Recieved a DICE for XMAS, just installed, initial impressions and questions

[msammy]

Well, my wife was kind enough to give me a DICE HD Radio with iPod integration for XMAS this year and I just installed it. It was a very thoughtful gift (that I constantly hinted I wanted!) and I was happy to find it under the tree on Christmas morning. I was so excited to get it installed and I just did, however, I'm not impressed for two reasons:

• What's with the cheesy antenna? For a product that appears at first glance to be well engineered, what the heck were they thinking when it came to the poorly engineered antenna? I'm an amateur radio operator with 25+ years of designing, building and testing antenna systems covering from 1.8 MHz to 1GHz+. There's nothing more basic than designing an efficient antenna system for the DICE which only need to operate on commercial AM and FM bands. I'm working on this now and will post my design/findings (or maybe market a better product soon!). Anyone interested?

• What's up with the iPod integration? At first I was delighted, then I was disappointed when I found my iPod (with 2682 tunes) caught in an endless loop of about the first 80 or so songs. Did I reach some limitation?

Initial observations right now - the digital FM sound quality is excellent with my stock audio system and speakers. The iPod sound quality is also excellent. If I can get a better antenna system built and the iPod integration to work (i.e., stop displaying STOP messages, etc), this would be a rock-solid and viable product. In its current configuration, I'd avoid it for now.

My Wife asked me how I like my new radio and I was very evasive and could not give her a straight answer!

How many of you out there have purchased a DICE HD Radio with iPod integration, installed it and now feel as ripped-off as I do?