Low Cost HD Radio Announced

[PocketRadio]

Alarm clock, clock radio, line input for portable devices (mp3 players, etc.)...sounds to me like this radio knows plenty of "tricks" for 99 bucks. I WILL BUY ONE, but will do nothing while it's vaporware. Too many people gave Radiosophy their charge card numbers, then waited FOREVER for their first product. I WILL NOT be the first, but I WILL buy one.

As long as, you have the required external antennas, which I'm sure you do, then go-for-it !

 

[PocketRadio]

I don't care about the reader comments, because anyone with a brain knows it's the same few people going around from site to site posting the negative crap.

"First $99 HD Radio announced"

According to the release you have to act now to get the $99 price, as those who wait until after July 30th will have to pay $119.99.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/13/first-99-hd-radio-announced/

Actually, you just want to see what consumers really think about HD Radio, but you already know. BTW, the radio is initially being put on-sale at $99, then after July it will be $120. Remember that Ramsey blog, about how consumers waited in line for three days to spend $600 on full-priced PS3s ? Successful technologies don't need to be initially put on-sale, in hopes of spurring consumer interest, or have to be "pushed" onto consumers with a $500,000,000 ad campaign (which has been almost a complete failure).

 

[jim8230]

.......Uh oh!.....its been quite some time now.....

where is he?.......over four posts and no nasty comments towards people that disagree
with his take on HD....

Should be any second now.......Where is Burns?

BTW Mike Walker: It was not you I referred to in previous post.

 

[Radio-X]

I think about this...and there are a few reasons why HD Radio is not catching on. And this $100 radio proves it

1) The radios are too damn expensive! Very few people spend $100 this day in age on radios (except me ;D) Most people consider radios to be a cheap, semi-disposable item. And until these things aren't much more expensive than the $19.99 boombox Joe Sixpack sees at WalMart, he ain't buying. And this leads me to number 2

2) Not enough choices! Yes, it's really cool that up to 3 HD streams can be on a station. But unless you're in a top 20 market, you'll be lucky if you have much more than 12 more stations on the HD. Right now, very few are going to shell out $100 for a radio with (if you have good reception) 12 more stations. This leads me to no. 3

3) Half the country can't get HD-FM signals! If you're out of the top 50 metro areas, there might be 2-4 FMs out of 10-20 analog stations running HD...and that's being liberal! On a drive from I-95 in a rental with HD Radio, I got NO HD signals from Raleigh, NC to Jacksonville, FL. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Personally, unless I get a cheap, cheap radio, I'll stick to illegally downloading music and Sirius.

Radio-X

 

[radiopilot]

Successful technologies don't need to be initially put on-sale, in hopes of spurring consumer interest, or have to be "pushed" onto consumers with a $500,000,000 ad campaign (which has been almost a complete failure).

The HD Cartel was more interested in spending wads of money on selling the idea instead of investing in the technology to get very inexpensive radios out to the public, thereby biting themselves in the rear...

If Ibiquity REALLY thought the buying public would be interested in HD, they should have gotten all these devices including portables on the market for reasonable prices to compete with $29.00 Sirius satelite radios, $25-50 table top radios, and a very nice line of 'high' quality HI-FI recievers and tuners, instead they offer rather empty boxes devoid of 'real' craftmanship worhty of dishing out my Sony or Marantz or Onkyo tuners.. but NO..... they offered up some cheap products for upwards of $300-400 for Radiosophy, Sangean, and Accurians, along with $400 radios for cars...

Not surprising that the're not getting the sales figures they thought for the amount of money spent educating the public over the air, telling them it's 'free' with no subscription fees is nonsense since they ALREADY get the music or talk program for free now on their existing radios!

Radiopilot

 

[Mike Walker]

You're a real marketing wiz, there Pocket. Never let facts ruin a good argument. The "cartel" has no control over radio prices, because the "cartel" doesn't make any radios. Not a single one (sigh). Radios are made by (gasp) electronics manufacturers...Boston Acoustics, Accurian, Sangean, JVC, Polk. But hey, don't let the truth slow ya' down.

HD radios are remarkably inexpensive for the newness and level of technology inside. As inexpensive as portable shortwave receivers, they have MUCH more high tech, cutting edge "innards".

 

[pullitin]

Its so funny reading these things! Internet radio? Sure it may have some factor on HD AND Sat. But, heck I'm having a hard enough time with my broadband service being up! You half to have that with Internet radio if you want it to sound decent! HD radio Rules!

 

[PocketRadio]

You're a real marketing wiz, there Pocket. Never let facts ruin a good argument. The "cartel" has no control over radio prices, because the "cartel" doesn't make any radios. Not a single one (sigh). Radios are made by (gasp) electronics manufacturers...Boston Acoustics, Accurian, Sangean, JVC, Polk. But hey, don't let the truth slow ya' down.

HD radios are remarkably inexpensive for the newness and level of technology inside. As inexpensive as portable shortwave receivers, they have MUCH more high tech, cutting edge "innards".

I never stated that The Cartel has control over the prices of HD radios - what they do have control over are the licensing fees paid to iBiquity, which can run from $40 to half the cost of HD radios. The bare-bones Radiosophy is a perfect example that HD radios will never approach the price of $20 Walkmans - the lousy Radiosophy doesn't even have a CD player ! Aside from that, if consumers don't see a need for HD radios, price is a moot-point, as Ramsey has stated over-and-over-again.

 

[R.F. Burns]

You're a real marketing wiz, there Pocket. Never let facts ruin a good argument. The "cartel" has no control over radio prices, because the "cartel" doesn't make any radios. Not a single one (sigh). Radios are made by (gasp) electronics manufacturers...Boston Acoustics, Accurian, Sangean, JVC, Polk. But hey, don't let the truth slow ya' down.

HD radios are remarkably inexpensive for the newness and level of technology inside. As inexpensive as portable shortwave receivers, they have MUCH more high tech, cutting edge "innards".

I never stated that The Cartel has control over the prices of HD radios - what they do have control over are the licensing fees paid to iBiquity, which can run from $40 to half the cost of HD radios. The bare-bones Radiosophy is a perfect example that HD radios will never approach the price of $20 Walkmans - the lousy Radiosophy doesn't even have a CD player ! Aside from that, if consumers don't see a need for HD radios, price is a moot-point, as Ramsey has stated over-and-over-again.

What a bunch or wo cares. This is equivelient to someone saying Who's going to buy the Macintosh component system, I mean why spend thousands of dollars when you can do the same thing for less than 100. Oh, that 20 dollar radio is missing out on 20 or more different music formats which HD provides to us in larger markets which you'd otherwise have to pay a monthly charge for. How about if I put it this way, sure I could survive as a celebate, but who wants too? That makes sense to me.

 

[PocketRadio]

What's interesting about the new Radiosophy, is that the product's page states that it just runs off AC and has an internal antenna for FM:

http://www.radiosophy.com/products/hd100.html

Also interesting, that it doesn't have an analog lock feature, so there is nothing stopping it from constantly switching between weak IBOC and solid analog signals - that will surely get annoying (of course, this is a problem with all HD radios). LOL !!!

 

[radiopilot]

What a bunch or wo cares. This is equivelient to someone saying Who's going to buy the Macintosh component system, I mean why spend thousands of dollars when you can do the same thing for less than 100. Oh, that 20 dollar radio is missing out on 20 or more different music formats which HD provides to us in larger markets which you'd otherwise have to pay a monthly charge for. How about if I put it this way, sure I could survive as a celebate, but who wants too? That makes sense to me.

Why buy a Macintosh component system???? Beacuse it a HIGH QUALITY component system compared to the $100.00 bare bones cheap HD radio equipment... THAT's WHY!

Why buy a Rolex when you can buy a Timex? Why buy a Breitling when you can buy a Citizen.... Quality and name brand, not just that it tells time... THAT'S WHY!!

I can see you don't get the needs of the consumer wanting high quality analog music systems compared to getting cheap radio equipment even if it's slightly less noise (sometimes) almost defeats the effort... doesn't it?

Radiopilot

 

[R.F. Burns]

What a bunch or wo cares. This is equivelient to someone saying Who's going to buy the Macintosh component system, I mean why spend thousands of dollars when you can do the same thing for less than 100. Oh, that 20 dollar radio is missing out on 20 or more different music formats which HD provides to us in larger markets which you'd otherwise have to pay a monthly charge for. How about if I put it this way, sure I could survive as a celebate, but who wants too? That makes sense to me.

Why buy a Macintosh component system???? Beacuse it a HIGH QUALITY component system compared to the $100.00 bare bones cheap HD radio equipment... THAT's WHY!

Why buy a Rolex when you can buy a Timex? Why buy a Breitling when you can buy a Citizen.... Quality and name brand, not just that it tells time... THAT'S WHY!!

I can see you don't get the needs of the consumer wanting high quality analog music systems compared to getting cheap radio equipment even if it's slightly less noise (sometimes) almost defeats the effort... doesn't it?

Radiopilot

You don't get anything. What digital offers is not just quieter noise floors and better ferquency response. It also offers extra channels with formats otherwise not available. That alone makes FM IBOC worth the expense. Go ahead and rant. IBOC isn't going away and there are already many more IBOC stations operating then AM stereo did during its entire existence.

 

[PocketRadio]

HD/IBOC offers total dropouts back to analog (poor coverage), adjacent-channel interference, digital artifacts, and HD channels that are robotic, repetitve, bland, underfunded programming - if the HD channel programming was so great, then put it on the main analog channel. The FCC has left the fate of HD/IBOC up to the marketplace, and we can see that there is almost zero consumer interest:

http://www.statsaholic.com/hdradio.com

If almost complete consumer apathy towards HD Radio doesn't change, HD/IBOC will eventually go away.

 

[R.F. Burns]

HD/IBOC offers total dropouts back to analog (poor coverage), adjacent-channel interference, digital artifacts, and HD channels that are robotic, repetitve, bland, underfunded programming - if the HD channel programming was so great, then put it on the main analog channel. The FCC has left the fate of HD/IBOC up to the marketplace, and we can see that there is almost zero consumer interest:

http://www.statsaholic.com/hdradio.com

If almost complete consumer apathy towards HD Radio doesn't change, HD/IBOC will eventually go away.

I wish we could say the same for you!

 

[4dude]

Funny, none of our analog AM/FM alarm clock radios need to have external antenna jacks - same problems, new package. I'll stick to my $25 < analog radios, thanks !

Agreed!

 

[dbdigital]

Walked into my local Radio Shack store yesterday to buy some electronic parts for a little project I'm working on. While there, I asked the salesman if the store had sold any HD Radios recently. He said they've sold two so far this year. There was no HD-Radio on display but the store hopes to have four in stock next month.

So is this a good or a bad barometer as the success of the HD-R rollout?

db

 

[R.F. Burns]

Walked into my local Radio Shack store yesterday to buy some electronic parts for a little project I'm working on. While there, I asked the salesman if the store had sold any HD Radios recently. He said they've sold two so far this year. There was no HD-Radio on display but the store hopes to have four in stock next month.

So is this a good or a bad barometer as the success of the HD-R rollout?

db

Where is the store located? Are there many HD stations broadcasting or on a few? The question is how many HD radios has Radio Shack sold not one store.

 

[calstymes]

radiopilot suggested:

The average Joe out there could care less about your demos... They'll go into Radio Shack, Circuit City, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, etc. and see and listen to the HD radio.... if they're not happy with what they hear, they won't buy... unless of course you're there with that handy demo to offer them to make up their mind!

I believe he may be working out a program distribution deal for that demo through his employer. If I heard that demo in a store, I would say that it was very nice and continue walking. As far as I'm concerned, AM IBOC is yet another (poor) engineering solution in search of a problem as a way to make lots of money for some speculative investors. I am not buying in. And neither is much of the great unwashed public.

jim8230 proclaimed:

.......Uh oh!.....its been quite some time now.....

where is he?.......over four posts and no nasty comments towards people that disagree with his take on HD....

Should be any second now.......Where is Burns?

No doubt he was very busy working at his job in the #1 broadcasting market. Some people DO work for a living you know! He has an important job and that takes precedence over posting here!

A fool who keeps posting URLs to meaningless links actually said something that wasn't foolish (so I am breaking my own rule):

If almost complete consumer apathy towards HD Radio doesn't change, HD/IBOC will eventually go away.

Well, we can keep hoping, right? I beseech you all to keep fighting the good fight against the disinformation campaign of the HD Cartel.

To which R.F. Burns replied:

I wish we could say the same for you!

Amen to that! But he will never go away unless people stop acknowledging his posts (like I just did above).

 

[Mike Walker]

AM HD may be a poor engineering solution, but let's not say it's "in search of a problem". Uh, in case you haven't noticed, AM reception can be kind of noisy, crackly, distorted (5-10percent distortion is TYPICAL at 125 percent modulation on many transmitters), is heavily affected by atmospheric conditions, subject to interference from flourescent lights/dimmers, computers, etc. And if you open up bandwidth to allow decent frequency response, interference and "splatter" from adjacent channels becomes a REAL problem.

Those are just a few of AM's ills. I LOVE AM Radio. But let's not say "in search of a problem". PROBLEMS ain't exactly hard to spot where AM (or FM for that matter) is concerned!

 

[PocketRadio]

AM HD may be a poor engineering solution, but let's not say it's "in search of a problem".

"Is HD Radio Worth It?"

"I've been a radio geek for at least 30 years. Consensus among my radio geek friends is that HD Radio is a solution in search of a problem. I've taken the leap to satellite and wouldn't go back, but if you're happy with FM the way it is, you really won't gain anything by moving to HD at this point. There's considerable doubt as to whether HD will even survive, particularly in the face of the competition from satellite. The FM owners seem to think that what people want is a technically "better" system, but what the satellite network owners seem to realize is that programming is what drives people to a given system. Given that, I don't think I would bet on HD Radio at this point. Better to wait and let it shake out."

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/007853.html