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HD = 8 TRACK TAPE = QUADROPHONIC = AM STEREO
- Thread starter joshzz
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Don Juan said:
Yes but you would have thought by now they'd have stopped blowing good money after bad. After all the money they have sunk into this hole, it's gone absolutely nowhere and has shown absolutely no signs of going anywhere except eventually to the Salvation army nearest you next to the pile of old TV's and computers
Don Juan said:
I realize this is a favorite argument of the pro-HD crowd, but it's based more on wishful thinking than sound logic. Basically, here's what they want us to believe:
FM became a very successful technology (and remains so), but FM struggled in the beginning.
HD is in a early phase of development and still struggling; therefore, HD will eventually become very successful.
Sorry, but this argument doesn't prove anything. If long-term success of all struggling technologies were assured, the consumer market would have accepted such flops as the Elcaset, RCA's Selectavision Video Disc, Columbia's SQ Quad system, Sansui's QS Quad system, (and other Quad variants), and Dolby FM -- not to mention the :CueCat!
Good point, Freebird, but there’s very important difference between “HD” radio and those other failures you mentioned. Each of those had only one or two corporate backers, instead of broad support from an entire industry, not to mention a clearly co-opted public radio establishment.
The array of economic interests currently promoting “HD” is comparable in breadth to the alliance of forces that were working to suppress FM for nearly the first thirty years of its existence. Their biggest success was getting FM moved from its prewar band to the present band in 1945.
I’m not going into detail on that here. I’d like to recommend Lawrence Lessing’s biography, Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, but it’s long out of print and very hard to find; so we’ll have to settle for this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong
With the country still in the Great Depression when FM was introduced to the public in 1938, they didn’t have to work too hard to suppress FM then. But FM should have been successful in the early postwar period, when prosperity returned. Big Radio's success in suppressing FM for another 20 years probably gives hope to the “HD” boosters that their half-baked technology can be successfully promoted if and when the economy recovers. But I’d like to warn them that it’s actually easier to suppress something good than to promote something so obviously bad.
(And please don’t try to refute the Wikipedia piece with any more of your attempts at a revisionist history of radio, David Eduardo and Big A – the holes in your arguments aren’t that amusing anymore.)
The array of economic interests currently promoting “HD” is comparable in breadth to the alliance of forces that were working to suppress FM for nearly the first thirty years of its existence. Their biggest success was getting FM moved from its prewar band to the present band in 1945.
I’m not going into detail on that here. I’d like to recommend Lawrence Lessing’s biography, Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong, but it’s long out of print and very hard to find; so we’ll have to settle for this Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong
With the country still in the Great Depression when FM was introduced to the public in 1938, they didn’t have to work too hard to suppress FM then. But FM should have been successful in the early postwar period, when prosperity returned. Big Radio's success in suppressing FM for another 20 years probably gives hope to the “HD” boosters that their half-baked technology can be successfully promoted if and when the economy recovers. But I’d like to warn them that it’s actually easier to suppress something good than to promote something so obviously bad.
(And please don’t try to refute the Wikipedia piece with any more of your attempts at a revisionist history of radio, David Eduardo and Big A – the holes in your arguments aren’t that amusing anymore.)
radioskeptic said:
You talk about revisionist history, but the fact is that there was only one company opposed to FM: RCA. Armstrong was a former RCA employee, and his success was a thorn in the side of David Sarnoff. Armstrong was to RCA as DeLorean was to GM. So there was no "alliance of forces" or a corporate anti-FM conspiracy. Just the opposition of one very strong and powerful man. And even though RCA continued to fight Armstrong into the 60s, it didn't stop them from obtaining FM licenses and investing in FM stations. The fact is that even after the frequency shift in 1945, it took more than 25 years for FM to gain popularity. So RCA's delays may have hurt Armstrong's business, but they weren't the reason why FM took so long to become popular.
The similarity between FM and HD is that they were both copyrighted technologies, requiring users to pay royalties. Sarnoff wasn't too interested in paying an ex-employee who was now a competitor for the use of a technology that he felt should have been his. (Armstrong began his work on FM while an RCA employee) And a lot of electronics manufacturers today feel the same way about HD. They're waiting for the copyright to expire. Ironically, the FM copyright expired in about the same year the the FCC came up with it's rule requiring original programming on FM. It led to an explosion of cheap portable AM/FM radios in the marketplace, and in ten years, FM became popular.
KB1OKL said:
The FM we know now is not the same FM Armstrong invented. Other companies and inventors made changes in the system, and one of the biggest came when General Electric came up with FM stereo.
What's missing right now is the interest of other companies to take the basic idea of IBOC, and make changes in it to fix some of the problems. Part of that is probably because there's not much interest in AM-FM radio either. There are serious questions about the future of the AM & FM bands, so why should a company invest in a technology that's related to a dying system of communication?
Outrageous errors!
First, Armstrong was never an RCA employee. After World War I, he sold RCA exclusive rights to the superheterodyne, which he had developed as a captain in the Army Signal Corps (for which he was promoted to the rank of Major) until 1930.
(Armstrong actually made a deal with Westinghouse, but Westinghouse, along with GE and AT&T, had formed RCA as a holding company for their radio patents. In the late Twenties, an anti-trust case forced them to divest themselves of their interest in RCA, which they spun off as an independent company; and the new RCA, which needed its own manufacturing facilities, bought the ailing Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, NJ – hence the name RCA Victor on its consumer products.)
Second, Sarnoff was not alone in opposing FM. Bill Paley’s CBS was also inimical to FM development, because CBS, NBC, ABC (which had been NBC Blue until 1943) and Mutual had most of the best Class 1 clears in the major markets, and they didn’t want to compete with a new and audibly superior audio service that they couldn’t dominate. AT&T also opposed it. Why? Again, turn to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Network
Armstrong held a patent on FM (not a copyright—inventions are patented, not copyrighted!), and he offered to sell it to RCA outright when he privately demonstrated it for them in 1934. They refused, but both GE and Zenith, followed by a number of smaller companies, were eager to license the patent on a unit sales basis, much as receiver makers to Iniquity for “HD” today. After a boomlet in FM radio began, RCA wanted to buy a blanket license on FM manufacturing for a single payment, but Armstrong, as a matter of principle, refused to betray his early supporters. (You’re right, though, about one thing: Armstrong’s basic FM patents expired around the time of the first 50-50 rule, requiring that at least 50 percent of an FM station’s programming not duplicate that of a co-owned AM.)
Again, Armstrong, was never an RCA employee. He was a professsor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, and he developed wideband FM entirely in his basement lab on the Columbia campus.
So please, Big A, no more of your error-ridden revisionist “history”!
Now as for what you said in reply to KB10KL:
Mono FM reception is still exactly as Armstrong designed it. But GE didn’t “come up with” FM stereo. Armstrong himself developed multiplexing, and privately demonstrated it for RCA during those 1934 tests. In fact, GE didn’t even come up with the idea of having a single subcarrier with an L-R signal. That was Murray Crosby, who proposed an FM subcarrier, instead of a double-sideband suppressed carrier difference signal with a pilot at half the frequency of the suppressed carrier (in fact, that was Zenith’s contribution to the GE-Zenith system—the original GE proposal used an AM subcarrier).
And we’d be much better off with the Crosby system. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what major Armstrong himself said in his landmark 1936 paper, “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” ( Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 5, page 734):
First, Armstrong was never an RCA employee. After World War I, he sold RCA exclusive rights to the superheterodyne, which he had developed as a captain in the Army Signal Corps (for which he was promoted to the rank of Major) until 1930.
(Armstrong actually made a deal with Westinghouse, but Westinghouse, along with GE and AT&T, had formed RCA as a holding company for their radio patents. In the late Twenties, an anti-trust case forced them to divest themselves of their interest in RCA, which they spun off as an independent company; and the new RCA, which needed its own manufacturing facilities, bought the ailing Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, NJ – hence the name RCA Victor on its consumer products.)
Second, Sarnoff was not alone in opposing FM. Bill Paley’s CBS was also inimical to FM development, because CBS, NBC, ABC (which had been NBC Blue until 1943) and Mutual had most of the best Class 1 clears in the major markets, and they didn’t want to compete with a new and audibly superior audio service that they couldn’t dominate. AT&T also opposed it. Why? Again, turn to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Network
Armstrong held a patent on FM (not a copyright—inventions are patented, not copyrighted!), and he offered to sell it to RCA outright when he privately demonstrated it for them in 1934. They refused, but both GE and Zenith, followed by a number of smaller companies, were eager to license the patent on a unit sales basis, much as receiver makers to Iniquity for “HD” today. After a boomlet in FM radio began, RCA wanted to buy a blanket license on FM manufacturing for a single payment, but Armstrong, as a matter of principle, refused to betray his early supporters. (You’re right, though, about one thing: Armstrong’s basic FM patents expired around the time of the first 50-50 rule, requiring that at least 50 percent of an FM station’s programming not duplicate that of a co-owned AM.)
Again, Armstrong, was never an RCA employee. He was a professsor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, and he developed wideband FM entirely in his basement lab on the Columbia campus.
So please, Big A, no more of your error-ridden revisionist “history”!
Now as for what you said in reply to KB10KL:
Mono FM reception is still exactly as Armstrong designed it. But GE didn’t “come up with” FM stereo. Armstrong himself developed multiplexing, and privately demonstrated it for RCA during those 1934 tests. In fact, GE didn’t even come up with the idea of having a single subcarrier with an L-R signal. That was Murray Crosby, who proposed an FM subcarrier, instead of a double-sideband suppressed carrier difference signal with a pilot at half the frequency of the suppressed carrier (in fact, that was Zenith’s contribution to the GE-Zenith system—the original GE proposal used an AM subcarrier).
And we’d be much better off with the Crosby system. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s what major Armstrong himself said in his landmark 1936 paper, “A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation” ( Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Vol. 24, No. 5, page 734):
Edwin Armstrong was at one time a large stock holder of RCA corproation. As was mentioned Sarnoff & others tried to destroy FM becauase they saw it as antiquating their well developed AM facilities (and for RCA their AM radios which the public owned. Origionally Sarnoff didn't want to air commercials on NBC. He saw broadcasting as a way of selling radios. His interest was on the manufacturing end and so he did all he could to bury FM. He had Armstrong kicked out of Empire and he used that space to develope Television broadcasting and he had FM moved from 44 Mhz to the current FM band therebye antiquating every FM rceeiver in the hands of the public. Companies like Philco manufactured radios which could receive FM radio but didn't pay Armstrongs licensing fee by making circutry changes. If you are interested in the developement of FM as well as Armstrongs life read Empire Of The Air & Men Of Hi-Fi.
FM worked on the 46Mc band, but the FCC obsoleted all the FM radios at the time when they moved the band.KB1OKL said:
Sometimes it is not the inherent technology that doesn't work, sometimes it is the politics.
TV worked in anologue, the politics said it doesn't work anymore.
Politics said Hazeltine/Kahn/ISB system doesn't work at all.
A truth of life: Politics Trumps Everything.
Politics can make AM/FM HD work. If it has to jam it down your throat.
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
R. F. Burns wrote:
Thanks, R.F., for backing me up on this. Though Armstrong was never an RCA employee, he was, indeed, a major RCA shareholder, because he was paid in RCA stock when he agreed to give RCA the exclusive use of his superheterodyne patent for a few years in the Twenties.
Thanks, too, for reminding me of Philco’s FM1000 detector tube, which was a blatant attempt to circumvent Armstrong’s patent. But that special-purpose Philco tube was a crude forerunner of the quadrature detector developed by Robert Adler at Zenith—though, of course, Zenith wasn’t trying to dodge paying royalties to Armstrong.
But RCA, like Philco, developed alternative detectors to replace the discriminator and thus avoid paying Armstrong. Their first effort, the ratio detector, was a resounding success because, functioning as a second-rate limiter, as well as a detector, it allowed manufacturers to cut costs, and thus was widely licensed by other manufacturers. Their second, the Beers receiver, seems to be nothing more than an historical curiosity, albeit an interesting one. An article describing it in detail appeared in the Dec. 1944 Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (“Frequency-Dividing Locked-in Oscillator Frequency-Modulation Receiver,” by G. L. Beers—yes, they hyphenated “Frequency-Modulation”).
The Beers receiver, which used the quadrature principle with a conventional pentagrid converter, was an even earlier forerunner of the “gated beam” quadrature detectors used in vacuum tube TV sets.
(I’ve never been able to find a single example of a commercially manufactured receiver using the Beers circuit. If anybody knows of one, please tell us about it.)
Thanks, R.F., for backing me up on this. Though Armstrong was never an RCA employee, he was, indeed, a major RCA shareholder, because he was paid in RCA stock when he agreed to give RCA the exclusive use of his superheterodyne patent for a few years in the Twenties.
Thanks, too, for reminding me of Philco’s FM1000 detector tube, which was a blatant attempt to circumvent Armstrong’s patent. But that special-purpose Philco tube was a crude forerunner of the quadrature detector developed by Robert Adler at Zenith—though, of course, Zenith wasn’t trying to dodge paying royalties to Armstrong.
But RCA, like Philco, developed alternative detectors to replace the discriminator and thus avoid paying Armstrong. Their first effort, the ratio detector, was a resounding success because, functioning as a second-rate limiter, as well as a detector, it allowed manufacturers to cut costs, and thus was widely licensed by other manufacturers. Their second, the Beers receiver, seems to be nothing more than an historical curiosity, albeit an interesting one. An article describing it in detail appeared in the Dec. 1944 Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (“Frequency-Dividing Locked-in Oscillator Frequency-Modulation Receiver,” by G. L. Beers—yes, they hyphenated “Frequency-Modulation”).
The Beers receiver, which used the quadrature principle with a conventional pentagrid converter, was an even earlier forerunner of the “gated beam” quadrature detectors used in vacuum tube TV sets.
(I’ve never been able to find a single example of a commercially manufactured receiver using the Beers circuit. If anybody knows of one, please tell us about it.)
radioskeptic said:
Call it what you will. He did a lot of business with RCA. His relationship with Sarnoff went back to 1914.
radioskeptic said:
Wrong! According to the respected historian Erik Barnouw, Armstrong sold the feedback and super-heterodyne patents to Westinghouse in 1920 for $335,000, payable over 10 years. Not RCA. The only other company interested was GE.
On page 65 of Barnouw's book "A Tower in Babel," he says that the Armstrong patent was bought outside of the GE-RCA-AT&T alliance.
The patent he sold to RCA was the super-regenerative circuit, plus the right to Armstrong’s next invention, which was FM. Lawrence Lessing credits Sarnoff for inspiring Armstrong's interest in creating a solution to static on AM.
radioskeptic said:
Sorry, but even the Wikipedia article you referenced named Sarnoff as the lone opponant. The fact is that GE and Zenith were major backers of Armstrong and FM, and stayed with him even after the 1945 move.
radioskeptic said:
Sorry, but the point is that while the move of FM hurt Armstrong financially, it was in no way responsible for the failure of FM to catch on publicly. The FCC accepted FM in 1940, and moved it in 1945. That's only five years, during which time there was a war going on. Not a lot of radios were being built or sold. The move was made in 1945, and it took over 25 years for the public to accept FM. By that time, Armstrong's patent had run out, and manufacturers could use his invention for free.
radioskeptic said:
Then why did CBS begin experiments with FM broadcasting in the 1930s, and even licenced stations in Philly and New York before the FCC move in 1945, and then quickly moved their stations to the new band?
I disagree with your point about an anti-FM alliance or conspiracy. Most of the major radio owners at the time were also electronics manufacturers and were excited about creating new reasons for people to buy radios. Westinghouse, GE, Crosley, and others were already licensing FM prior to the FCC move, and continued afterwards. Sarnoff's problem was he felt his 1924 deal should have given him "favored nation status." Armstrong disagreed.
Oh come on, Big A. You’re desperate. Immediately after the comment you quoted, I said,
And there was no “GE-RCA-AT&T alliance” because RCA—while organized as an independent, publicly trade corporation on paper—was a de facto holding company for the radio patents of AT&T,GE, Westinghouse and United Fruit (which had financed some early radio research because of its interest in radio communications for commercial shipping); and it remained, in effect, a holding company until Westinghouse and GE and AT&T were forced to divest themselves of their interests in RCA. RCA marketed equipment built by GE and Westinghouse before it acquired Victor’s Camden plant in 1929.
The $335,000 Armstrong got for selling his superheterodyne patent to Westinghouse was to be paid over 10 years, and he wisely accepted RCA stock as payment for the later installments. And yes, RCA optioned any future inventions, which is why they got first refusal on FM. As we all know, they refused it.
Armstrong’s 1914 meeting with Sarnoff? Sarnoff was a junior exec with the Marconi group when they were interested in the regenerative circuit. The primitive technology of the time was their only common ground. Sarnoff was far less interested in the workings of the circuit than in its commercial possbilities. There was nothing like the personal friendships Armstrong enjoyed with other radio pioneers, who were more technically oriented.
As for Westinghouse, GE and others licensing FM, both before and after the 1945 move to the current band, they did so partly because they believed in its long-term prospects, but also partly because they liked to show their disdain for their prodigal offspring, RCA.
And there was no “GE-RCA-AT&T alliance” because RCA—while organized as an independent, publicly trade corporation on paper—was a de facto holding company for the radio patents of AT&T,GE, Westinghouse and United Fruit (which had financed some early radio research because of its interest in radio communications for commercial shipping); and it remained, in effect, a holding company until Westinghouse and GE and AT&T were forced to divest themselves of their interests in RCA. RCA marketed equipment built by GE and Westinghouse before it acquired Victor’s Camden plant in 1929.
The $335,000 Armstrong got for selling his superheterodyne patent to Westinghouse was to be paid over 10 years, and he wisely accepted RCA stock as payment for the later installments. And yes, RCA optioned any future inventions, which is why they got first refusal on FM. As we all know, they refused it.
Armstrong’s 1914 meeting with Sarnoff? Sarnoff was a junior exec with the Marconi group when they were interested in the regenerative circuit. The primitive technology of the time was their only common ground. Sarnoff was far less interested in the workings of the circuit than in its commercial possbilities. There was nothing like the personal friendships Armstrong enjoyed with other radio pioneers, who were more technically oriented.
As for Westinghouse, GE and others licensing FM, both before and after the 1945 move to the current band, they did so partly because they believed in its long-term prospects, but also partly because they liked to show their disdain for their prodigal offspring, RCA.
With the latest movement on HD (increased power for those station owners that offer it), I think as some people pointed out - HD is here to stay.... which contradicts my original assertion that HD is merely a flash in the pan.
When I'm wrong, I admit it. Based on new developments, I now believe HD will become the norm in the next 5 -10 years... With that said, I do believe that LPFMs and translators may disappear due to the fact that stations broadcasting in HD will completely obliterate their respective, small signals.
When I'm wrong, I admit it. Based on new developments, I now believe HD will become the norm in the next 5 -10 years... With that said, I do believe that LPFMs and translators may disappear due to the fact that stations broadcasting in HD will completely obliterate their respective, small signals.
radioskeptic said:
No...the patent that made him a big stockholder was the super-regenerative circuit, which Barnouw said made Armstrong a millionaire. The super-heterodyne was less lucrative, especially spread over ten years.
Once again you ignore the main point here, and that there was no corporate alliance against Armstrong. You're attempting to turn Armstrong into the opposite of iBiquity, saying that the entire industry was united against him. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The similarity I see between HD and FM is that both came at a point where radio is seen as antiquated, and not as worthy of investment. By 1939, it was obvious that TV was the future, and the focus on TV at the time was well spent, because they made far more money with TV (once accepted) than with FM. The thing that really hurt the growth of FM was not the band move in 1945, but the growth of TV between 1945-65. That left both AM and FM in the dust. I believe we're at a similar point now for AM & FM. Any investment in any technologies related to AM & FM, whether it's HD or anything else, will pale in comparison to investments related to personal technologies like cell phones, portable computers, and the internet.
TheBigA said:
There were, indeed, few stations. 53 "regular" commercial FMs and 11 non-commercial / experimental FMs on the air in the middle of 1945, as reported in the Fall White's Radio Log... prior to the move in frequency. 20 of the 53 commercial stations were in just three cities, NY, Philly and Chicago.
While there were almost 1000 FMs on the new band by 1950, just 5 years later, the number fell to around 600 by 1960. If FM had problems, it was during the 50s when they were dissappearing by the hundreds that FM was really in danger of disappearing.
Josh wrote,
No, Josh, it won’t last. But I wouldn’t call it a “flash in the pan” because lacked even the most superficial kind of attractiveness. The radio industry was panning for gold. But with “HD,” all they came up with was a lump of mud!
The power increase will harm the FM band—perhaps not as much as “HD” hurt AM, but enough that it will be quietly dropped (if it doesn’t kill radio first).
I’m 62 now, but at 13 I was already so enthusiastic about the superior sound of FM (even before FM stereo was approved) that I was predicting that it would eventually overtake AM. My middle school classmates may have thought I was crazy, but most of them were listening to “underground” rock on FM by the time we graduated from college (not in the car, though —at least not for a few more years).
And I don’t think my judgment in technical matters has diminished in the past half century.
No, Josh, it won’t last. But I wouldn’t call it a “flash in the pan” because lacked even the most superficial kind of attractiveness. The radio industry was panning for gold. But with “HD,” all they came up with was a lump of mud!
The power increase will harm the FM band—perhaps not as much as “HD” hurt AM, but enough that it will be quietly dropped (if it doesn’t kill radio first).
I’m 62 now, but at 13 I was already so enthusiastic about the superior sound of FM (even before FM stereo was approved) that I was predicting that it would eventually overtake AM. My middle school classmates may have thought I was crazy, but most of them were listening to “underground” rock on FM by the time we graduated from college (not in the car, though —at least not for a few more years).
And I don’t think my judgment in technical matters has diminished in the past half century.
josh said:
Josh, here are the facts: there are approximately 15,000 radio stations in the US (not counting LPFM or translators), of these only about 10% are running IBOC and of these less than half are running HD2/3 channels. Response to HDR from CE manufacturers continues to be tepid with only a few audio products having the technology. AM station conversions have virtually ground to a halt and there has been only a trickle of conversions by FM stations (notice the HD Radio station conversion scoreboard has been missing lately from RW?).
Now does this sound like a technology that has "legs", that has a future? The power increase and better revenue projections for 2010 and beyond might bring a few more stations into the HDR fold but I think it's essentially game over for HD Radio. Unless something amazing happens (like government-subsidized conversions and a waiver of all fees and royalties by iBiquity), I believe its growth, such as it is, has peaked.
c5
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