I believe the source of confusion is because of 2 unrelated things happening at the same time:

1) Certain VHF and UHF frequency users must convert their equipment to 12.5Khz bandwidth by January 1, 2013. New licenses for the old 25Khz systems will no longer be accepted past January 1, 2011. The NOAA Weather Radio is specifically exempted, there will be no need to replace receivers. Also, it is now the "NOAA All-Hazards Radio", and thus is a very important component of the public safety warning system. Upgrading it's equipment will be about as difficult as replacing our aging air traffic control system.

2) Digital TV conversion, resulting in portable radios (not NOAA Weather Radios) being unable to receive the digital audio portion of Digital TV. NOAA Weather Radio operates on 10 designated frequencies, that are exempt from narrowbanding, and will continue to operate in analog mode.

Hacksaw,

Have you seen the new GPS units which display realtime weather for your location? They use XM radio to get the information.

Bushnell GPS

I'm not sure if they report other hazardous situations...

-Blast

My TomTom can already do that but it needs to use my phone as a modem....$$$!

New vehicles with Sirius (just Ford and some Chrysler that I know of) have access to weather and traffic data through the built in navigation system courtesy of Sirius.

My current handheld is about 9 years old (I don't think that GPS12 will EVER quit) so maybe it's time for an upgrade. I've heard that the Bushnell GPSs are pretty slick and coming up fast under the radar of the big guys like Garmin.

Several Garmin models can do that, as well as get text Aviation weather.

That's only with marine and aviation models (and a few in car models)...no handhelds which I'm aware of...most of them require an additional XM module to function.

I've checked the XM site and I'm not sure you can get this in Canada...either way it's completely absent from the XM Canada site.

So far it seems the best bargain is a mobile CB radio like the Cobra Road Trip or the Midland model with the removable battery pack and car adapter kit...more bang for the buck.

Thats one of mine, the midland one. I have a cobra 25 cb in the truck. The only annoyance is the noaa channels are not standardized and the cobra and midland have them opposite, so channel 1 one one is the frequency of channel 7 on the other
The cobra I bought new and it came with a little chart so I copied it for the hand held but then found the noaa web site and learned that they added several more transmitters since the chart was printed. I've found that I can pick up at least two most anywhere.

I managed to trade in the HH50 for a Freeplay crank radio with weather bands. Handy for camping but not practical in the Jeep (not entirely practical anyhow since the weather bands tune on an analog dial anyhow)

I'm definately going to pick up a CB for the Jeep before I drive to Alaska later this year but I may also upgrade my GMRS radios to models which include weather bands so I have something truly portable as well.

The Satelite radio is super nice but I don't think it will replace the emergency nature of the weather radio.

Tuning the weather on an analog dial seems to be kind of odd, its only 10 frequencies, no need for analog.

I don't get the point in the satalite radio, I guess I'm spoiled here because we have two good radio stations and cd's for when we travel that it doesn't make sense to pay every month for a subscription service.

Eugene: If you never leave the urban areas then local radio is fine...though commercial and talk free is a very nice bonus...and if I want to relive my childhood the 70s and 80s only stations are always close at hand.

The reason I bought one in the first place is because I do a lot of camping and I do at least one 5000km-8000km road trip a year. The satellte radio becomes a huge asset at this point especially if driving through Utah or Ontario or anywhere the towns are few and far between. The variety of programming is also nice. Having 3 dedicated comedy channels (sometimes 4) when you've been on the road 12 hours and are a wee bit sleepy sure helps.

It's really too bad there isn't more thought put into integration of these devices. I'd kill to have a satellite radio that could do am/fm/NOAA frequencies too or to have a weather radio built into my GPS...or my car. It makes so much sense and the technology is so simple it could easily be done. Instead we're forced to buy dedicated hardware or another radio within a radio to go inside the car or backpack which may already have several radios in it. Don't get me wrong; I'm totally on board with the risks of having too many 'all in one' devices (or just one all in one device) but if you're going to have a 'radio' why not just have one to cover all your radio needs? If you're going to use weather as part of your navigation planning, why not have it built into your GPS (though as was discussed there are some emerging technologies moving in the right direction)?

On top of that the geek in me is even more upset that the devices which are out there don't have Bluetooth capability. I have bluetooth everything and it would be so handy to have a radio set up not unlike a cellular phone that could just connect to a headset or handsfree device (or my GPS) and alert me without having 5 devices in my car competing for my auditory attention...unfortunately integration is only as good as the hardware which integrates (or doesn't integrate) them.

I guess I could blame free enterprise and market competition. Why would Sirius or XM allow a person to use their products to access a free service? Why would a GPS (which accesses satellites already) not use more satellites to access additional features? Makes sense...but that doesn't mean I have to like it

I leave the urban areas plenty but we listen to the few cd's we own on those trips, we bought several years ago and haven't bought a lot lately so we play those old ones while were driving on trips.

I wish my gps had bluetooth then I wouldn't need a usb cable for it.