For Discussion - Niche Formats

[ElCheapo]

Ok well noted. I am not an engineer, and have no desire to be one. I was never good at math.

Although, my assesment was based upon what my engineer told me when we went HD and the question was raised about how many sidebands is the spectrum capable of, that was his answer.

Either way, however, you are sacrificng one for another.

How are you anyway "Cheapo"?

Understood. You are definitely correct in your assessment - when you add more channels, the quality goes down because you have to split the available data stream to accomodate them - their reach does not, but quality definitely suffers. In the HD standard, up to 8 channels are possible per FM station, but that won't be feasible until more of the available bandwidth can be used for HD transmission.

You can eliminate higher frequency subcarriers and get more bandwidth for HD, you can even eliminate the stereo component (the L-R signal, which itself is a subcarrier) broadcast in mono and get more bandwidth for HD. Eventually, some stations might eliminate the analog component altogether and use all of their bandwidth for HD - then broadcasting up to 8 channels per FM frequency would be feasible. Whether this ever happens will all depend on adoption and Commission rulings. They axed analog TV - I don't think it's too much of a stretch that they might do the same to analog FM.

As for me personally, I'm doing very well - except for the friggin' cold I have right now. The time I spent in Dallas was pretty miserable because I had to talk constantly and explain things to people there with almost no voice.

I chose the "ElCheapo" screen name when I started some threads in the engineering section about using the Optimod PC 1100 as a front-end processor for other processors. It retails for under $1,500 and gives you most of the functionality of the flagship Optimod 8500. You're probably using them there to process your HD2 streams - many CC markets are.