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"HD Radio Shouldn't Be This Hard"

C

Carmine5

While not entirely losing his HD Radio old time religion, Tom Ray does express his frustration at not being able to get HDR in his new Ford Escape in the latest RW for August 11.

However, what I found most interesting was this comment from him:

"My HD Radio gear at WOR is going on five years old. Seeing as this is all computer equipment it won't be long until I need to replace the HD Radio gear. Thus far there has been no return on investment meaning that if an exciter cooks tomorrow it simply may not be replaced."

He then wonders why HD Radio is taking so long to gain consumer acceptance when it took the iPad only a few months to sell several million (BTW, the figure is 3 million iPads sold in 80 days. Eat your heart out, Bob Struble).

Interesting reading--not the usual cheerleading from Mr. Ray. c5

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/rw_20100811/#/0
 
I'm not an iPad user but I can see the value of the product.

HD Radio? Not so much.

People will spend money for perceived value.
 
Carmine5 said:
"My HD Radio gear at WOR is going on five years old. Seeing as this is all computer equipment it won't be long until I need to replace the HD Radio gear. Thus far there has been no return on investment meaning that if an exciter cooks tomorrow it simply may not be replaced."
Click to expand...

Read the sentence right before that: "HD Radio could go the way of FM Quad and AM Stereo."

FM Quad would be more likely to be successful than HD radio because it keeps stereo compatibility (and integrity!!!) with existing receivers while enabling the quadraphonic capability of new receivers. The quad feature could be easily inserted into car radios, surround systems, and new tabletop models and a notice on the box touting "FM Quad Sound". I hate having to accommodate the natural delay of digital on the analog feed just to sync with the HD-1! (same on DTV; I miss analog TV!)
 
Carmine5 said:
......He then wonders why HD Radio is taking so long to gain consumer acceptance when it took the iPad only a few months to sell several million ....
Click to expand...

Might be because iPad had so many broadcasters falling all over themselves to promote it and tell people what it could DO, rather than just saying "it exists".
We have to tell people WHY they want HD Radio, by promoting the formats and the programming, not just saying "It's here, try it". They can't try it without buying a radio. There's gotta be another way to tell them what's on it.

Maybe we could tell 'em about it, using RADIO?
 
Yes...not to mention the fact that an iPad actually works. As opposed to HD Radio.

I have to give Tom Ray kudos for (belated) candor, given his stubbornly insistent support for HD-AM several years back. The story in the article about the WOR news director coming in to announce "HD Radio sucks!" is most compelling. He bought an expensive import with a factory HD radio, and found the annoying mode-hopping between digital and analog unacceptable - on a local 50kw AM signal!! Also telling, was Tom's apparent efforts to help the ND find a way to force the receiver to an analog-only mode. (What?? Are you kidding? Then what's the point of having an HD Radio? It's the parallel to what I've been saying for years about the encoding delay and live ballgames, where stations simply turn off the digital for play-by-play. Why bother having the system at all?)

When one of HD's biggest historical proponents, Tom Ray, writes a piece like this - and frankly relates how he tried to help a fellow WOR exec defeat the digital mode of his expensive HD factory car radio so he could default back to good old analog - it's all but, "nighty-night for HD."
 
It's pretty simple. With the exception of NPR, there's nothing on HD Radio you can't get on an iPod, and on the iPod you get it without dropouts, stuttering, and it's when you want it.

This is only a symptom of the disease that permeates much of radio today, the disease that killed off local programming. Give people something worth listening to on HD Radio and it will have a chance. Nobody gives a damn about two or three extra channels of the same old stuff.

To Tom's credit, he appears to have figured that out in the first sentence. Say, do you think the sorry SOBs who run the mega-radio chains that destroyed local radio will ever get it?

And off-topic for the moment, something else that "shouldn't be this hard" is reading RW Online. That format of theirs is a mess.
 
mmnassour said:
And off-topic for the moment, something else that "shouldn't be this hard" is reading RW Online. That format of theirs is a mess.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you said that. I thought it was just me. It was like a cross between an Easter Egg hunt and an eye test.
 
Chuck said:
I'm glad you said that. I thought it was just me. It was like a cross between an Easter Egg hunt and an eye test.
Click to expand...

I just fired off an email to the Editor-in-chief. I don't know who sold them that absurd web presentation but it's a disgrace.
 
kenglish said:
We have to tell people WHY they want HD Radio, by promoting the formats and the programming, not just saying "It's here, try it". They can't try it without buying a radio. There's gotta be another way to tell them what's on it.

Maybe we could tell 'em about it, using RADIO?
Click to expand...

Don't know about your market but here in Phoenix KOOL had spots running for the better part of two years giving all the "benefits" of HD Radio. I assume other stations in the C(BS) cluster did as well.

It did bring KOOL some new listeners on their HD2.....online, that is.
 
Hmmm....jerkiness, hard to navigate, on my browser the resolution pops in and out so it's like having an eye test, slow and clunky....

Perhaps: "iBiquity's On-Line Magazine Reader??" ;) :D
 
Whoa! This edition of RW hasn't hit my mailbox yet. So I struggled through the online version.

I remember when an edition of RW featured Tom on the front cover, pretending to weld HD equipment into the rack. Hope those beads will be easy to break loose.

FM may be a different story, but as for AM, iBiquity has been a huge disappointment. Game over boys. After all the hype to date, nothing will make the consumer buy what he/she doesn't want.

Want to improve the AM band? Walk over to the rack, take a deep breath, turn it off, and get back to business.
 
Savage said:
Yes...not to mention the fact that an iPad actually works. As opposed to HD Radio.
Click to expand...

I don't know...in my circles, there are a lot of criticisms of the iPad, in terms of Flash and other issues.

But the real questions are: Can I surf the net on HD radio? Answer emails? Write presentations? Interact with others?

It's an apples & oranges discussion. Radios are not computers. Computers CAN be radios, and the fact that I can hear the radio on my computer is why radios as free-standing devices are becoming obsolete. But don't confuse the struggles of HD Radio with the success of the iPad, because they're not the same thing. And that's why one is a success.
 
It's great to hear that Tom Ray might be giving up the Kool-Aid; someday soon WOR may once again be heard in its full fidelity, 50 kw, analog glory. Not only shouldn't HD Radio be this hard, it shouldn't be at all. Analog radio is easy; anyone can do it. Turn a knob, push a button, sit back and enjoy.
 
I like that he alluded to management seeing 0 return on investment on HD radio. They sunk thousands of dollars on HD radio, and didn't see a penny of advertising revenue directly attributable to it. Those HD Alliance spots are aired for free. If something breaks, bye bye HD on WOR!

The average consumer wouldn't jump through all those hoops and spend hundreds more just to get HD radio in their car. Tom only did that because he needs to hear his station in HD.
 
Savage said:
Hmmm....jerkiness, hard to navigate, on my browser the resolution pops in and out so it's like having an eye test, slow and clunky....

Perhaps: "iBiquity's On-Line Magazine Reader??" ;) :D
Click to expand...

The only problem is that there's no mode-hopping here--no switching to a more readable (analog?) printed copy of RW. :)
 
This IS refreshing news. Any time reality intrudes to the extent that the laws of physics are recognized is good.

It IS HARD to make digital schemes work at 1 Mhz without sufficient bandwidth and redundancy.
Even with these, there's undeniable degradation of the data's "squareness" and lack of resolution for data
when referenced to the 1 mhz carrier. Too many bits "fall into" zero crossing of the carrier and requires more redundancy.

But it's a great system for wrecking 50khz of spectrum at one fell swoop. Or is that swoosh?
 
AM HD should have never been unleashed on the world to begin with, but apparently there was this alien concept of "fairness" in play that dictated that AM couldn't be "left behind", laws of RF be damned.

I really don't see how leaving AM in analog (or pushing C-QUAM as a poor man's substitute) would have made much of a difference next to FM HD. For AMs in a cluster, FM HD's subchannels could be the saving grace. I think most of the negativity towards the HD scheme would have never materialized if AM HD weren't around.

But, no. If FM gets a new upgrade, AM's gotta get it too! (stamps feet and pouts) Yeeeeech.

In an idea world, FM HD would have been unleashed with an agreement to build in quality AM tuners into the HD radios, that support stereo and wider bandwidth than the nasty 4 kHz most seem to be stuck with these days. The emphasis should have been on better radios for the consumer, with more choices on FM.
 
Let's not lose sight of the fact that FM HD is almost as big a disaster as AM HD. They function equally poorly; the basic difference is that an AM HD signal interferes with four adjacent channels, while FM HD only interferes with two.
 
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