CES 2009: McIntosh Adds HD Radio

And BD Audio Decoding

By Joseph Palenchar -- TWICE, January 7, 2009

Las Vegas — McIntosh launched its second home HD Radio product and its first audio component to incorporate decoding of all authorized Blu-ray surround formats.

 The new HD Radio product is the MR88 component AM/FM tuner, which also controls an outboard XM Mini tuner. The MR88, due in March at an unannounced price, will join an $800-suggested TM2 HD Radio tuner module, which plugs into the MA6600 integrated amp and other future products.  The MR88 features manual flywheel tuning, single-ended and balanced audio outputs, and vacuum-fluorescent display to display metadata.

 The new MX150 preamp/surround processor includes HDMI 1.3 inputs and outputs, decoding of all Blu-ray surround formats, 1080p video up-scaling, analog-to-HDMI video up-conversion, room acoustics correction, multiple subwoofer outpouts, two-zone capability and differential balanced audio topology. It ships in March at an unannounced price.