FMextra - FAR BETTER THAN IBOC ? OR !

[joshzz]

Sometime ago I spoke to a representative of FM extra about what they offer.

Apparently, it seems they have something better than IBOC but it's being met with little fanfare.

IBOC has the big powerhouses funding it.. Clear etc, while FMextra seems like a small mom and pop shop.

What they do offer is quick set-up, side channels for your main carrier station and low cost buy-out purchase - no annual fees.

Problem is, getting the radios out to the public would be a much, more difficult challenge. They don't have the money to encourage auto manufacturers to put them in new vehicles - but I would like to see FMextra overcome these challenges and become the leader.

The manufacturers of IBOC claim it offers great sound but in all honesty - when driving in the car with the heater running, horns honking, kids talking - I don't hear any noticeable difference.

What's your take on FMextra? josh

 

[ChiefEngineer]

Fm Extra is the better option. It has better coverage because it is operating on the subcarrier which is better than 1/100 of your power.

As I understand it IBOC people paid FM Extra to stop distributing or promoting the product.

I really want to see a product that can be received on HD radios that doesn't cost 25,000 to license then another 150,000 to build a Class A.

Smulyan got the phone manufacturers to include a radio app but this isn't widespread. Wonder if there is a non license required subcarrier product that can be sent over the air?

Patent rights are supreme and for the Commission to pull the same deal with Am stereo we already see small amounts of stations implementing IBOC and even fewer receivers selling. Fm had the competitor phase modulation. Are we so far past the ability to design a better mousetrap on our own?

 

[radioskeptic]

If you want to know why VuCast (the renamed Digital Radio Express) isn't serious about promoting FMeXtra as the viable alternative to so-called "HD" that it is, you may find the answer in an interview with FMeXtra inventor Derek Kumar in the Dec. 2005 Radio World Engineering Extra:

Early on, we saw that IBOC was going nowhere as long as there were multiple proponents, and even in the best estimates, it would be many years before there would be any return on investment.
So we decided to license our patent portfolio for use in IBOC to USA Digital Radio, which eventually merged with Lucent’s IBOC group to form Ibiquity.
We are an Ibiquity shareholder. [Emphasis supplied.]

(Source: http://www.bext.com/RW/RWFMeXtraDec05.pdf.)

One other quote from that interview:

There is no significant difference in spectrum occupancy between the “extended hybrid” mode of IBOC today and these earlier [late 1980's] systems, which were deemed by the NRSC and others to be incompatible with the host analog FM signal.

So the NRSC was right then, but they're wrong now, after being "packed" (in the sense that FDR tried to "pack" the Supreme Court) with members from the radio consolidators that collectively own a controlling interest in Iniquity Digital Corp. (And that "n" in Iniquity was no typo!)

And by the way, I have it on good authority that the new investors that bailed out DRE/VuCast financially were the ones who insisted on the name change, because they think the word "radio" has acquired a bad image.

 

[HowardMBurgers]

May as well put FM Xtra up on the dusty mantel with Leonard's ISB stereo. Nobody cares.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

May as well put FM Xtra up on the dusty mantel with Leonard's ISB stereo. Nobody cares.

There are a few of us who are passionate believers in FMXtra...unfortunately, none of us are owners of the technology.

 

[joshzz]

Where is fmextra now? I typed in www.fmextra.com and was taken to a VU cast page. Same company?
josh

 

[radioskeptic]

It's there on the VuCast web site, or at least there's a link to the FMeXtra page, if you look hard enough. I only discovered that Digital Radio Express had changed its name a few months ago when I typed www.dreinc.com in the URL box and got to the VuCast site. (Somewhere on the page, in very small type, it says "Formerly Digital Radio Express" or words to that efffect.)

 

[nd2023]

So FMextra would go as far as the stereo signal.IBOC has the advantage that if it were 100% digital at 100% power, the HD signal would go further than the analog signal. A class B could be heard static free 70 miles away.

 

[gtomas]

So FMextra would go as far as the stereo signal.IBOC has the advantage that if it were 100% digital at 100% power, the HD signal would go further than the analog signal. A class B could be heard static free 70 miles away.

Yes, but it would wipe the adjacent stations' analog signals in digital hash... With FMeXtra (being a subcarrier) there are no power level or interference issues at all.


Regards,
Goran Tomas

 

[radioskeptic]

So FMextra would go as far as the stereo signal. IBOC has the advantage that if it were 100% digital at 100% power, the HD signal would go further than the analog signal. A class B could be heard static free 70 miles away.

Yes, Nick, the IBOC signals would travel that far, but that doesn’t mean they would be usable at that distance.

You’re in the Philadelphia media market, too, aren’t you? Then you ought to know about what’s happened to OTA TV here since the digital transition. (Of course, you may not have noticed if you have cable or satellite.)

We had four VHF TV stations, but now we have only two: WPVI on channel 6 and non-com WHYY-TV on channel 12. KYW-TV abandoned 3, keeping 26 for its digital signal, and WCAU dropped 10 in favor of 34. Most of the original UHF’s played a game of musical chairs in the band. Only WPHL (17) moved its digital signal to its original analog channel.

I have an excellent outdoor antenna, and I’m less than 20 miles by air from the Roxborough antenna farm. The only stations I have trouble with are WHYY and WPVI, especially the latter---even after the FCC gave them permission to quadruple their power to overcome the problems they were experiencing on channel 6!

And as I’m sure you know, channel 6, at 82-88, is just below the FM band, while channel 12, at 204-210, is operating at twice the frequency of stations in the upper half of the FM band. (Channel 17, the lowest U here, is 488-492—more than 4.5 times the top of the FM band.)

So what are the implications for digital radio from this TV talk? Simple. Just as MF (the AM band) has proved completely unsuitable for digital broadcasting, the experience of digital TV indicates that the propagation characteristics of the VHF range, especially the lower half of it, render it far from ideal for digital radio, whether it uses COFDM like “HD” radio or 8VSB like OTA digital TV.

Of course, that doesn’t apply to FMeXtra, where the digital signals are broadcast as a subcarrier on the analog FM signal. The only limitation on its range, relative to that of the baseband mono audio, is a consequence of the triangular noise spectrum of FM.