"XM, Sirius, or a few HD2 and HD3 formats that I can't even get because I'm in the suburbs 60 miles from the towers. Hummmm--- I think I'll go with XM or Sirius not HD when I get a new car radio. Instead of half a dozen HD2 in addition to the stuff that I already get, I can get over a hundred fresh, unique formats that won't fade out 10 miles from the tower. And I can listen to them all over the country without re-tuning the radio every few miles hoping to find an HD station within range."If you live in a major market this is simply not true. First off, how many diffferent musical formats do you listen to? I might listen to 2 or 3 at most and with nearly every HD FM station running a different format on their HD 2's from what's on their HD 1's we've already doubled the available formats and we even have an HD 3 music format. As they close down the analogue transmissions more HD channels can be opened up and best off... There's no monthly bill. Also most people don't wander 100 miles from home. Most people might travel 30 miles a day. The HD's have no trouble with that kind of range. "AM C-Quam was good for 300 miles daytime, hundreds more at night. " There are still some C-Quam stations and no one under the age of 50 will listen to a current AM music station. With the competition on FM and the audience for AM dwindling, forget about Am's appeal. Why do you think they have the equivilent of 10 presets for FM and only 5 for AM stations? "No way AM IBOC will ever equal that! "It doesn't have to. 99% of the public wants to hear a local loud radio station. They don't want to hear fading, crackling, noisy AM as it stands now. If you had a business where you knew the audience would disappear and soon, wouldn't you do something to make that business appeal to a new audience? As IBOC comes on board a lot of thee talk stations will go away and more music will be reintroduced to the AM band."Not everybody lives in New York City."That's your loss. "Some of us live in the wild west where you can drive 100 miles without seeing a house, FM is useless because it is line of site, and you can find areas without a single FM station on the dial, and precious few AM."I'm sorry for your problems but lets face it. There are 15 million of us here and that's in NY metro alone. The vast majority of people live in urban or suburban areas. You can't hold back technology from the majority for the few who feel they might have a problem." But what few AM's there are, C-Quam worked."NOt really. It might have worked technologically but there are few 20 something AM listeners and even though IBOC was available on car radios for years, no one cared. Only a few techie types. "Now stereo is subtracted from rural listeners so somebody in New York City can put their Receptor radio next to a flourescent light bulb, TV, computer, and light dimmer and still hear talk radio without buzzing and interference. Can somebody plot the overall usuable square mileage of useful IBOC on a map of the US, and compare that to the square miles where it will only cause interference to rural listeners?"Maybe this will work out and many of those marginal stations will go off the air. Therr's way too many stations operating now. Let me ask you, at this time on AM IBOC runs daylight hours. What interference do you rceeive from NY stations? Oh and maybe we should power down those 50 KW stations we have so that you receive less interference. " I suspect less than a tenth of a percent of the total square miles in the US can actually benefit from IBOC. And I don't care how many people live in a few concentrated urban centers, because it won't make a difference to us out West!"Let's wait and see. I think if you are being interfered with by NY stations running an IBOC exciter during daylight hours you have the most remarkable receiver. If you are assuming that you will suffer if and when IBOC goes 24 hours I'd say never assume.If you are that far west NY stations will not interfere with your reception unless of course RF transmited in IBOC defy's the laws of physics and the D layer.
