CAN WE STILL SALVAGE THE AM BAND AT NIGHT?

[rbrucecarter5]

Dude, was WFAN 660 carrying the Mets? They turn HD off during baseball games because the fans like to listen on headsets in the park. The encoding delay makes this impossible.

It may not be just that. "Shredderman" documented how those headset radios have broad bandwidth. IBOC self-jamming would be lounder than the screaming crowds around them!!!

Of course it may just be the live vs seven second delay is unacceptable for sports fans. There is no workaround for that from the IBOC cheerleaders.

 

[davideduardo]

Of course it may just be the live vs seven second delay is unacceptable for sports fans. There is no workaround for that from the IBOC cheerleaders.

It's the 8.1 second delay; many stations run the risk of an indecency / profanity fine if they also turn off the cuss box delay, too. Many stations have the profanity delay on 24/7, particularly those taking phone calls, live contesting, etc.

 

[awj223]

It's the 8.1 second delay; many stations run the risk of an indecency / profanity fine if they also turn off the cuss box delay, too. Many stations have the profanity delay on 24/7, particularly those taking phone calls, live contesting, etc.

Play-by-play is different from talk radio, and has to be run with no delay so that fans who are physically at the event can hear the commentary. The announcers are hired by either the station or the team, and are expected to be professional and refrain from cussing on the air. I've never actually heard a play-by-play announcer use profanity in a broadcast, but if one of them did he or she would probably be immediately reprimanded and/or fired.

The only time I remember cussing getting through to a play by play broadcast was when they started putting portable microphones in the dugout and on the players' uniforms so that you could hear the "sounds of the game". The TV side commentators (I won't name the station or the team) cut to a replay of the previous play so that fans could hear the reaction of the team to a miraculous defensive play that got them out of the inning. One of the team members could easily be heard saying "oh s**t" as the ball left the bat. The commentators immediately apologized and said it was "not our intention to have that type of language in the broadcast".

In any case, as another poster said the HD Radio delay is a problem for which even the cheerleaders have no solution. If the bits aren't too interleaved, there should be a switch to tell the radio to immediately decode the audio without waiting for the redundant/error correcting bits to arrive (at the cost of a more robust signal of course). Basically, eliminate the buffer and decode without delay. If you can guarantee a strong signal at the location of the sporting event, which most flagship stations have, this shouldn't be an problem because the spectators don't move around too much.

 

[kenglish]

If we "reinvent" the FM Band again, I say to move it up in to the upper VHF (channels 7-13, 174-216 MHz range) area.

Most Digital TV will be in the 7-51 area, so few people will need a low-band TV antenna after the Transition is done. That means, smaller outdoor antennas for TV. Why not eliminate the need for a low-VHF section entirely? Put Digital Radio in between the high-VHF TV channels, with a caveat that they have to broadcast from a common location (that keeps the interference down).

 

[KeithE4]

If we "reinvent" the FM Band again, I say to move it up in to the upper VHF (channels 7-13, 174-216 MHz range) area.

Most Digital TV will be in the 7-51 area, so few people will need a low-band TV antenna after the Transition is done. That means, smaller outdoor antennas for TV. Why not eliminate the need for a low-VHF section entirely? Put Digital Radio in between the high-VHF TV channels, with a caveat that they have to broadcast from a common location (that keeps the interference down).

The current FM band is too entrenched to move anywhere. It's possible to expand the band down to 76 MHz (if Channels 5 & 6 are withdrawn from TV use, of course) with little or no trouble because the chipsets & circuits that can handle those frequencies already exist for the Japanese FM band.

There are also too many TV stations that will continue to use Chs. 7-13 after analog is shut down so moving them and turning that spectrum over to FM or digital broadcasting is just not an option.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

I don't want to see the AM band moved to low VHF channels. I am looking forward to the broadband internet service in that band, so I can get streaming from any station I want, on the road.

 

[PhilGalasso]

Of course it may just be the live vs seven second delay is unacceptable for sports fans. There is no workaround for that from the IBOC cheerleaders.

The Harris exporter (IBOC encoder) has a "ballgame mode" which eliminates the delay on the ANALOG part of the signal for that purpose. Of course, if you are listening in digital, you will still get the 8 second latency delay.

 

[PhilJSmith67]

I've heard WSCR Chicago do that digital-delay / analog-live split. It's really a mess if you're listening in HD and the signal reverts to/from analog. I like WBBM Chicago's approach. Just turn off the IBOC signal and eliminate the delay.

As for the encoding delay, it could be reduced dramatically from 8.1 seconds if error-correction was eliminated, but it can never be zero like analog -- there will ALWAYS be some delay. The A/D converter has to collect enough bits to form each packet, and that takes a span of time. It might me a half second or so (I don't know exactly with the AAC 48k codec, or what the packet size is), but there will always be a delay. Unfortunately the bandwidth of HD Radio is tremendously lower than DTV's 19.2 MB/sec; DTV's packets are only 188 bytes each (1508 bits), so figure at 19.2 Mbits/sec, it doesn't take long to squeak out 1508 bits at a time. I've seen some of the newer ATSC/DTV tuners acquire channels in about a quarter-second. HD Radio will never, under any circumstance, be able to do that.