Houston HD Radio question

[jras20]

Well I decided to buy a new HD Radio for my place at home near Austin I got a home component tuner, I took my Accurian down to Lavaca county, I hooked it up to my outdoor antenna turned it towards Houston, and the HD Signal came in for about a few secounds and then droped out. It wasnt even listenable. I can recieve a clean stereo signal with that antenna on my analog Technics FM tuner so I thought I could recieve HD better than that. I acually now just have a dipole antenna hooked onto it and it can pull in the missouri city sticks just fine. How far can anyone else recieve the HD signals in Houston?

 

[-juan-]

Well that depends, are you asking Dxing wise, or just normal car antenna/House?

 

[jras20]

For now just house, I can get pretty good HD reception at my place near Austin, dont know if it could be the transmitters or what, but I can recieve San antonio HD almost all the time being around 60 miles away. I'm having better luck with HDTV reception than HDFM.

 

[ilistentotheradio]

I think this is the 80th time I have said this, but... radio, especially HD radio, is not made for distant listeners.

 

[jras20]

I think this is the 80th time I have said this, but... radio, especially HD radio, is not made for distant listeners.

Yeah I think your right, but I wish they would make it more decent coverage.

 

[ilistentotheradio]

I think this is the 80th time I have said this, but... radio, especially HD radio, is not made for distant listeners.

Yeah I think your right, but I wish they would make it more decent coverage.

I agree... I wish radio stations could have similar ranges to television staitons, but there's so many, it's impossible. However, it would be nice if we had European spacing.

 

[jras20]

I'm afraid if they were to kill off analog radio then I would half to pay for radio and I dont want to pay for radio I refuse to pay for something that I can get for free with just a wire!

 

[John Steel]

First of all HD radio is very very low power, so it will not give much distance at all.
The Big analog stations are running 100,000 Watts, that is One Hundred Thousand Watts.
an HD radio station can only run 1% of the power that their analog is ruinning, so for a 100,000 watt station that would make the HD 1,000 watts.
So the HD will not even have the coverage that their analog has.
Quite a great job that FCC is doing these days.
AND to add insult to injury the HD system is privately owned, meaning that the stations have to pay to use it.
WOW , could this get any worse.

 

[CW]

First of all HD radio is very very low power, so it will not give much distance at all.
The Big analog stations are running 100,000 Watts, that is One Hundred Thousand Watts.
an HD radio station can only run 1% of the power that their analog is ruinning, so for a 100,000 watt station that would make the HD 1,000 watts.
So the HD will not even have the coverage that their analog has.
Quite a great job that FCC is doing these days.
AND to add insult to injury the HD system is privately owned, meaning that the stations have to pay to use it.
WOW , could this get any worse.

Ahhh someone who thinks the numbers of digital and analog are the same (not so broadcast breath!)...
A HD signal IS 1%...because the power density is higher in the bandwidth and error correction is built in. An analog signal is spread out...thus the power density is LOW at any one point.....compared to the overall signal..the digital signal on the other hand is constant through the bandwidth...thus power density is high and you dont NEED AS MUCH..

This is why HDTV stations are running MUCH less power than their analog counterparts....to acheive the same distance, you dont need the power...It is an ENGINEERING FACT........now they dont have QUITE the same coverage...but IF the FCC ever does away with analog radio, then you can bet the digitals will increase power somewhat.....HD btw in radio does NOT stand for High Def...it stands for Hybrid Digital (Something I had to email Kim Komando on; she kept calling it high definition).......it still has too many artifacts for my taste....

 

[Fieldtech1]

This is why HDTV stations are running MUCH less power than their analog counterparts

Its my understanding in HDTV that Digital generally runs at 20% of analog power IE: an analog full power UHF runs 5000KW a full power digital runs 1000kw sometimes on directly adjacent channels. Is it in FM-Hybrid digital that anything higher than 1% would interfere with the main analog carrier?

BTW From personal experience the HD signals from Sr Road Stations generaly make it out about 65 air miles before they blend back to analog on my Kenwood receiver.

 

[CW]

This is why HDTV stations are running MUCH less power than their analog counterparts

Its my understanding in HDTV that Digital generally runs at 20% of analog power IE: an analog full power UHF runs 5000KW a full power digital runs 1000kw sometimes on directly adjacent channels. Is it in FM-Hybrid digital that anything higher than 1% would interfere with the main analog carrier?

BTW From personal experience the HD signals from Sr Road Stations generaly make it out about 65 air miles before they blend back to analog on my Kenwood receiver.

If HD Radio was running higher power, it would not fit in the channel mask that has been the standard.....receivers may not be able to handle the higher power and possibly be intermoded more than they already are. Because of the tightness of the station spacings and the receivers being used, the power levels were set to be a good compromise at this time. It aint perfect.....a truely full digital system WOULD likely use higher power levels...but this is a hybrid and transistion phase. NOW if they could put the digital on the adj channel like HDTV is being done, the filtering could handle the signal problems...but then that would cause problems for 2nd adj stations, etc....the FM and TV scenarios are different in their operation....also video requires a wider b/w thus a higher power to maintain coverage....They have a complete 2nd channel to set power levels and get the coverage to almost equal their analog....HD R does not have that luxury at this point.

 

[John Steel]

CW,

I NEVER said that digital and analog signals are the same, then can not be with analog running 100,000 wats and digitla running only 1,00 WATTS.
what we want if a radio station is to be viable is "BUILDING PENETRATION", and you are not going to get that with power levels at only 1% of the analog.
IF what you are saying about HD radio is correct and the 1,000 WATT signal is the same as an analog 100,000 WATT signal, then WHY will they EVER want to increase the power at all?
I have heard all of this before about Digital power being more than analog, BUT being an engineer I can assure you that the 1,000 WATT will NOT get through concrete and steel like 100,000 WATTS of analog, SO if you can not get into buildings, (AS analog can) then do you realy have a signal.
NPR has been telling everyone that "THOSE DIGITAL WATTS ARE MORE AND BETTER THEN ANALOG" RIGHT,
and if you beleive that then why do stations on the same antenna with analog and digital not have as much signal on digital as they do on analog?
and better yet if you beleive that I have some great beaach front land to sell you in New Mexico.
I have installed and am running IBOC (HD radio) and have made signal strength readings. HAVE YOU?

 

[-juan-]

Changing the subject a bit, anyone have an idea of why is KKBQ making it's HD signal lock in exclusively to it's DIgital band. It's a pain when you are outside of Houston and the signal drops out to nothing.

 

[CW]

CW,

I NEVER said that digital and analog signals are the same, then can not be with analog running 100,000 wats and digitla running only 1,00 WATTS.
what we want if a radio station is to be viable is "BUILDING PENETRATION", and you are not going to get that with power levels at only 1% of the analog.
IF what you are saying about HD radio is correct and the 1,000 WATT signal is the same as an analog 100,000 WATT signal, then WHY will they EVER want to increase the power at all?
I have heard all of this before about Digital power being more than analog, BUT being an engineer I can assure you that the 1,000 WATT will NOT get through concrete and steel like 100,000 WATTS of analog, SO if you can not get into buildings, (AS analog can) then do you realy have a signal.
NPR has been telling everyone that "THOSE DIGITAL WATTS ARE MORE AND BETTER THEN ANALOG" RIGHT,
and if you beleive that then why do stations on the same antenna with analog and digital not have as much signal on digital as they do on analog?
and better yet if you beleive that I have some great beaach front land to sell you in New Mexico.
I have installed and am running IBOC (HD radio) and have made signal strength readings. HAVE YOU?

John,
if have installed IBOC, then you know the FM mask and the reception problems that would be caused by higher levels of the digital sidebands...it already seems to have affected some analog reception...so why hurt it more by increasing power now? Remember HD is Hybrid Digital....IF and WHEN the FCC sunsets analog FM and allows digital on channel to take its place, then power levels would be increased...but from what I have seen, the HD signal is pretty good all things considered...with it in a hybrid mode, you have to make compromises.....but you should have known that if you know IBOC FM. I didnt speak for nor defend NPR....if they ARE saying that, they are smoking something!!!

 

[John Steel]

C.W,

OOO yes NPR is really smoking something for sure.
I must admit that for as little power as it is running it does pretty good, BUT not inside buildings.
If you only want to listen to IBOC in the car, it is doing fairly well.

 

[IngenieroPerron]

building penetration and a moving receiver seem to be the biggest problems with hd radio, especially the lower power hd stations like 1049 which already is low power fm, our hd transmitter is only at few hundred watts. 1029 at 100 kw fm, and hd at 1 kw seem to be pretty good coverage and building reception.

its true that as soon fm is put to sleep, hd will takes its place and so we should have an lil increase of power but i dont expect much since we already are at the max without interferance of other fms.