Uniden Announces the Home Patrol 2, and manages to piss off everyone

Uniden Announces the Home Patrol 2

Usually when we have a new scanner announcement, it generates excitement in the scanner community.  This has pretty much been the case over the last 15 years.  Maybe not so much with the Home Patrol 1, since many of us were not sure what to make of it at first, but that all changed with the extreme upgrade and the 2.0 firmware.

In my 25 years of scanning, I have never witnessed such a backlash on a new product announcement.  Radio Reference had no less than 6 forum threads bashing Uniden, not because of the HP-2, but because of the yet unresolved issues with the BCDx36HP scanners.  Things got so bad that Paul Opitz (UPMan) had to issue a statement saying new productions are always in the works and work continues on the Siren app etc.  Needless to say it was little too late.  As of this writing things have calmed down, but the negative posts continue.

This is all Uniden's fault

Uniden made a colossal mistake with the announcement.  They would have taken heat due to the BCDx36HP mess regardless, however an update to the HPx36HP progress and similar statement a few days prior to announcing the new scanner would have gone a long way and it would not have spun as far out of control as it did.  The bottom line is that they screwed up.  

The aftermath and troubled times ahead

With the BCDx36HP updates in chaos, no doubt the HP-2 is going to suffer sales wise.  There is a lot of anger towards Uniden right now.  With Whistler releasing new scanner models, this probably couldn't have come at a worse time.  There is a lot of speculation of the possibility of Whistler announcing their equivalent of the PSR-900 mobile scanner at CES.  A lot of people may be swayed back over to them and give up on Uniden.

Conclusion

I did the math and over the last 15 years I have spent close to $5,000 on Uniden products (new retail, not used).  I have always purchased their flagship scanners without question.   Normally, I would have my HP-1 up for sale and would be making plans on buying the HP-2 when it launched, however due to the way Uniden has handled things over the last 9 months, I am sitting this one out for now and I am going to give Whistler a second look.