$40 HD Licensing Fee?

[Chuck]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

If this is true, these radios will remain very expensive for until the fee is drastically lowered. Most car radios don't cost $40 to manufacture in China. Adding a huge licensing fee will price these radios off the shelf.

I have a hard time believing that it is that expensive. Does anyone know for sure?

In the past, the FM Stereo royalty was on the order of ten cents per radio. I think C-Quam was twenty five cents per radio. Of course Motorola wanted to sell you the chip sets. That was another dollar or two. Incidentally, it seems the Motorola chips are still being made, and have several uses past AM Stereo. If the licensing fee for HD is much over one dollar per radio, they are putting nails in their own coffin.

 

[700WLW]

I heard that Ibiquity does get a percentage of each radio sold - it is no wonder, that the prices of HD radios is so outrageous, and will never approach the $10 - $25 range for typical analog radios. Yes, this will help put a nail-in-the-coffin, along with the lack of portable HD radios, for the foreseeable future.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

> Incidentally, it seems the Motorola chips are still being made, and have several uses past AM Stereo.

AM radios with C-Quam chips sound better even on mono stations, because of the product detection they use instead of envelope detection. So AM stereo radios will continue to be prized by audiophiles long after the last C-Quam station gives up. Of course, if you are listening to an IBOC AM station, the analog audio sounds terrible on any radio, but is especially noticable on a good quality AM receiver. IBOC self jams if you are not tuned exactly on frequency, and on AM stereo radios, you can hear the sidebands above 10 kHz very audibly.

 

[Chuck]

A retired Motorola engineer replied in regard to the C-Quam chip string on Barry Mishkind's news board. Motorola still makes the chips. According to him, many car radios still use them, and many recent radios from Chrysler and Ford can decode AM stereo, although nobody bothers to mention it.

He also said that there is no longer any licensing fee for the technology. It is free to anyone who wants to use it. All Motorola wants to do is sell some semiconductors. That is keeping in the tradition of electronic component manufacturers. Even RCA put some circuit designs in public domain, so they could sell their tubes. That is not unusual. IBM won the personal computer wars because their design was open to all. Apple made nice computers, but everything was proprietary. If it weren’t for the iPod, I doubt that Apple would still be with us. (For you Mac fans, they still make nice computers, but now they also do Windows.) Sometimes the best technology doesn’t win, but the freely available technology has a way of succeeding. Ibiquity should take note, since it is becoming obvious that it isn’t the best solution. It would be more viable if it were free, or at least, very low cost.

As for AM stereo, other posts on that site indicate that it is still doing well in Australia and New Zealand. It seems that people still listen to music on AM in those countries because somebody programs something the want to listen to. Imagine that....

 

[OldGringo]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

 

[700WLW]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

Whatever the fees are, the price of HD radios will never approach that of analog radios, typically, at $10 to $25. I have now read that some are saying that the critical price of HD radios needs to approach $50, and maybe even less - that will never happen. Even portable HD radios are not in the near future, due to power consumption requirements.

 

[Chuck]

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

So, can you tell me EXACTLY what the fee is? I'll be happy to report it to Barry's news board. Unfortunately, the amount seems to be proprietary.

 

[zumahans]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

What is the fee, and since there is only one authorized source, why is that amount proprietary?

 

[SUPERCASTER]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

Perhaps the fees alone, are not in the "hundreds of thousands" but the installation, engineering, and equipment costs for a station adding HD transmission abilities often are in the "hundreds of thousands" of dollars.

 

[700WLW]

That amount is exaggerated by several orders of magnitude. Similarly, the fees stations pay are not in the "hundreds of thousands" as has been repeated over and over here.

So, can you tell me EXACTLY what the fee is? I'll be happy to report it to Barry's news board. Unfortunately, the amount seems to be proprietary.

This is from last year:

"Ibiquity Gets Specific With Fees"

http://rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/01_rw_fees_5.shtml

"IBOC Fees Stir Reaction"

http://rwonline.com/reference-room/iboc/rw-iboc-fees.shtml

What a scam - if this was an open system, there would be no fees ! Notice that iBiquity also gets a percentage of yearly revenues, but this is from 2002.

 

[700WLW]

On Barry Mishkind's radio boards, there is discussion that Ibiquity wants a licensing fee of $40 per radio. Nobody seems to be able to confirm that, nor can I, after looking all over Ubiquity’s web site. I can tell you that the licensing agreement I saw might charitably called "onerous." That isn't a great way to sell a product.

If this is true, these radios will remain very expensive for until the fee is drastically lowered. Most car radios don't cost $40 to manufacture in China. Adding a huge licensing fee will price these radios off the shelf.

I have a hard time believing that it is that expensive. Does anyone know for sure?

In the past, the FM Stereo royalty was on the order of ten cents per radio. I think C-Quam was twenty five cents per radio. Of course Motorola wanted to sell you the chip sets. That was another dollar or two. Incidentally, it seems the Motorola chips are still being made, and have several uses past AM Stereo. If the licensing fee for HD is much over one dollar per radio, they are putting nails in their own coffin.

I went to the NAB website, but couldn't download this link, if anyone else can, then please do:

"3) HD Radio (99%) - 08/01/2006
Potential to generate $50-$100/radio profit 31 HD Radio Rollout - Station Promotions Increasing WXGI-AM 950, Richmond, VA KPOF-AM91, Denver, CO WGUC-FM 90.9, Cincinnati, OH WOSU-FM 89.7, Columbus, OH WHUR-FM,..."

http://www.nab.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Search&Template=/search/searchdisplay.cfm