HD Thoughts

[georgetown3ham]

I purchased a JVC HD Radio about six months ago. My area doesn't really have any HD stations yet, but I travel to areas that do, so I wanted to "test" it. Here's my observations:

 

[SUPERCASTER]

I purchased a JVC HD Radio about six months ago. My area doesn't really have any HD stations yet, but I travel to areas that do, so I wanted to "test" it. Here's my observations:

Apparently your JVC HD radio didn't work anywhere?

 

[radiopilot]

I just bought the Kenwood Model KDC-MP235 AM/FM/CD/HD/SAT/IPOD/Bluetooth car radio last week from BESTBUY and of course the saleskid did not even try to mention anything about the HD tuner for this radio but he QUICKLY wanted to get the Sirius/IPOD cable attachment to this radio and suggested that the HD tuner was 'crap' and that no one has bought one YET...

My son (for whcih the radio was bought for his FIAT Spider) was not even interested in the HD or CD feature of this radio infact the new car radios (newer) does not even come with the CD unit anymore, they now have the IPOD/satelite/Bluetooth feature... go see for yourself.... He wanted the IPOD/Bluetooth feature only, go figure.. he does not even listen to FM radio anymore and could care less for AM.

These are the trends whether the rabid pro-IBOC types like it or not!

Radiopilot

 

[LinoNYC]

I just bought the Kenwood Model KDC-MP235 AM/FM/CD/HD/SAT/IPOD/Bluetooth car radio last week from BESTBUY and of course the saleskid did not even try to mention anything about the HD tuner for this radio but he QUICKLY wanted to get the Sirius/IPOD cable attachment to this radio and suggested that the HD tuner was 'crap' and that no one has bought one YET...

My son (for whcih the radio was bought for his FIAT Spider) was not even interested in the HD or CD feature of this radio infact the new car radios (newer) does not even come with the CD unit anymore, they now have the IPOD/satelite/Bluetooth feature... go see for yourself.... He wanted the IPOD/Bluetooth feature only, go figure.. he does not even listen to FM radio anymore and could care less for AM.

These are the trends whether the rabid pro-IBOC types like it or not!
Radiopilot

Funny but the only "rabid" posters around here are the naysayers. They have two traits in common: they are professional victims -claiming personal attack when someone counters their flawed arguments, second, they often have these ironic handles.

The "trend" worldwide is toward digitization of mass-media. In this country,FM could probably continue without it for the forseeable future but AM is dead within a decade if something radical isn't done to improve the audio.

Europeans have had DAB for over a dozen years and mixed results regarding public acceptance. Part of this has been the cost of receivers and, more recently, the onslaught of new "personal media' devices.
They are now working on their version of hybrid (in band) digital.

Canadians have stopped promoting their DAB system and have taken exploratory steps toward adopting the AMerican iboc.

I don't understand why some are so filled with venom over this subject, but it really doesn't matter, any intelligent person would see the trend and use this (and other) forums for productive discussion rather then venting their frustrations over something inevitable and positive.

Lino

http://www.drm.org/system/whydigital.php

 

[clouseau]

I just bought the Kenwood Model KDC-MP235 AM/FM/CD/HD/SAT/IPOD/Bluetooth car radio last week from BESTBUY and of course the saleskid did not even try to mention anything about the HD tuner for this radio

.. and suggested that the HD tuner was 'crap' and that no one has bought one YET...

Ya know...

Did he "not even try to mention anything about the HD tuner" or did he "suggested that the HD tuner was 'crap'" ?

It's kinda hard to not mention it and say it was crap.

Could you pick a story and go with it?

Thanks

Clouseau

 

[radionekkid]

[/quote]

Funny but the only "rabid" posters around here are the naysayers. They have two traits in common: they are professional victims -claiming personal attack when someone counters their flawed arguments, second, they often have these ironic handles.


I don't understand why some are so filled with venom over this subject, but it really doesn't matter, any intelligent person would see the trend and use this (and other) forums for productive discussion rather then venting their frustrations over something inevitable and positive.

Lino





[/quote]
Are you being so pious as to label those who disagree with you as "naysayers" and challenging their intelligence? Constantly having to get in the last word or "I hit you last", a common school yard playground one-upsmanship ploy and a transference onto others what you are indeed guilty of. Based on this, I don't think you are any better than those you most vehemently criticize as "venomous". Are you not part of the problem here? Think about it.....Misery loves company most of the time, only a few domminate this board.

 

[radiopilot]

I just bought the Kenwood Model KDC-MP235 AM/FM/CD/HD/SAT/IPOD/Bluetooth car radio last week from BESTBUY and of course the saleskid did not even try to mention anything about the HD tuner for this radio but he QUICKLY wanted to get the Sirius/IPOD cable attachment to this radio and suggested that the HD tuner was 'crap' and that no one has bought one YET...

My son (for whcih the radio was bought for his FIAT Spider) was not even interested in the HD or CD feature of this radio infact the new car radios (newer) does not even come with the CD unit anymore, they now have the IPOD/satelite/Bluetooth feature... go see for yourself.... He wanted the IPOD/Bluetooth feature only, go figure.. he does not even listen to FM radio anymore and could care less for AM.

These are the trends whether the rabid pro-IBOC types like it or not!
Radiopilot

Funny but the only "rabid" posters around here are the naysayers. They have two traits in common: they are professional victims -claiming personal attack when someone counters their flawed arguments, second, they often have these ironic handles.

The "trend" worldwide is toward digitization of mass-media. In this country,FM could probably continue without it for the forseeable future but AM is dead within a decade if something radical isn't done to improve the audio.

Europeans have had DAB for over a dozen years and mixed results regarding public acceptance. Part of this has been the cost of receivers and, more recently, the onslaught of new "personal media' devices.
They are now working on their version of hybrid (in band) digital.

Canadians have stopped promoting their DAB system and have taken exploratory steps toward adopting the AMerican iboc.

I don't understand why some are so filled with venom over this subject, but it really doesn't matter, any intelligent person would see the trend and use this (and other) forums for productive discussion rather then venting their frustrations over something inevitable and positive.

Lino

http://www.drm.org/system/whydigital.php

Funny but I thought I bought the radio and not you... so therefore if Savannah is not broadcasting in HD and I could care less if they did or not is not the issue, but rather whether my son cares for the HD feature and he doesn't, the saleskid mentioned when I confronted him with the HD tuner that why do they sell them here in Savannah if there are no IBOC stations, he shrugged his shoulders and quoted 'I have not sold one of these units YET and they seem to be crap (Why? Because it does not decode anything if no stations are broadcasting in HD), you can UNDERSTAND that... entiendes ahora Lino?

So PLEASE give it a rest for now!

Radiopilot

 

[R.F. Burns]

Savannah, Ga. Market # 157 12+ population; 265,300


NYC Market #1 12+ population; 15,344,600

Gee, I wonder why these broadcasters are so centered on serving a market like NYC. They should be more focused on markets like Savannah, where the 'real' Americans live

 

[LinoNYC]

Funny but I thought I bought the radio and not you... so therefore if Savannah is not broadcasting in HD and I could care less if they did or not is not the issue, but rather whether my son cares for the HD feature and he doesn't, the saleskid mentioned when I confronted him with the HD tuner that why do they sell them here in Savannah if there are no IBOC stations, he shrugged his shoulders and quoted 'I have not sold one of these units YET and they seem to be crap (Why? Because it does not decode anything if no stations are broadcasting in HD), you can UNDERSTAND that... entiendes ahora Lino?

So PLEASE give it a rest for now!

Radiopilot

So we have: A young salesman in a store in a minor market with probably no hd service who has thus never heard the system calling it "crap".

You don't leave much room for an intelligent response.

Your son's lack of interest in radio does convey a point worth making in that this is exactly the way the youngest sector of the radio market responded to AM some 30+ years ago.

We've seen what happened to AM when it no longer attracted new listeners. The reason this happened was simply that AM could not compete with FM in sound quality. After awhile it stopped trying.

You can make the case that FM isn't in dire need of a sonic fix, AM is if it's to avoid the looming fate of preachers and whoring.

Iboc offers a last chance for AM.

Lino

 

[LinoNYC]

Are you being so pious as to label those who disagree with you as "naysayers" and challenging their intelligence? Constantly having to get in the last word or "I hit you last", a common school yard playground one-upsmanship ploy and a transference onto others what you are indeed guilty of. Based on this, I don't think you are any better than those you most vehemently criticize as "venomous". Are you not part of the problem here? Think about it.....Misery loves company most of the time, only a few domminate this board.

No, I'll be more pointed than that. Whenever the topic of HD radio is reported in a positive light, some people counter with intelligent arguments, but then we have the "jerks" -people with nothing but ignorant rants and venom.

That was simple enought, right? I'll let the rest of your vacuous post stand on it's own.

Lino

 

[grantchester]

This whole thing just makes me sad. Broadcasters abandon the AM band to talk, ethnic and religious. Kids abandon the band because there's nothing for them there. IBOC comes along and jams the out-of-town stations. Long range reception was one of the few benefits AM had. Now my favorite out of town stations are covered up.
I could always get XEG clear as a bell... now it's covered with hash from WHO.
As someone whose livelihood depends on AM broadcasting, I must say this IBOC thing concerns me. I had kept an open mind, but now it has become apparent the slight benefit that is gained is outweighed by the gross destruction of (what's left of)the value of the AM band.
Prove me wrong. Prove to me that digital can gain popularity, and be of some use.
g

 

[Mike Walker]

Digital can and will "gain popularity and be of some use" in every instance where the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. This may well be everywhere EXCEPT the AM broadcast band! There, the drawbacks are numerous, and inarguable by a person with half-a-brain. And the benefits...noise-free but swishy, artifact-filled audio over a tiny fraction of the station's original coverage area...well is that REALLY enough to justify what's wrong?

I believe the artifacts can be reduced to a tolerable level with good engineering. I've heard airchecks of AM HD that sounded quite good...notably from WOR AM. But those are the exceptions. The vast majority of AM HD I've heard has sounded, with the exception of a startlingly silent background, inferior to broadband analog reception. Still, with proper pre-processing, the limiting of the audio bandwidth to perhaps 9-10khz rather than 20khz, I believe the artifacting could be handled. But that leaves the other problems. I remain as convinced that FM HD is a Godsend as I am that AM HD is festering sewage spewing into the air (sorry if that was vivid!)

 

[Play Freebird]

Iboc offers a last chance for AM.

If in-band digital is truly AM's "last" chance, then it's a hopeless situation.

Let's push for another chance that has real potential for success. We need to use another portion of spectrum (like low-band VHF) for AM broadcasters' digital carriers. If you have any lingering doubts that AM station owners would be willing to install new transmitters and antennas to support out-of-band digital, take a look at all of the enthusiastic comments recently filed by small economically-disadvantaged AM broadcasters in favor of FM translators.

Claims that we have "no other choice" but to implement AM IBOC due to lack of available broadcast spectrum are baseless. Consider that the most recent revision to the Table of Allotments for post-transition DTV indicates the following states and territories no longer have any full-service TV stations operating on Channels 5 or 6 after next February:

Alabama
Arizona
Arkansas
California!
Colorado
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
North Carolina
North Dakota
Oklahoma
South Carolina
South Dakota
Utah
Vermont
Washington
Wisconsin
Guam
Puerto Rico
Virgin Islands

Of the remaining states, most have just one Channel 5 or 6 assignment. I strongly suspect that Channels 2, 3, or 4 could be substituted in place of these. If not, there will be a few markets where only 6 MHz is available for AM digital radio, rather than 12. That's still a big improvement over the current plan, which unsuccessfully attempts to break the laws of physics by throwing digital on top of analog in a band that's only 1.2 MHz wide.

 

[tripinva]

My personal opinion would be to just clear out channels 2-6 entirely. In most places, an upper-VHF is available for use where a lower-VHF is now, and in others, there are reasonable UHFs available too. Heck, channel 4 only has two stations on it in the whole US as it is (WHBF in Rock Island and WDKY in Danville/Lexington--and the latter unsuccessfully tried to move to channel 22 a few years ago, so you know they want to get out; WHBF could probably be put on channel 8, though I haven't done any detailed checks).

Then I'd say to make channels 5 and 6 an expanded FM band and channels 2-4 can be used for perhaps all-digital AM frequencies or something like that.

- Trip

 

[dbdigital]

Lest we forget about CAM-D, Leonard Kahn had his objection over the Clear Channel sale shot down by the FCC. It seems he failed to provide sufficient evidence that CC had been shutting out his competing digital AM system from major markets and, therefore, was violating anti-trust laws.

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0100/t.10891.html

He may be an engineering genius, but as his own lawyer, Kahn is a disaster.

db

 

[LinoNYC]

Lest we forget about CAM-D, Leonard Kahn had his objection over the Clear Channel sale shot down by the FCC. It seems he failed to provide sufficient evidence that CC had been shutting out his competing digital AM system from major markets and, therefore, was violating anti-trust laws.

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0100/t.10891.html

He may be an engineering genius, but as his own lawyer, Kahn is a disaster.

db

His cam-d website has two airchecks, both are of the analog carrier, if you read his description carefully you'll note that he is saying in effect this is what the analog sounds like with cam-d running. No digital. No specs although an engineer told me that it had an 8-bit depth -that and the analog up to 7k ought to sound real great, we'll probably never know.

What is typical of some of the iboc detractors is that they'll believe in cam-d, a "system" that no one seems to have actually heard (probably believe anything Ol' Lenny says) but will hate iboc even with demonstrated proof that it works and sounds decent.

Reminds me of the crowd allways touting the "virtuous" Apple computer co. vs. mean old corporate PC.

Lino

 

[dbdigital]

Lest we forget about CAM-D, Leonard Kahn had his objection over the Clear Channel sale shot down by the FCC. It seems he failed to provide sufficient evidence that CC had been shutting out his competing digital AM system from major markets and, therefore, was violating anti-trust laws.

http://www.rwonline.com/pages/s.0100/t.10891.html

He may be an engineering genius, but as his own lawyer, Kahn is a disaster.

db

His cam-d website has two airchecks, both are of the analog carrier, if you read his description carefully you'll note that he is saying in effect this is what the analog sounds like with cam-d running. No digital. No specs although an engineer told me that it had an 8-bit depth -that and the analog up to 7k ought to sound real great, we'll probably never know.

What is typical of some of the iboc detractors is that they'll believe in cam-d, a "system" that no one seems to have actually heard (probably believe anything Ol' Lenny says) but will hate iboc even with demonstrated proof that it works and sounds decent.

Reminds me of the crowd allways touting the "virtuous" Apple computer co. vs. mean old corporate PC.

Lino

And, of course, you can't resist turning this into a flame war.

Regardless of the merits (or lack thereof) of CAM-D, Kahn seems intent on treading the same wrong path that iBiquity and the HD Alliance have taken, namely, seeking favors and sympathy from the FCC. Kahn certainly isn't going to get any from them.

Love 'em or hate 'em, the satcasters got it right by aggressively making pacts with the devil to get their products into cars while nearly everyone else was looking for a handout from the Commission (and still are).

To their credit, the creators of FMeXtra realized that was a dead end and busily went out trying to sell their system to the rest of the world.

Kahn needs to do the same with his system. A simple start is to build a professional website with specs and a photo of the product along with credible sound files and demos. Next, build a sales team who can effectively trumpet CAM-D to the rest of the world and make whatever agreements they can with overseas reps and CE manufacturers to get the system into radios. And, finally, Lenny needs to forget about the FCC and winning lawsuits over anti-trust issues.

On paper CAM-D sounds like a very good compromise for the narrowband world of AM but we need something more than the ravings of a mad blogger to confirm that.

db

 

[LinoNYC]

How is it "flaming" to point out the obvious. Many of the same people who rail against the iboc system then exclaim the virtues of one that doesn't even seem to exist.

Kahn needs to do the same with his system. A simple start is to build a professional website with specs and a photo of the product along with credible sound files and demos. Next, build a sales team who can effectively trumpet CAM-D to the rest of the world and make whatever agreements they can with overseas reps and CE manufacturers to get the system into radios. And, finally, Lenny needs to forget about the FCC and winning lawsuits over anti-trust issues.

On paper CAM-D sounds like a very good compromise for the narrowband world of AM but we need something more than the ravings of a mad blogger to confirm that.

Thirteen years ago, before Europe and later America demonstrated the advantages of a true DAB there might have been some interest in the cam-d concept, by now all the taste makers and regulatory beaurocrats in these countries have heard these systems, a single band, half-and-half system with no future upgradability is a non contender.

In today's world, Mr Kahn and his concept are like gramps trotting out a Victrola.

Lino

 

[dbdigital]

How is it "flaming" to point out the obvious. Many of the same people who rail against the iboc system then exclaim the virtues of one that doesn't even seem to exist.

IBOC on AM is so deeply flawed that, as far as I'm concerned, a workable, backward compatible digital system for AM still doesn't exist.

As for your suggestion that Bill Norman add IBOC to his station, WNMB, he said this in the same e-mail he sent me:

"As to AM Stereo, it works well for us. It sounds really great and there are lots of car radios (and many HD Radios) that can receive it. It will probably never become a really strong thing, but for us it is much better than IBOC."

db

 

[JohnnyElectron]

Speaking of AM Stereo, I found out that EVERY single "new" re-vamped Ford T-Bird has a C-Quam AM Stereo in it - and the AM bandwidth ain't half bad either, though not quite as wide as the Caddy Delco version (with the "AMST" pushbutton or the 90's Chrysler version with 5-band EQ.

I belive it's standard in the largest beastly Ford SUV too.