Just talked to a dealer, he told me that Motorola discontinued DTR radio as of 12/2018. And i do not see a comparable radio on the market. What a pity. Is this a dying breed with people using cell phone more? For analog radio, i like Baofeng. They are super cheap ($35 new) and offer lots of features. But their licensing is questionable.
Dude!
Have you read ANYTHING on my site?
http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/showthread.php?1638-New-Motorola-DTR700-model-in-the-works-available-Q4-2018
And this, from many years ago?
http://www.checkcheckonetwo.com/forum/showthread.php?1475-New-DLR-radios-compatible-with-DTR
Sorry. I should say DTR650 is discontinued.
Motorola appears to be committed to keeping the DTR series going and has introduced new models while the older DTR models have been discontinued. The DTRs have a loyal following and Motorola knows this. The DTRs fill a niche market untouched by any other manufacturer. I suspect Motorola has been dealing with parts End of Life (EOL) issues with the older DTR 410/550/650 models. A 12 year production run with very few changes is a very good track record.
Motorola introduced the DLR series radios in 2015. DLR = Digital Lightweight Radio according to Motorola. They work with the DTRs. I own a fleet of DLR1060 radios.
The DTR410 and DTR550 have already been discontinued:
IMHO, Motorola should have discontinued the DTR410 long ago and heavily pushed the DTR550 and DTR650 models instead.
I’m not sure about the DTR650 being discontinued because I can still find it on Motorola’s site and it doesn’t show on the discontinued page. Motorola’s site is in a state of flux and it’s hard to navigate to find stuff without having to use the Search function.
The DTR650 might be discontinued but don’t worry because replacement DTR models are already available. I currently own a fleet of DTR650 radios. I am not worried about being unable to replace them.
The new DTR models (released December 15, 2018) are the DTR600 and DTR700. The DTR600 is a lower cost version of the DTR700 with fewer channels. It looks like there is also a DTR720 in the works. No information is available on the DTR720 yet. The DTR720 looks like a refresh of a DTR550 and updated to give it a color display and the DLR way of programming. The DTR720 is a fresh posting and first appeared on Motorola’s site only a few days ago. It may be just a temporary placeholder as a teaser for another new model in the works. The picture shown is a picture of a DTR550.
Motorola also has a CB300-D call box on 900MHz designed to work with the DTR and DLR series. FCC and Canada certification was granted in October 2018 so this is another new model.
I received my fleet of new DTR700 radios a couple of days ago. They have a date of manufacture of December 20, 2018, 19 days ago as of this posting. I’m playing with brand new DTR700 radios that were manufactured in Malaysia less than 3 weeks ago. I currently have my fleets of radios all working with each other on Public and Private Groups for 100% backward compatibility.
Fear not, the DTRs are far from dead and it looks like another new model (DTR720) is coming.
thanks for the posting. one question. how is DTR 720 performing compared to DTR650? voice quality, delay, weight, robustness, flash & update & programming? I know the technology is similar. still Spread Spectrum, and hopping. Andy might not care about this, but I do. I am majored in Electric Engineering and in mobile phone business for quite some time (now i am making electric car). Digital + SS + hopping is an ultimate way of anti jamming.
The DTR720 doesn’t exist yet. It is vaporware currently but Motorola has hinted about it on their website. I have some of the new DTR700 radios and they are working excellent. The DTR700 is a nice replacement for the older DTRs.
Audio: The DTR700 audio quality is better than the older DTRs, thanks to automatic gain control (AGC) in the transmitted audio. The older DTRs and the DLRs don’t have AGC in the Tx audio.
Delay: The digital audio delay is unchanged from the older DTRs. This won’t change without a 100% redesign of the protocol and radios and would be incompatible with the older DTRs. This is not going to happen unless there is a strong enough business case for Motorola to pursue it.
Weight & Robustness: The DTR700 has a rugged feel to it but feels feather light compared to the older DTRs. Time will tell how the DTR600 and DTR700 holds up to years of use and abuse.
Flash & update & programming: Unknown about updates yet because the DTR700 is a brand new model. There is some mention of Phase 2 features being added in the future and probably will be through a flash update. Programming is easier than the older DTRs. They program like the new DLR series. The current version of the CPS to program the DTR700 is R07.00. The programming cable is the same cable used to program Motorola’s other business radios. The cable is around $35 USD on Amazon.
I’m not sure where you got that idea, I do care a lot. Many many many hours of my life have been dedicated learning all I can about the DTR radios and it wasn’t easy. Before my site, there was almost no information at all available about these radios. I pay for this site myself, and give back to the community all that I have learned.
I also have learned a lot from others that have contributed here as well, and I am grateful.
David did a great writeup which should answer most of your questions.
Hi, Andy, My apology. I had this impression because you said that you valued delay and voice quality more than SS last time. I take back what I said. I was involved in voice codec standardization for mobile phone, hence I know Motorola’s voice codec is sub standard. also because I was involved in channel coding and error correction development and standardization, I knew the problem on the interference on fixed frequency. that is the reason I valued SS hopping a lot and my opinion is biased because of my prior work.
Misunderstanding, I thought you were saying I don’t care about the radios, which clearly I do. My apologies.
As you were.