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I have had Sirius XM for 4+ years, it very rarely drops out, I can drive for hours before I get a drop out unless I'm under a long bridge, bad weather etc. Analog FM radio sounds better than Satellite but in a car with all the ambient noise it really doesn't matter all that much and the choice on satellite is much better than the SOS on FM. Satellite you can drive accross the country and listen to the same station if you like with very few drop outs, with analog you can drive to maybe line of sight with very few dropouts, with HD you can drive 1-2 miles with a lot of drop outs. The average person is going to look at all three and say well analog is free sounds good and is fairly consistent except that you hear the same old krap day in and day out unless you listen to public radio, satellite comes in very good almost everywhere, doesn't sound quite as good as analog radio but the choice of programs is very good but.. it costs money, HD is also free, but has the same boring 30 tunes that regular analog plays and is quieter, but.... it constantly drops out and many stations don't sound any better than their analog counterparts anyway, in fact some sound worse. Now what is Joe Blow going to opt for? Analog of course, FM and AM. Music lovers that like a wide range of music and talk get satellite, audiophools buy HD because they fall for the hype, you know the same people that buy rhodium-plated fuses for 100.00 for the "sonic purity" it imparts to their systems, but the vast majority of people get analog and are very happy with it. Case closed.
KB1OKL said:
You are making generalizations for HD radio that are not true in all markets. The only thing majorly different is FM-HD range (relatively short) vs XM (much wider). Fidelity goes to HD. XM does have more genre's but that isn't important unless you desire a specific genre. Like cable TV I have no use for the vast majority of channels so why pay for them?
I have a great HD-2 "classic hits" format in my town and as yet I have not had any of the drop-out issues you denote. Performance is just like analog FM so I am completely satisfied with it and it doesn't cost a dime.
There are advantages to both and it depends upon your location and format desire as to whether or not either will fit your situation or not. Bottom line for me - I don't want the additional genre's nor am I in the car often enough to warrant a pay service. My car has XM but I don't.
landtuna said:
The key words...in my town. If it was not in your town, you wouldn't be hearing it without dropouts. HD is dropout free only to the 80 dBu contour. It goes in and out until the 65 dBu contour, after which you have to hold the antenna in just the right way to hear an HD2. The analog is listenable to the 50 dBu contour, and people willing to put up with static listen out to the 35 dBu contour. DXers detect it at the 25-30 dBu contour.
Let me get this right.landtuna said:
Your car, a mechanical device which you own, possesses something that you do not?
Are we awarding personal property rights to lifeless objects?
How does a car pay for the service?
I avoided the term inanimate object, as someone could argue that a car has moving parts.
R
rbrucecarter5
Guest
landtuna said:
It seems to me that HD is a better solution for stations in the West, full class C with 2000 foot towers, 100kW, and over flat terrain. I've done the drive tests, and the range is about 70 miles with occasional dropouts starting at 50. Heck I am even noticing that HD is coming in on an Austin station in the mornings - it sounds awfully good, I look down and there it is - full HD display. At home I can get HD on a station from Dallas 250 miles away very well. The thing is - for ordinary listeners, this is very similar to the range FM stereo has, the only difference being that with blend functions and continual audio, most people don't notice the FM stereo dropouts.
Scale this back to the East coast with lower towers, less ERP, more rugged terrain in some cases, and closely spaced co-channels and first adjacents and you have the perfect storm limiting HD range. I doubt you can get 10 miles in some cases. West coast markets like LA and SF have similar problems. So there are a heck of a lot of folks who have good reason to be dissatisfied with HD. But I suspect a lot of folks are not getting stereo off analog FM, putting up with mono and occasional picket fencing, multipath, and other woes - not complaining because they are used to it and because the music stays playing. Those same folks are used to digital TV being "all there" or "not there" because TV is a stationary service, once you have the antenna / cable set up, its not going to fade. Making the leap to a digital radio service that is all the way working or all the way off is difficult because it happens in the car and is super annoying.
Not that I am an HD advocate, or think it was engineered properly. I still think putting the sidebands within the channel would have produced a much more robust system, at the expense of RDS, SCA, and blind reading services. I think this could still be done and rescue what little credibility the system has left. But it would take a lot of good will to replace the displaced services with HD equivalent.
Nick said:
Of course the reception depends upon location. My statement was simply that your problems with drop-out are not universal. I don't know what the contours are here but I can usually listen to analog FM (towers on Phoenix South Mountain) about 100 miles SE (mostly flat) and 60-70 miles N (into the mountains) without a problem. My HD signal is just about 15-20 miles shorter than analog. I all my travels around the metro area I have found only one small spot that causes HD signal drop-out and that is up beside the Scottsdale Air Park which may have something to do with airport ops.
ai4i said:
Ha, ha - aren't you funny! What I meant, of course, is that the car has the capability of receiving XM but I control the subscription. Therefore, it does and I don't. Makes perfect sense to me.
And....I will not tell Genny that you called her an inanimate object. You would break her heart.
rbrucecarter5 said:
I agree and also agree that these repetitive complaints about HD (and digital TV) depend a lot on location - yours and the tower and the geography in between.
All I'm saying is that HD radio is working for me but don't get me started on the deficiencies of digital TV.
Another useful concept would have been to map every digital signal at a specific offset frequency in a NEW BAND, like in one of the "bands" that the US military no longer uses but refuses to relinquish. There's a LOT of useful bandwidth left untouched.
The mediumwave AM signals could have been easily mapped into the 2.0 to 3.8 mhz range.
When was the last time anyone tried to listen to WWV or WWVH on 2.5 Mhz?
Similarly, the FM digital siganls could been mapped into the abandoned 45 mhz public service bands, mostly abandoned
by fire, police, ambulances, etc.
I'm mostly annoyed by the interference the digital sidebands produce for the analog signal.
For FM, in the Chicago area, there are lots of spits, flutters, fades, and dropouts where noise intrudes,
and makes reception within 10-20 miles sound like it used to (pre iboc) at about 40-60 miles.
Maybe if we could ban airplane traffic to eliminate the reflected cancellation siganls...
I understood landtuna perfectly....and anyone who thinks that cars are inanimate has a poor relationship with the physical world.
As someone who had been charged with making "stuff' behave for many years, I assure you that such things have at least some limited awareness and life.
The mediumwave AM signals could have been easily mapped into the 2.0 to 3.8 mhz range.
When was the last time anyone tried to listen to WWV or WWVH on 2.5 Mhz?
Similarly, the FM digital siganls could been mapped into the abandoned 45 mhz public service bands, mostly abandoned
by fire, police, ambulances, etc.
I'm mostly annoyed by the interference the digital sidebands produce for the analog signal.
For FM, in the Chicago area, there are lots of spits, flutters, fades, and dropouts where noise intrudes,
and makes reception within 10-20 miles sound like it used to (pre iboc) at about 40-60 miles.
Maybe if we could ban airplane traffic to eliminate the reflected cancellation siganls...
I understood landtuna perfectly....and anyone who thinks that cars are inanimate has a poor relationship with the physical world.
As someone who had been charged with making "stuff' behave for many years, I assure you that such things have at least some limited awareness and life.
Tom Wells said:
This has been proposed and discussed many times.
First of all, the government has no reason to give away valuable spectrum to profit-making companies. If they were to start a new band, it wouldn't be for the kind of radio we currently have.
Second, such a plan would make every existing radios obsolete, and require every person in the country to either buy a new radio or an adapter. While that may have been possible in earlier times, given the hostility of the electronics industry, it's not very likely now without a federal mandate. And getting that would be close to impossible.
Forget the profit motive for a minute, we're talking about how to do the best thing to satisfy the need of serving the public.
Anyone could either buy a new radio or be satisfied with the existing service.
Much less disruptive than adding noise to all the existing services.
The government has every reason to find the best use for allocations to serve the public.
Pretending that the military is EVER going to use 2.0 to 3.8 mhz is just silly.
Anyone could either buy a new radio or be satisfied with the existing service.
Much less disruptive than adding noise to all the existing services.
The government has every reason to find the best use for allocations to serve the public.
Pretending that the military is EVER going to use 2.0 to 3.8 mhz is just silly.
Tom Wells said:
If there was any concern about interference, they wouldn't have approved IBOC in the first place. The fact that it was approved should tell you all you need to know.
And if they EVER do anything with military spectrum, they will sell it to telecom companies, not give it away to broadcasters. But they won't do either without an act of Congress.
TheBigA said:
Yes, the bought and paid for FCC approved IBAC only because the big money boys wanted it. How else would such a harebrained scheme that causes more problems than it solves have made it otherwise? The FCC has become one of the most useless parts of government we have, they are all lawyers who wouldn't know what a radio is if it bit them on the a##. All they know is money and big business, they really couldn't care less about us, the consumers.
KB1OKL said:
That's what you say...but you have no proof that anyone at the FCC or any other agency took or were offered money to approve it. And it's more likely, when you consider the way the FCC works in other areas, that money was not involved.
Yes the FCC is useless, but they're not corrupt just because they approve things you don't like. Because they also approve a lot of things the "big money boys" don't like.
Also just because YOU don't like it doesn't mean all other consumers agree with you. Most don't care.
It is clear that the original intent of the FRC and the FCC were to protect radio.
It's also clear that the job of the FDA was to protect food and drug safety.
The plethora of "bad drug" lawyer commercials on TV show that the FDA doesn't "remember" its charter, either.
Are we to suppose no money has been involved in influencing the approval of drugs?
The interference caused by iboc is so bad, that's it's hard to believe the system could have ever been approved
for use without liberal applications of ..."influence".
It's also clear that the job of the FDA was to protect food and drug safety.
The plethora of "bad drug" lawyer commercials on TV show that the FDA doesn't "remember" its charter, either.
Are we to suppose no money has been involved in influencing the approval of drugs?
The interference caused by iboc is so bad, that's it's hard to believe the system could have ever been approved
for use without liberal applications of ..."influence".
Tom Wells said:
It depends on what you man by "radio." Because what the FRC and FCC did was push amateur radio off AM. So amateurs were pretty upset about the FCC. Not unlike how DXers feel about IBOC. In fact amateur radio groups at the time also said that the FCC accepted payoffs from big radio to get rid of them. But they had no proof.
Tom Wells said:
Just as with the FDA, if you in fact have proof, take them to court.
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