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I noticed HD range is much greater with the 100000 watt class C's in the midwest than the class B's in the northeast. I was able to get the Minneapolis stations in HD reliably out to 40 miles on a portable HD radio. In the northeast, the HDs are almost completely gone 40 miles away.
In the Northeast, the FM band is a lot more crowded. In some areas where stations from multiple markets come in equally well, on a good car radio you can pull in a listenable signal on nearly every frequency across the band. So it is this high level of adjacent channel activity which kills the HD signal range, because most of the digital signal is actually contained in the station's adjacent channels. Stations in the Midwest have better HD range not necessarily because of higher power levels, but rather because the FM band is simply less crowded out there.
Nick said:
I was in East Brunswick NJ for a few days last week, the best NYC HD signal I got from there was WBLS, that did ok even while driving...WWFS also did ok from there...It was difficult and at times nearly impossible to get a lock on KTU, Z100 & NOW's HD signals, 30 miles from Empire. Down here in Upstate SC most HD signals do excellent out to about 50 miles.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
KyleAndMelissa22 said:
What I am reading into this is that the strategy of placing HD sidebands on first adjacent frequencies was a poor technical decision. Interference from first adjacents - even if they are inaudible on the radio - is enough to cause the radio to lose lock. In locations with less crowded radio dials, there are no first adjacents and HD works fine to at least double the range. So - what is the broadcaster's solution? Try to "out shout" the first adjacents even if it means they introduce self jamming. The FCC rubber stamps both the defective system initially, and the really bad patch. WHERE are REAL engineers? Has everything become so profit driven that really bad engineering gets enacted into law as official technical standards? I still say - they should have sacrificed a handful of secondary services and put the sidebands into the existing channel.
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diymedia
Guest
K6JHU said:
Back in 2002, Radio World contributing editor Skip Pizzi considered HD Radio “fundamentally a blocking policy, primarily intended to retain the status quo for incumbent broadcasters. From an engineering standpoint, it’s been a transition plan in search of a technology, with its primary requirements oriented toward damage control rather than growth.”
He lamented HD as an indicator of “how important the business aspects of radio broadcasting are in the United States, and how reduced the public service value of the medium has become.”
In December 2010, Pizzi became the NAB's Director of Digital Strategies. Nary a peep from him on HD since then. I would love to hear his updated thoughts.
K6JHU said:Just like there was no need for digital television. But anybody want to go back to 480i
I'd go back to the 480 lines of resolution with analog TV. No problem.
I much prefer occaisional ghosting or snow to enjoy instant tuning on channel changes, versus the interminable
delay, delay, delay when tuning on digital.
Then there's the total droputs with delay, the droputs from airplanes or cars with bad ignition going by, the pixellations, and blocking.
I see too many situations at work where someone has tried to believe an analog situation can be adequately digitized
and then I'm the one stuck trying to make it work acceptably in what is the essentially an analog application.
Nobody can argue against the improved picture quality of 8-VSB along with the additional channel capacity. But if you can't watch it because it keeps cutting out, that's a problem.
At my country house I can't get any TV stations reliably now, even though I have a large, high gain antenna system with a low noise preamp. It is in a low area that has always had weak reception. But with analog, you could always get a signal. Not with digital.
I think they should have designed in the capability for the digital signal to degrade gracefully. Like the fiscal cliff, the current system has a digital cliff and once you fall off, you are out of luck. Analog transmission is superior in these situations.
HD radio suffers from the same problem, plus interference to other stations (which nobody in the industry seems to care about). The answer is not to just keep cranking up the power-- that just exacerbates the interference issue.
At my country house I can't get any TV stations reliably now, even though I have a large, high gain antenna system with a low noise preamp. It is in a low area that has always had weak reception. But with analog, you could always get a signal. Not with digital.
I think they should have designed in the capability for the digital signal to degrade gracefully. Like the fiscal cliff, the current system has a digital cliff and once you fall off, you are out of luck. Analog transmission is superior in these situations.
HD radio suffers from the same problem, plus interference to other stations (which nobody in the industry seems to care about). The answer is not to just keep cranking up the power-- that just exacerbates the interference issue.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
audioguy said:
Plus - the rural viewers lost all those low VHF stations, which guaranteed you could pull something in even hundreds of miles away from a channel 2 or 3. Now you have only high VHF and UHF which don't propagate nearly as far. On the plus side, you could probably buy a new super high gain high VHF and UHF antenna which would put all of its gain where you need it instead of now useless low VHF - and the antenna would probably be smaller than what you have now.
As far as HD going over the cliff - that is especially true on HD-2 and above where the fallback mode is dead silence. And eventually a format you really don't want on analog if the software in the radio is set to default back to it after a couple of minutes.
I've argued against power increase for HD for years - after testing 64 miles away from towers in the middle of a pasture and getting perfect HD. And driving to Fairfield the other day and getting perfect HD 60 miles from 107.5. HD doesn't need a power increase. It never did. It is just very susceptible to adjacent channel interference and multipath. More power won't solve it.
As I have previously documented you don't need to be a rural viewer to have problems with DTV. After two years of screwing around with various combinations of antennas I have finally found a combo that seems to to work for me - and I live 8 miles line-of-sight from the towers with no obstacles. But as I sit here tonight trying to tune into RF 12 and seeing nothing but a black screen I am reminded that reliability of DTV continues to be a hit and miss proposition.
I do enjoy the improved PQ of DTV but it isn't/wasn't worth it.
I do enjoy the improved PQ of DTV but it isn't/wasn't worth it.
8VSB is a fragile method to send video and audio.The lack of reliability is most crucial during severe weather, when folks really need to know what's coming down the pike and what to do about it.Ancient NTSC,even if the video was being torn up by storm caused electrical disturbances , still had Major Armstrong's FM audio to keep the populace informed.
While ATSC Scrabble boards the video and loses the audio completely, the ancient analog system could still get vital information through.Relying almost solely on UHF transmission makes a bad situation worse.After all, what is one of the best ways to compromise an UHF signal path? Put leaves on the trees and moisture in the air.Works every time.
While ATSC Scrabble boards the video and loses the audio completely, the ancient analog system could still get vital information through.Relying almost solely on UHF transmission makes a bad situation worse.After all, what is one of the best ways to compromise an UHF signal path? Put leaves on the trees and moisture in the air.Works every time.
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