HD Radio: From QVC to HSN

[gosmith123]

Remember a few years ago when QVC tried to sell those cheesy HD radios, and no one called in with testimonials?

http://the-unmutual.blogspot.com/2007/09/hd-radio-and-qvc-looked-good-on-paper.html

Well, this Saturday HSN will be trying to sell the new knockoff of the Insignia HD01, the Audiovox Portable HD Radio Receiver with Armband and Belt Clip. We don't have cable, so it would be interesting to hear if any HD Radio cheerleaders call in with testimonials!

 

[tomservo]

Considering the type of people who watch the shopping channels, I'd say the 2007 blog's estimated 200 sales were actually really good for a half hour segment devoted to something relatively few care about. I'd be more interested to know how many were returned, as QVC has always had a pretty generous return policy.

If anyone's interested, you can order it from their website. Man, it IS a clone of the Insignia. I wonder if it has that model's insanely poor build quality as well? Audiovox has always been the K-Mart quality brand in my eyes, so I'm thinking 'yes'. :

 

[spunker88]

Chances are Best Buy's in house brand Insignia contracts out its products to other manufacturers. This is a pretty common practice among generic or in store brands. I wouldn't be surprised if Audiovox made HD radios for Insignia.

 

[gosmith123]

Chances are Best Buy's in house brand Insignia contracts out its products to other manufacturers. This is a pretty common practice among generic or in store brands. I wouldn't be surprised if Audiovox made HD radios for Insignia.

It appear's that BB also contracts out the same nonsense - HSN's website states that the Audiovox has "almost sold out", just like what BB's website would state periodically "on backorder", with only a handfull of reviews.

 

[phil]

HSN now shows it "currently out of stock."

 

[Savage]

It doesn't take long to "sell out" of twelve pieces of something. :

 

[gosmith123]

HSN now shows it "currently out of stock."

It's called short-supplying inventory to make a product appear to be in demand. Amazon and BB have done the same with their HD Radio products. Through my blog's analytics, I've seen these retailers Google, "iBiquity Digital IPO". I wonder what that means?

 

[spunker88]

It's called short-supplying inventory to make a product appear to be in demand. Amazon and BB have done the same with their HD Radio products. Through my blog's analytics, I've seen these retailers Google, "iBiquity Digital IPO". I wonder what that means?

So is the HD Radio Farce blog yours? Its the first result when you Google "iBiquity Digital IPO".
I like this March 2001 PDF from iBiquity that envisions a bright future for HD Radio:
http://www.brai.com/PDF/iBiquity.pdf

Since 2001 new alternatives to AM/FM such as MP3 players and cell phones that can play online streams have became affordable and commonplace. DSP chips have improved analog reception, and HD Radio is still as flawed today as it was in 2001.

 

[Savage]

Or as it was in 1990. You know, when the whole idea of IBOC was hatched by a cabal of paranoid broadcasting nitwits, most of whom exited the business decades ago.

Why radio continues to cling to this ridiculous boat-anchor is beyond my comprehension.

 

[gosmith123]

It's called short-supplying inventory to make a product appear to be in demand. Amazon and BB have done the same with their HD Radio products. Through my blog's analytics, I've seen these retailers Google, "iBiquity Digital IPO". I wonder what that means?

So is the HD Radio Farce blog yours? Its the first result when you Google "iBiquity Digital IPO".
I like this March 2001 PDF from iBiquity that envisions a bright future for HD Radio:
http://www.brai.com/PDF/iBiquity.pdf

Since 2001 new alternatives to AM/FM such as MP3 players and cell phones that can play online streams have became affordable and commonplace. DSP chips have improved analog reception, and HD Radio is still as flawed today as it was in 2001.

The site has more than one owner/administrator, but the originator does not want their identity released. I've done some serious search engine optimization (SEO) for the site, as it shows up very high in Google rankings, just as you indicated. There is a Site Meter icon at the bottom, which is open to the public, but visits have fallen way off. All of the significant entities have already visited the site.

Yea, that study from Barrington Research is pretty amusing. iBiquity was supposed to have a 70% saturation level of HD radios by 2012 - in reality, it is less than 1%. According to the study, iBiquity was supposed to have gone IPO about five years ago, so it's auto fraud, or nothing, for iBiquity.

 

[davideduardo]

Or as it was in 1990. You know, when the whole idea of IBOC was hatched by a cabal of paranoid broadcasting nitwits, most of whom exited the business decades ago.

Actually, the technology comes from an amalgamation of sources, principally tracing back to Bell Labs and its spawn, Lucent. Broadcasters only added some seed capital... a very small amount in fact.

 

[nd2023]

Even 1% is ambitious, that means 1 out of 100 radios are HD radios. It's more like .1% or less. When HD radio fails, perhaps an all-polka AM station can hire HD Radio's salespeople to sell ads for their station. Or they can start a new career selling ice to the Eskimos or sell flowers to florists or sell $2000 vacuum cleaners door to door in a poor neighborhood.

The marketplace will decide whether people want HD radios in their car. I've seen an HD radio in only one car I've ridden in, and the owner had to pay to disable the HD reception in her HD radio because it sounded horrible switching from analog to HD and the HD2s were useless when it keeps dropping out.

 

[gosmith123]

There's no doubt that iBiquity has a world-class sales team. I believe that it is going to take a serious investigation to put an end to iBiquity's nonsense. The automakers don't seem to care about the problems with HD. iBiquity will continue to claim "critical mass" adoption. Last year, iBiquity had some accounting consutant look at their books, no doubt to go IPO. I'de be curious about the latest auto show, if the iBiquity vehicles were parked inside, and had some sort of external feed/antennas into the radios? iBiquity is making an Enron around everyone.

 

[tomservo]

I've seen an HD radio in only one car I've ridden in, and the owner had to pay to disable the HD reception in her HD radio because it sounded horrible switching from analog to HD and the HD2s were useless when it keeps dropping out.

I know we've been over this before, but how stupid does someone have to be to pay to disable HD when they could just RTFM? Unless turning off HD is a hidden feature (which it isn't in any car radios I've played with) that's a pretty big waste of time and money due to ignorance.

 

[tomservo]

Why radio continues to cling to this ridiculous boat-anchor is beyond my comprehension.

Oh, I think deep down inside you know, and you or some other prescient soul called it years ago: the end result is not really to benefit us listeners, it's to benefit big corporate radio as a way around ownership caps. AM HD will thankfully wither and die sooner rather than later, but FM HD will be around for a long time as a way to feed translators. Consumers needn't have radios or a strong signal to pick up the HD when everyone knows the target is the translator itself, which won't even have to be fed by the actual HD signal.

It will continue to feed translators and continue to allow public radio stations to syphon off classic users to a network-fed cheap to run classical subchannel so they can focus on the money to be made from speech programming.

I think that was the ultimate, unspoken goal of HD all along — to bypass ownership caps.

My go to market example is Birmingham, where Clear Channel is either at or near their cap, but they've managed to put on THREE (so far) 250 watt or equivalent translators with new formats. And they're all showing up in the ratings, with one even doing better than competing Class C signals and most AM stations.

Surely the continuing license fees to iBiquity and the power bill for a 250 watt translator are cheaper than building out another class A station.

 

[spunker88]

My go to market example is Birmingham, where Clear Channel is either at or near their cap, but they've managed to put on THREE (so far) 250 watt or equivalent translators with new formats. And they're all showing up in the ratings, with one even doing better than competing Class C signals and most AM stations.

Surely the continuing license fees to iBiquity and the power bill for a 250 watt translator are cheaper than building out another class A station.

iBiquity will try to convince car companies, etc that these ratings come from people listening on HD Radio so they can get it installed in more new cars. After all when you are talking about a $20000+ vehicle, the cost of adding HD radio becomes nearly negligible. When in fact 99% of these listeners are people picking up the 250 watt translator which probably covers a larger area than the HD signal on the full power station. Most of these HD translator stations unofficially identify themselves using the frequency of the translator rather than the HD channel.