HD radio a waste?

[WNTIRadio]

It won't take off until it is standard equipment in ALL cars, not just a few of each brand. Not just the luxury cars, but ALL of them.

By the late 70's most cars were sold with an AM/FM radio. Prior to that, the radios were expensive, people had converters etc. In 1972 my mother bought a VW Beetle for $2,100. She paid $250 to have the FM radio put in. That's over 10% of the price of the car!!!

 

[Tom Wells]

That Becker or Blaupunkt factory VW AM/FM had 3 preset buttons for AM, and 2 for FM. Yes/no?
IIRC, it was probably necessary to push one of the AM vs FM presets to make the switch between bands.
I seem to recall the sensitivity was pretty good on these, and they had really sharp "skirts" on the AM's IF selectivity.
Which meant you could have pretty satisfying frequency high end audio yet cut the adjacent channel chatter quite well.
It probably had a 262.5 khz IF amp on the AM.

 

[Kmagrill]

I understand and respect your point but we're overlooking the obvious. With mobile Smartphone technologies changing every 6 months and being adopted so quickly, HD radio is moving at a snails pace. As for radios, desktop and portable radio production has been anemic since the launch of HD radio and the content is mediocre to say the least.

I'm assuming that the mention of smartphones equates to streaming audio/radio, in general.

So far, I have not seen a streaming model that makes economic sense compared to any broadcast model. Each stream is a 'home run" to a server and each stream has a certain cost associated with it. That cost increases with users and time. So, the more users that you have listening for longer periods, the greater the cost to the streamer. Ultimately, the cost to reach thousands, or tens of thousands, of broadcast listeners is a fraction of the cost to reach those same thousands via stream. When you add the unrealistic SoundExchange royalty structure on top of the other hard costs, you've really got a financial disaster looming. Unless things change, there will probably be a lot fewer streaming audio choices in 10 years (especially in the USA), even though there are a lot more receiving devices. The inefficiency of streaming appears to be a major Achilles' heal.

So, while we can agree that smartphones are proliferating rapidly, I can't see how streaming services can really make a very serious dent in radio listening without driving themselves broke in the process. If someone knows how this can work (other than a subscription model, ala Netflix), I would really be interested in finding out about it. Lots of broadcasters that I know are dying to find a method to economically stream to the masses.

 

[Unregistered]

Too many people seem to opine about FM IBOC who don't even have a HD Radio in their car!
HD is a huge improvement over analog on FM simply because the noise floor is so much lower. It is the same affect most of us noticed when CDs first hit the market. Quiet really meant QUIET!!
I'm in a top ten market with one of our stations running sports talk. The difference between analog and IBOC is noticeable to even the "unwashed." Even with the pilot turned off, the noise penalty on analog makes IBOC superior. The listening experience is better, plain and simple.
Besides lack of receivers, the big problem is radio's lack of imagination. This technology should encourage innovation and experimentation...instead, we are getting more of the same chub heard on analog. We need some group heads to commit to IBOC and then hire programmers who can "think outside the box."
IBOC on AM is dead and a failed technology. Having said that, listen to KMOX in HD at night. The digital signal is so much easier to listen to and really sounds pretty good - even on the music bumpers. Not CD quality...but better than noisy ancient modulation.
CBS did research, back in the 60s, and found the "average" listener found noise the most annoying audio issue. IBOC is a success at reducing noise on channel...adjacent channels are not so lucky!

 

[Kmagrill]

IBOC on AM is dead and a failed technology. Having said that, listen to KMOX in HD at night. The digital signal is so much easier to listen to and really sounds pretty good - even on the music bumpers. Not CD quality...but better than noisy ancient modulation.
CBS did research, back in the 60s, and found the "average" listener found noise the most annoying audio issue. IBOC is a success at reducing noise on channel...adjacent channels are not so lucky!

Maybe not quite so dead. The current hybrid mode might be nearly dead, but some interesting proposals are popping up for fully digital AM in the AM improvement NPRM. At least one proposal has been floated to open an AM window exclusively for digital-only companion channels to existing analog AM stations.

It has been said that in full digital mode (HD mode 3 or 4), AM HD does not cause adjacent splatter to analog AM and has enhanced range compared to analog AM. It may be that the future of AM is digital only. Presumably, this would allow the AM station to compete with their FM counterparts once enough receivers finally reach the market. It may take many years, though.

 

[bossbill]

But we mustn't forget that part of the reason for HD in the first place was to offer additional programming on HD2,3,4. I'm not sure how "uber cheap" one can go with the HD install. You still need a linear transmitter, exporter, importer, maybe A to D converter, additional STL, antenna, plus an analog transmitter.