HD = 8 TRACK TAPE = QUADROPHONIC = AM STEREO

[TheBigA]

Response to HDR from CE manufacturers continues to be tepid with only a few audio products having the technology.

Once again, as I pointed out, their response to ANYTHING that involved AM/FM is tepid. The most exciting AM/FM product at this year's CES in Las Vegas was a radio that automatically removed all talk and kept just the music. That's what the consumer electronics industry thinks about AM/FM. They're not even too excited about free-standing internet radios. And if they're not making the radios, the public can't hear the programming. So it's a total loss.

 

[joshzz]

Thanks for your responses. I still believe that HD will become the norm. You may be correct in your statement that the government may intervene to get the ball rolling. The government could set a mandate for stations to transition to HD as they did with TV. To encourage the public's participate they could offer HD radios at reduced cost as they offered the conversion to Digital TV boxes.

In my opinion there is a better way. FM EXTRA offered side band channel capabilities and the cost for an entire radio conversion would have been less than $ 5,000. AND there would be no licensing fees!

 

[kenglish]

Does anybody really think that the Government is going to allow us to remain analog forever?

I think the HD Radio system is going to be a stop-gap measure on the path to a true all-digital system of broadcasting. I envision a system that uses a few wide-band digital transmitters in each market, to transmit several hundred channels of programming...some locally produced (what we currently call "stations"), some nationally-networked feeds (with local news, public-affairs and commercials), some regional and "Public Radio" feeds.

The advantage would be that every programmer in the market would have an equally good "signal" (since they are all coming from the same transmitter), and the entire "haystack" of each transmitter could be re-broadcast, like TV translators, by a single translator or booster. This would eliminate the need for multiple boosters and translators at every site.

I can envision variable bandwidth (just like DTV), so programmers could offer everything from "listenable" mono, to full-fidelity surround channels...even switching them "on the fly" between shows (think of the non-comms who do NPR news in the AM, and classical or jazz music at night).

Doing something like this on TV channels 5 and 6 for now, then clearing the 88-108 FM Band of analog in ten years (going all-digital, just like the DTV Transition) might save us a lot of grief (aka. losing our entire spectrum) later.

 

[Savage]

"Does anybody really think that the government is going to allow us to remain analog forever?" That's the wrong question. Does anybody really think that people are going to abandon hundreds of millions of serviceable receivers and buy new radios just to get digital signals? I don't, and I'm far from alone. And the FCC has flatly stated there will be no mandate to transition radio to all-digital a la HDTV.

While you're "envisioning" what amounts to the end of the American system of radio broadcasting, you might want to envision a couple of related points: first, that thousands of licensees of existing radio services might have a thing or two to say about your proposal to wipe them off the map. These owners - along with their millions of listeners and citizens of communities of license, amount to a tremendous lobby. Second: somebody needs to "envision" a digital radio system that actually works, if you buy into the idea that radio MUST be digital, which I don't.

Worldwide, the track records of DAB, Eureka-147 and IBOC are not good ones. Maybe it's more appropriate technically for radio to remain analog. There's no upside in the form of a revenue-generating spectrum grab for the Washington weenies, so their attitude towards radio seems to be to ignore it.

 

[badjef]

"Does anybody really think that people are going to abandon hundreds of millions of serviceable receivers and buy new radios just to get digital signals?"

Yes! Without a doubt!

I don't, and I'm far from alone.

Keep reading

And the FCC has flatly stated there will be no mandate to transition radio to all-digital a la HDTV

That's today.

While you're "envisioning" what amounts to the end of the American system of radio broadcasting, you might want to envision a couple of related points: first, that thousands of licensees of existing radio services might have a thing or two to say about your proposal to wipe them off the map. These owners - along with their millions of listeners and citizens of communities of license, amount to a tremendous lobby. Second: somebody needs to "envision" a digital radio system that actually works, if you buy into the idea that radio MUST be digital, which I don't.

The wiping of Analogue signals off the map is proof that it can happen because it DID!

Worldwide, the track records of DAB, Eureka-147 and IBOC are not good ones. Maybe it's more appropriate technically for radio to remain analog. There's no upside in the form of a revenue-generating spectrum grab for the Washington weenies, so their attitude towards radio seems to be to ignore it.

Eventually, there will be a digital system that will ignore available bandwidth in favor of unlimited. That will be the system the FCC and others will flock to.

But the key word is "bandwidth". Once that is not an issue, it will just be a matter of which part of the spectrum is desirable for the particular service.

It is important to stop looking at a rainbow as a visual representation of available spectrum.
That is old thinking. - the Sarnoff "Static, like Death and taxes will always be with us" mentality is still being used all over the boards and the industry. Then came FM and later digital. Where's static, now?
Eventually, the elimination of the analogue TV signals for the reason of bandwidth will have been a bad decision guided by the antiquated technology of the day.
Just as C-quam, iBOC , etc. were bad ideas destined to fail because of a rush to new technologies or worse - politics.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[TheBigA]

It is important to stop looking at a rainbow as a visual representation of available spectrum.

That's all fine, but keep in mind that the government owns the rainbow. It doesn't own the internet, at least not yet. So before the government starts ditching the system it owns, it needs to put its claws into the replacement system. It hasn't done that yet, and the battle for it will be huge.

 

[kenglish]

I'm not talking about taking away everybody's right to broadcast, although the FCC is still talking about doing just that with the TV channels : ....

We would just keep the existing "stations" as programming providers, using a couple of competing "Transmission Facilitators" in each market. The spectrum would be licensed to those transmitting groups, possibly made up of consortiums of the original licensees. It would be possible for the two transmission groups to compete with each other, if commercial entities, to sell their service to the programmers...who no longer have to maintain their own transmission facilities and maintain them.

Translators and boosters would be much easier, since there would only be 2 to 6 "TV" channels of spectrum (32 MHz, in 3 to 6 MHz groups) to carry, with only about half that many in most markets.

Since people are listening to more channels from the competition anyway, the additional channels would be additional revenue to local broadcasters...revenue that would otherwise be going to some satrad or other provider.

 

[kenglish]

.....The most exciting AM/FM product at this year's CES in Las Vegas was a radio that automatically removed all talk and kept just the music.......
[/quote]

Hopefully, the advertisers have not seen this yet! Or, will we have to make all our future commercials be jingles?

 

[badjef]

That's all fine, but keep in mind that the government owns the rainbow.

The government doesn't "own" the "rainbow". It is a public resource.

It doesn't own the internet, at least not yet. So before the government starts ditching the system it owns, it needs to put its claws into the replacement system. It hasn't done that yet, and the battle for it will be huge.

There will eventually be an unlimited supply of bandwidth. The government will have no choice but assign it in that way. It is the way the technology is going to go.

I'll equate it - albeit, poorly - to the cell system. For the longest time, we said, "bigger and taller and more powerful is better." Nobody argued that. Then somebody decided if we were to be able to communicate by telephone, we are going to have to develop a better system. Instead of sharing 12 frequencies in NYC on a party line type system, with cellular technology we have virtually unlimited available at one time. I am not saying that cell idea is the wave of the AM/FM/TV future, but it is an example.

How arrogant it is to think that 100 years of wireless technology, and it is topped out, already!
Fire all the politicians who would think that way. Discredit those in engineering with the same attitudes.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[Len14043]

Maybe it's more appropriate technically for radio to remain analog.

You might be correct with the AM band, but my gut tells me that digital transmission is superior for the FM band, and possibly with the AM band in an all-digital mode. IBOC might not be the perfect system, but then we are talking in terms of 1 to 10% digital power. I think its amazing that the digital power at 1% works as well as it does. How do you think analog would fare if it was 1-10% of the digital signal? I suspect there would be no dropouts because the radio would permanently default to digital.

 

[TheBigA]

There will eventually be an unlimited supply of bandwidth. The government will have no choice but assign it in that way. It is the way the technology is going to go.

If it's unlimited, then it doesn't need to be assigned. The reason the gov't got involved in airwaves was in part because of scarcity.

The internet has been an un-regulated area for 20 years. Yes, I understand the radio airwaves were also unregulated for a period, but they didn't expand as quickly as the internet has. If and when the government appropriates the internet (and the Telecommunications Act gives it jurisdiction over it), I expect a huge rebellion from all the grass roots groups and tea party folks.

 

[badjef]

There will eventually be an unlimited supply of bandwidth. The government will have no choice but assign it in that way. It is the way the technology is going to go.

If it's unlimited, then it doesn't need to be assigned.

Good point! By "unlimited" I am not suggesting no assignment necessary, I am suggesting that there will only be an accounting for interference. That was done in the various Telecommunications Acts. Interference is accepted in AM/FM/TV in co-channel and adjacents, now. This will just be on a first come, first serve, or not at all, I see it, but I don't know what technologies are over the horizons. Sprint and Verizon are, or were, using the same frequencies for their networks. The coding determined which system the phone was using.

The reason the gov't got involved in airwaves was in part because of scarcity.

Again, the scarcity issue was because of the transmission standards of the times and the implementation restrictions.

The internet has been an un-regulated area for 20 years. Yes, I understand the radio airwaves were also unregulated for a period, but they didn't expand as quickly as the internet has.

The internet expanded as quickly as it did because the phone system was already in place and been building out for 100 years! Sprint had a digital network in place 10 years before the web was opened up as a commercial venture. Internet was already accepted long before it was released.

If and when the government appropriates the internet (and the Telecommunications Act gives it jurisdiction over it), I expect a huge rebellion from all the grass roots groups and tea party folks.

No rebellion at all. None needed. Offer people what they want or need and they will come to you, willingly. When was the last time a car company came door to door?

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[kenglish]

I read an interesting article a few months ago, where an engineer figured out just how much bandwidth it would take in a typical big city like Chicago, to provide JUST audio service to every commuter via internet.

He figured that, even with frequency re-use, you'd need ALL the available spectrum (not just what is allocated) and have towers every couple of thousand feet, to make it work. So, it sounds like spectrum is NOT unlimited.

I think broadcasting (one sender to an unlimited number or receivers) and internet (one sender per receiver) can, and should, co-exist.

 

[badjef]

I read an interesting article a few months ago, where an engineer figured out just how much bandwidth it would take in a typical big city like Chicago, to provide JUST audio service to every commuter via internet.

He figured that, even with frequency re-use, you'd need ALL the available spectrum (not just what is allocated) and have towers every couple of thousand feet, to make it work. So, it sounds like spectrum is NOT unlimited.

Irrelevent!

He was, undoubtedly using the already antiquated technology. He was talking today. I'm talking a completely different mindset. He is speaking from inside the current "box".
And, so what if he puts a tower every couple of thousand feet. There was a cell system years ago that an antenna on every utility pole in a neighborhood - those are spaced at 100 feet.

I think broadcasting (one sender to an unlimited number or receivers) and internet (one sender per receiver) can, and should, co-exist.

When internet casting first came on, that was the case. Look what we've accomplished just in the last 10 years! It will only get better. Walkman type internet radios already exist - on your phone.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[Savage]

Len, if initial experience with DTV is any guide, digital is problematic in broadcasting. At least the vastly superior pictures afforded by HDTV provide a tenable argument for the superiority of digital over NTSC.

In-Band-Adjacent-Channel-And-On-Channel-Too, And-Maybe-More-If-We-Think-We Need-It, a/k/a HD Radio, strongly suggests that digital is inappropriate for reception in receivers in fast-changing mobile environments like jogging or listening in car radios in cities or mountainous terrain.

I see where the argument is going in HD these days: the reason the Wonderful Digital Component isn't working is because we have to co-exist with that blasted antiquated analog. If we could just make the brave leap forward to all-digital and dump analog entirely, everything will be hunky-dory. iBiquity will get their confiscatory monopoly and we can move on to a new era of no-more-mom-and-pop-stations, handing the nitwits who have irretrievably screwed up the radio industry their hegemony, aided and abetted by the lobby-and-lawyer addled FCC.

Wrong. All wrong.

Nobody wants HD, either hybrid or all-digital. If analog were to get dumped, people will just stop listening to radio - period.

Even in all-digital mode - AM OR FM - IBOC won't work reliably the way most people listen to radio. It's not just the low digital power. It's the enormous computing power consumed by decode of all the digital carriers - completely unnecessary and inappropriate for the application. This dictates clunky, power-gobbling, noise-inducing CPUs - just to decode freakin' stereo audio and a little ancillary data. It's unnecessary Rube Goldberg complexity to achieve a simple task - kind of like trading your current car for an office-building-size thing just to commute to work.

I'm going on the record right now: in about a year, when the vaunted digital power increase isn't producing much of an improvement - and it won't - the new IBOC talking point will become something like this: well, it's a miracle IBOC works at all since the digital power is so limited. After all, the IBOC genius scientists were handed an almost impossible mandate to have digital and analog co-exist, etc. "Hybrid mode" was only meant to be temporary....etc., etc. And the squeeze for all-digital will begin which, if the industry and Commission leaders are insane enough to pursue, will spell the end of broadcast radio as we know it.

 

[badjef]

Len, if initial experience with DTV is any guide, digital is problematic in broadcasting. At least the vastly superior pictures afforded by HDTV provide a tenable argument for the superiority of digital over NTSC.

In-Band-Adjacent-Channel-And-On-Channel-Too, And-Maybe-More-If-We-Think-We Need-It, a/k/a HD Radio, strongly suggests that digital is inappropriate for reception in receivers in fast-changing mobile environments like jogging or listening in car radios in cities or mountainous terrain.

I see where the argument is going in HD these days: the reason the Wonderful Digital Component isn't working is because we have to co-exist with that blasted antiquated analog. If we could just make the brave leap forward to all-digital and dump analog entirely, everything will be hunky-dory. iBiquity will get their confiscatory monopoly and we can move on to a new era of no-more-mom-and-pop-stations, handing the nitwits who have irretrievably screwed up the radio industry their hegemony, aided and abetted by the lobby-and-lawyer addled FCC.

Wrong. All wrong.

Nobody wants HD, either hybrid or all-digital. If analog were to get dumped, people will just stop listening to radio - period.

Even in all-digital mode - AM OR FM - IBOC won't work reliably the way most people listen to radio. It's not just the low digital power. It's the enormous computing power consumed by decode of all the digital carriers - completely unnecessary and inappropriate for the application. This dictates clunky, power-gobbling, noise-inducing CPUs - just to decode freakin' stereo audio and a little ancillary data. It's unnecessary Rube Goldberg complexity to achieve a simple task - kind of like trading your current car for an office-building-size thing just to commute to work.

I'm going on the record right now: in about a year, when the vaunted digital power increase isn't producing much of an improvement - and it won't - the new IBOC talking point will become something like this: well, it's a miracle IBOC works at all since the digital power is so limited. After all, the IBOC genius scientists were handed an almost impossible mandate to have digital and analog co-exist, etc. "Hybrid mode" was only meant to be temporary....etc., etc. And the squeeze for all-digital will begin which, if the industry and Commission leaders are insane enough to pursue, will spell the end of broadcast radio as we know it.

Proof of that is NYC. Where WQXR's 105.9 range at 1/10th of the power of everyone else is not that much less of a geographical range. It is a great example of how power is not as much of a factor as we would all like to think. iBoc power increase will not put it on par with the coverage of the analogue.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[Tom Wells]

I read an interesting article a few months ago, where an engineer figured out just how much bandwidth it would take in a typical big city like Chicago, to provide JUST audio service to every commuter via internet.

He figured that, even with frequency re-use, you'd need ALL the available spectrum (not just what is allocated) and have towers every couple of thousand feet, to make it work. So, it sounds like spectrum is NOT unlimited.

I think broadcasting (one sender to an unlimited number or receivers) and internet (one sender per receiver) can, and should, co-exist.

THANK YOU for making a real world case for the argument aganst moving to a point-to-point information system dependency.
The efficiency of 50kw = 47 horsepower as to information transmission to over half the country at night and 250 miles daytimes is unparalleled
yet in the digital mode. We're talking about unlimited receivers vs a whole lot of repetitive physical structures the "wireless" made unecessary.
We COULD have had audio from another continent over wired receivers if WW1 had not intervened. And listened to an Opera from Vienna live, if we'd
developed the tech we already had then to do it. But Radio took over, with the advantage of a "ready built" infrastructure courtesy of the laws of physics.
Spectrum is most defintely not unlimited, and the greater dependency on higher frequencies makes repeaters more necessary.
I see many apartment buildings here in Chicago with cellphone antennas just above apartments and I shudder.
It is essential that broadcast continue to exist, and in the best interests of all, determine a ratio that recognizes and respects the efficiency of broadcast.
I use this laptop wirelessly when not at home, but at home I plug in to the network because it works better 'coz there's less busy-stuff going on.
It is a total waste of radio spectrum to use radio to do something wired (or fiber-optic'd) does better.
No matter what wavelength you do it at.
The internet still needs to learn from broadcast and move toward its efficiency where a server could group out 10 or 10000 feeds, trunk them, and release the 9999 feeds worth of bandwidth again. But this takes more interactivity than exists now. NO, the tech exists now. The competetive model of our
cell phone network will not permit such an efficient usage of BW. I'm sure a law or 3 would need to be changed to permit full through-pass of service.
And as that is where cellphone providers seem to compete ( in coverage) I wouldn't expect they'd much like any such improvement.
I remember back in 1990 in Sydney Australia, that the analog cellphone, instead of saying something useless like Cingular, instead said something useful, like Randwick or Coogee and told me which tower ( and Neighborhood) I was "in" as far as the phone was concerned, and it changed a lot.
The competetive model is holding back on the bandwidth because they're going to dole it out like a premium channels package.

 

[kenglish]

.......And, so what if he puts a tower every couple of thousand feet. There was a cell system years ago that an antenna on every utility pole in a neighborhood - those are spaced at 100 feet.
Have you purchased any tower space lately? You sure can't do anything for free if you have to pay huge pole attachment fees and rent building-top space.
As for the power poles, the antennas were likely owned by the power company (which owned the poles).

Don't even get me started about what it takes to BUILD towers in a (NIMBY) neighborhood .

 

[hubcity]

Nobody wants HD, either hybrid or all-digital. If analog were to get dumped, people will just stop listening to radio - period.

Actually, I'm going to extend that:

Nobody wants HD, analog, Satellite, Internet, AM, FM, or tin cans attached to string.

People want to be entertained, informed, and excited in the manner and at the price of their choosing, and they will turn to the provider that makes that happen.

 

[Savage]

Yes, thank you. And to listen to your favorite hits, Rush, the ballgame, NPR or the news and weather - existing analog radio suits just about everyone just fine.

Especially when you consider the alternative: which is, to spend $100 or more to get your favorite hits, Rush, the ballgame, NPR or the news and weather - in digital sound for all practicable purposes indistinguishable from analog. But with mode-hopping, muting, annoying artifacts and less-satisfactory coverage added into the mix, just so you know you got something with your pricey, obscure purchase.

Yes, there is an insipid additional range of choice in the form of HD subs - offering the local AM talker, a handful of jukebox all-music channels, out-of-town country stations and - the apparent default fave of HD subchannel programmers - The Dead Carrier Channel. (And related popular HD-sub formats, The Low Modulation Channel, The All-Hum Channel, etc.)