Category: HD radio

More HD radio news

Link to: HD RADIO™ GOES THE WAY OF THE LASERDISC PLAYER.

An interesting take from a non-broadcaster that gets it mostly right.    The premise for HD radio™, as the author states, was to serve two purposes; improve sound quality and add extra programming channels.  I have a few issues with this statement:

Regarding the improved signal, that still holds true, and can be especially beneficial for AM radio, which has struggled for some time with signal degradation.

I would argue the opposite. HD Radio™ has done nothing to improve the signal quality of the AM band. It has, in fact, degraded the band further by adding digital hash to adjacent channels, limiting the on-channel analog bandwidth to less than 5 KHz and creating on-channel background hiss.

Thus, HD Radio™ has done neither of those two stated goals.  In addition to that, from the radio station owner/operator’s perspective, it is expensive to install, expensive to license, expensive to operate, and has no audience.

Hat from here.

Ford begs Broadcasters: “Please install our wonderful HD Radio product.”

In an open letter to broadcasters, the entirety of which can be found here: Ford Exec Writes Open Letter to Broadcasters, Jim Buczkowski, whose official title seems to be “Henry Ford Technical Fellow and Director, Electrical and Electronic Systems Research and Innovation Ford Motor Company,” nearly begs broadcasters to install HD Radio technology at their radio stations.

One thing that seems to be missing from the open letter, is something mildly important called: Disclosure.  According to iBiquity’s own website, Ford Motor Company is an investor in the technology.  Other investors include:

  • Clear Channel
  • CBS Radio
  • Grotech Capital Group
  • J.P. Morgan Partners
  • New Venture Partners
  • FirstMark Capital
  • Harris
  • Texas Instruments
  • Visteon

Not an inclusive list by any means, but something to keep in mind when reading the letter or the latest iBiquity advertising in various trade magazines.

Back to the letter; the cliff notes version is this:

  • Through the use of HD Radio, AM/FM broadcasters can now embrace the digital age
  • Drivers now have many choices for in-car entertainment, including satellite radio (Sirius XM) and online services (Pandora, et.al) that offer “Crystal Clear” audio
  • Through Satellite radio, MP3 players, and IP streaming services, drivers now have extra features  like Title, song, and artist; Song tagging; iTunes; album art, etc which they have become accustomed to
  • Installing HD Radio will be a big upgrade and make AM/FM stations on par with those “digital age” services

For the first part, there is not a single broadcaster in the country that is not already aware of HD Radio.  Every radio station manager and owner knows that it exists, but most people in the general public do not.  Radio stations are hesitant to install HD Radio equipment because it is expensive, has a questionable return on investment, is unimpressive, and technically dubious.

Making the comparison to Satellite Radio and or IP streaming services, which all require subscriptions or data plans, is a bit of a stretch.   Someone who will pay a fee for in-car entertainment is usually a tech geek.  As the subscription rates for Sirius XM show, that works out to about seven percent of the US population (~20 million subscribers/~300 million people).  It is a bit harder to nail down those who listen to streaming products like Pandora, iHeartRadio, or other webstreams in their cars, but I’d estimate not more than ten percent do.

While 3G and 4G wireless services are great, it still does not have the same coverage as standard and FM broadcasting stations.  The last time I tried to listen to Pandora in my vehicle, it kept dropping out and was not easy to deal with.  With TuneIn radio, I had the same experience during urban, suburban, and rural driving.  Thus, the “Crystal Clear” reception is also a bit of a misnomer.

Further, fooling around with iPods, iPhones, TuneIn, Pandora, etc while driving is not the best idea.  Even on vehicles with built-in IP connectivity or satellite radio, looking for song titles and other information while driving is not recommended.  Thus, the value-added services of HD Radio are of questionable at best in a moving vehicle.

I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but for as long as the iBiquity crew continues to spout disingenuous bull sh!t about their failed technology, I’ll keep posting about it.

Developments on the digital radio fronts

I am still in awe of iBiquity and I have to hand it to them for stick-to-it-liveness. The newest “fix” for their FM IBOC system, colloquially known as HD Radio™, is in contour on-channel repeaters.  According to the article “Performance of FM HD boosters varies,” (Radio World online edition), the reason for such boosters is to “increase or fill in FM Digital footprint so that the digital coverage matches that of analog.”

The idea that IBOC is somehow an improvement over FM analog is becoming (or has become) untenable.  In order to make the new system cover the same area with the same reliability as the old analog system, on-channel bandaids boosters are now needed.  And what is with this extending coverage?  How much more expensive will radio station owners have to deal with to make this scheme work?  And I still don’t understand where the improvement over analog-only systems comes from.

As the article points out, however, all is not well in paradise; the IBOC booster signals interfere with analog signals close to the booster transmitter.  This becomes problematic if the receiver is an analog-only device.  As of this writing, most of the radios in this country do not have HD Radio™ capabilities.  Thus, radios that are currently working perfectly well will be cut out and can become useless around these repeaters.

For your reading pleasure, the entire NAB report can be found here.

Try as they may, neither the NAB, iBiquity or Greater Media can supplant the laws of physics.  Then there is that insanity definition floating around:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein

AM HD update and other ideas

Looks like the AM HD Radio™ juggernaut continues… To sink under its own technical faults that is. According to the list the number of AM stations running IBOC in the US is now down to 233 stations from a high water mark of 290 or so.  That represents a total of just 4.8% (233 IBOC/4782 Total stations) of all US AM radio stations.  On a related note, Bob Savage of WYSL 1040, Rochester, NY has a good idea:

I’ve always said – if you want to see surprising new life in the AM band, s**t-can the stupid irrelevant NRSC pre-emphasis filter and allow stations to run to 15 kHz during daylight hours and 10 kHz nighttime.  Mandate C-QUAM in all receiver and receiver devices.

It will sound better than HD, be more robust, and cause far fewer problems.  Plus it wouldn’t obsolete a single radio out there, while making a whole bunch of them sound a whole bunch better.

It is so simple in concept, so easy to implement, with almost no expense to AM stations.  Again, Mr. Savage:

Most software-based processors have com ports which can be addressed by a remote control system like Sine Systems, so when the power gets reduced at evening pattern change, the bandpass can be changed at the same time…..vice-versa at sunup.  No biggie.

For older setups a simple outboard relay and rolloff network could accomplish the same thing.  It’s a little more complex but again, not a big deal.

Wow.  Facepalm.

Wish somebody had thought of that a few years ago, it might have saved several million dollars and we’d have a different AM band today.

There are a few shoehorned AM stations around here that might be adversely affected by 15 KHz daytime bandwidth, but those are few and far between.  By and large, most stations are spaced correctly where this could really work and work well.  It certainly would not generate the chaos that AM HD Radio™ has.