A new radio idea thoughts?

[jras20]

I was thinking, instead of the terrestrial idea of HD Radio, how about having Satellite free version of radio. to where it would work in rural locations as well as in the City, and 30 miles from the City etc. The only catch would be adds. They are already making people buy new radios for HD Radio. So why not just use a Satellite base type radio service instead? I would be for that, XM works great in home and car. with really small drop outs.

 

[Savage]

Kudos to jras20. I've been saying this for a long time. Distribute terrestrial radio via satellite for its digital component. The infrastructure already exists, the precedent has been set by terrestrial TV stations which are distributed on the bird and by cable. The system is reliable and it works well. There are tens of millions of receivers already out there. Which is to contrast with HD, which is unreliable and has been rejected in all three segments of the market.

XM/Sirius, individually or merged, do not possess a workable financial model. Teaming with terrestrial radio with analog signals remaining for local coverage and using the bird for national-digital could be a win-win.

 

[R.F. Burns]

If this could be arranged and not with the currently awful satellite radio audio, I'd agree 100%.

 

[jras20]

If this could be arranged and not with the currently awful satellite radio audio, I'd agree 100%.

Yep and you won't half to deal with the awful Customer support as well.

 

[kenglish]

Check out Free-to-Air (FTA) satellite audio channels:

http://www.lyngsat.com/freeradio/United-States.html

Or, here is the top of the worldwide listing:

http://www.lyngsat.com/freeradio/index.html

Of course, you won't be getting them on a paper-clip sized antenna.

 

[KB1OKL]

Jeez, that's a good idea jras20, I could go for that also with improved audio. Did we all just agree on something or am I dreaming?

 

[Chuck]

It has been suggested that the new combined Sirius/XM company, whatever they choose to call it, will have some free commercial channels. If that happens, it might be an opportunity for a few unique broadcasters to supply programming. On the other hand, it could also become a major competitor to local terrestrial radio.

Obviously, there wouldn't be much need for duplication of programming. How many satellite channels do you need with Rush and other similar talk shows on them? Maybe it would challenge local broadcasters to actually do something original.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I was thinking, instead of the terrestrial idea of HD Radio, how about having Satellite free version of radio. to where it would work in rural locations as well as in the City, and 30 miles from the City etc. The only catch would be adds. They are already making people buy new radios for HD Radio. So why not just use a Satellite base type radio service instead? I would be for that, XM works great in home and car. with really small drop outs.

I was thinking more along the lines of how to make IBOC actually WORK. I've often thought that three RF signal chains instead of one - one for the analog and two more, one for each sideband, might do wonders for range.

I'm not sure what to do about AM, I think the only hope there would be to massively shut down stations - or put the IBOC on longwave only. 150 to 450 kHz is wasted on outmoded airport beacon stuff right now. That is a band 1/3 as big as the present AM band, and they could do it right with 30 kHz spacing, megawatt transmitters, no protection outside of COL.

 

[PhilJSmith67]

Bruce, using LW wouldn't be IBOC, it would be OOBDC which is where HD Radio belongs in the first place.

OOBDC (out of band dedicated channel; i just made that up )

I don't care if HD Radio runs in LW, 76-88 MHz, 225-235 MHz, a deprecated UHF channel, or wherever, I just want it the heck out of the MW/AM band. When I can actually get an AM HD station reliably, the sound quality is mediocre, and for the other 95% of stations on the AM dial the collateral interference is a major detriment.

I don't mind it so much on FM, although I prefer to keep power levels where they are (or better yet, move those signals out-of-band too). I do enjoy the significant audio improvement on several of my existing FM stations.

As for the topic of this thread, I just can't stomach paying for radio. Been there, done that for several years. I would be all for a free satellite service, in the capacity first mentioned on this thread.

 

[JohnnyElectron]

There isn't enough satellite bandwidth for the addition of terrestrial stations as it is with current codecs. XM+Sirius audio is already as poor as it can be before they lose customers Because of the NAB, the 2 satrad boys only got half the spectrum that they asked for, so in order to double the number of original channels, they've had to reduce codec rates. The other half of this satrad bandwidth on either side should be purchased by terrestrial radio stations; then a radio with quadruple the current satellite bandwidth can be made to cover XM+Sirius+terrLower+terrUpper. If the timing was correct, then the 'fill-in' repeater for the 'Terr satrad' would be the local AM/FM signals?

 

[jegrant]

Slacker may still offer satellite delivery at some point. And there was a project a while back to use a standard Ku band DVB satellite, but with massive levels of error correction, to offer a satellite radio type service that would only program one or two of its own channels and lease the rest. Those who lease could choose to broadcast in mono or stereo. The service would have been receivable on a portable receiver roughly the size of many shortwave radios, and an antenna would be built in; for stationary reception, such as home use, a regular Ku satellite dish could be installed (slightly larger than a Dish Network or DirecTV dish) and it would receive both radio and TV channels free of charge.