So one of the things you’ve probably heard about today is that your existing radio stations are converting to digital. What that means is that you’ll get the same clear stations with the limited programming you get now, but in crisp digital, as opposed to that lame analog you are listening to now. Of course you’ll need a new radio to enjoy this. You can expect that new radio will likely support some additional features like data — meta at the very least of what you have on, if not other content that’s yet to be dreamed up.
Sorry if that sounds a touch sarcastic, since it is. I just can’t see ever upgrading my radio to HD. Eventually it will be installed in cars at the factory, but I’ll choose Satellite radio any day to get the diversity of programming and commercial free stations. It’s well worth the subscription price of a CD per month.
Just because it’s new and digital does not make it better. HD Radio is more like adding a new and improved burst to a box of detergent than anything else.
If I was Fred, I would be proud of this deal though. It’s a massive upgrade across a huge array of media properties and definitely good for iBiquity Digital’s pockets. Just not for my ears.
I sure hope your take is wrong and one reason it may be is that there will be somewhere between 2 and 5 digital channels for every existing analog FM channel. Some will be paid and ad free, others will be free and ad supported. If the average city has 15 FM stations, it will probably have more than 50 in an all digital world. that will allow broadcast radio to compete with the diversity of programming that satellite offers today.
You are certainly much closer than I am to how it will supposedly work.
I did not know about the additional pay channels… the trick will be in quality of the programming. if it’s just an extension of existing radio they’ll have to be fully revamped in order to compete with the quality and range I have found on the satellite system.
HD digital radio jamms existing analog stations by broadcasting modem type digital hissing noise all over the public’s AM and FM bands.
Provides fewer stations, not more, by jamming popular stations you can now receive clearly and enjoy.
Jamms lower power local, community and suburban stations most.
Reduces diversity, restricts news and free speech, by allowing powerful broadcast stations and conglomerates to jam independent voices with digital noise.
Has digital coverage limited to only a few miles from the station’s transmitter.
Provides few benefits, but maximum destruction, of the current analog broadcasting system the public depends upon, especially in emergencies.
Is a seriously flawed, expensive, technology that benefits a very few group station owners, at the expense of the many.
Obsoletes almost 1 billion AM and FM radios the public already owns.
Provides little benefit for the general public, at the great cost of destroying their airwaves.
The internet already provides hundreds of thousands of iPod downloads and broadcast streams, wireless inernet is already on the way. There is no need for a destructive new service to jam analog broadcasting.
http://worldsupercaster.blogspot.com
It was bad enough when GM started putting in car radios with only 4 khz AM audio response. Now to have have the FCC approve such a pie-in-the-sky scheme is IBOC make my blood boil. Didn’t any of the people who approved this train wreck have RF engineering in school? When you modulate a sine wave with a square wave (digital), at the moment of the Square corner function, you are trying to create sidebands on every frequency from DC to light. It is then up to the output tuning network to TRY to keep the output within spec. But the Q of the circuit, high as it is, is unable to restrict the bandwidth. Even when sanctioned and approved by the FCC, bad engineering is still bad engineering.
And it is rude to other stations and disrespectful to the listeners, who are now being told that they won’t have a right to listen to a station 35 miles away that they have always listened to, because they aren’t in a protected contour area. I pray for this mess to fail big time. I will start a radio school to re-educate Ibiquity engineers who have had I-botomies.