has the ability to send along the name of the song and artist to the device while playing. Options such as satellite radio offers comparable clarity in their radio signal but requires subscription fees to pick up the signal.

Sony has offered products in the past for satellite radio but this is their first run at the HD radio market with the XDR-S3HD and the XT-100HD Mobile HD radio tuner offering HD …

Directly from North Sioux City, South Dakota, almost the exact same place that Gateway computers started out, comes a new affordable HD radio from a company called Radiosophy.

The HD100 HD radio has all the basic features you would find in most HD radio packages, but without any frills, and does it with a very reasonable price at $119.95. The company is even offering the HD100 for just under $100 until the end of June.

The 12 inch wide radio can pick up AM and FM stations, and of course can pick up all the HD AM and HD FM stations within range as well. It has a scan function that can scroll through the numbers and pick up signals for all radio stations in your listening area or set it to identify just HD stations in its search.

The HD100 can function as …