There was a thread on this about a year ago here (http://www.saabcentral.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8187&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0), about digital radio and at that time only one person was admitting to having a DAB system in their car. I recently bought a digital radio for home and I have been very impressed by it's quality, and I'm thinking about upgrading my car stereo to one incorporating a digital tuner. Despite the technology having been around for some time now it seems to me that DAB car systems are still very much in their infancy as I can only find a very limited selection on the market.

I currently have an Alpine head unit and I would really be looking for another product by this company. Their website is really unhelpful and so is Sony's, which would be my second choice. I notice that Blaupunkt have a couple of units available and there are some budget items by Goodmans and Ministry of Sound below £200, brands which I would normally not consider.

Since the thread last year has anyone else installed a DAB system in their car and with what sort of results? And what are people's general views? I'm disappointed to see that things really haven't moved on much in terms of range or prices in the last 12 months - or am I wrong?

JVC have been offering some good deals on DAB but I doubt very much if the units are up to the same quality as an Alpine.. If your existing alpine is not to old and Ai Net not M Bus you should be able to add the DAB hide away tuner to it??

I have had the Blaupunkt Woodstock DAB52 radio in my 900 for a couple of months now. I chose it because it seemed to have the best feature list - DAB / MW / LW radio with CD and MP3 disc drive plus a memory card slot to play flash memory cards with MP3 format files!

Installation was very straightforward, I bought a stick on aerial for the front windscreen. All you have to do is provide a 12v feed to power the booster amplifier and plug the aerial cable in the back of the radio.

I get really good DAB reception here in Swindon. Overall I recommend the radio, the price seemed really good value at 199 GBP. I bought it through http://www.bluespot.co.uk

I had a JVC KT-DB1500 in my Carlsson (the one that is now for sale in the classifieds), and now have the KT-DB1000 in my 'vert. The DB1500 is just a tuner, and needs to be mated to a (JVC) head unit.

The KT-DB1000 is smaller, (and cheaper), than the DB1500, and comes with a windscreen-mounted stick-on antenna, which is nice (but a pain if you ever have to replace the windscreen). As with the DB1500, you do need to hook it up to a JVC head unit...

Both units work well. They probably aren't hi-fi, but in the noisy environment of a car, (especially a rag-top), I don't think it matters too much.

I have DAB at home too, and I don't rate it for sound quality: despite the noise floor being almost completely inaudible, the cheaper units seem to suffer from horrible digital artefacts on anything other than a 100% perfect signal. That's been my experience over the past 4 years, anyway, despite several antenna upgrades.
So, for me, it's OK in a car, but for serious listening at home, I prefer good old FM.

One thing though - in marginal signal areas, whereas an FM station maybe gets noisier, (but is still audible), the DAB just blanks out completely. Very annoying when you're listening to something riveting / enjoying your favourite track, etc. :o Most of the time, though, it's just fine and dandy.