NAB Radio Show: Smear And Loathing In Las Vegas?

[DToTheJ]

HD Radio is set to make a "big splash in Vegas" at next week's NAB Radio Show, where cars "strategically placed" in the area will be "showcasing" the decade-old technology. Will the public accept it this time?
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2433880&spid=24698

 

[rbrucecarter5]

HD Radio is set to make a "big splash in Vegas" at next week's NAB Radio Show, where cars "strategically placed" in the area will be "showcasing" the decade-old technology. Will the public accept it this time?
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2433880&spid=24698

Nope - it doesn't work very well and nothing will fix it.

 

[KB1OKL]

HD Radio is set to make a "big splash in Vegas" at next week's NAB Radio Show, where cars "strategically placed" in the area will be "showcasing" the decade-old technology. Will the public accept it this time?
http://www.radioink.com/Article.asp?id=2433880&spid=24698

My question is: will there be auxiliary transmitters placed within a mile of the place to ensure that there are no drop outs if cars stay stationary?

 

[spunker88]

I wonder how long iBiquity will try to sell this inferior technology. They are also trying to get HD Radios into all smart phones with the only positive side being that it would get analog radios into more phones, but probably drive up the cost since there would be licensing fees. Analog FM can already be added pretty cheaply to phones since it can integrated with wifi, GPS and bluetooth all on the same chip (TI WiLink).

 

[tomservo]

My question is: will there be auxiliary transmitters placed within a mile of the place to ensure that there are no drop outs if cars stay stationary?

It may not be necessary. I had pretty good HD reception in a ground floor hotel room last time I was in town, and it was right off the strip with all that electrical noise. In fact, the HD stations were the only ones that came in clearly, the rest had terrible noise in stereo and poor RDS reception.

Something tells me with the electronics conventions that Vegas hosts, there was probably a big push to get the power levels up in that market ASAP after the increase was granted.

 

[Darth_vader]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

 

[tomservo]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

FM. I don't have a HD radio for AM. The strip is definitely a bad place for FM, period. I don't know enough about Vegas' FM landscape to know where each station transmits from, but I recall most signals had some sort of noise/interference type problem up and down the strip and especially inside the casino hotels I've stayed at. HD, at least in hotel rooms, was much better but I always had rooms facing west (towards Clark Mountain) so that may have had something to do with it. The exception was a ground floor room at a seedy joint a block off the strip, but HD worked great there too.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

Oh - and given the level of toxic air pollution from smokers, the strip is unsuitable for human habitation, especially late at night. That smoke would probably render delicate electronics in hotels rooms inoperable within months - if not weeks. The TV in my room failed while I stayed there. Caked with smoke residue inside. It was a non-smoking room. I can only imagine the attrition rate of electronics in smoking rooms. NEVER AGAIN. I won't go anywhere near the strip unless I am wearing a hazmat suit. The toxins and carcinogens are that bad.

 

[Darth_vader]

Remember, one of the fundamental features of the Ibiquity System's physical layer is its redundant carriers. Where, if the information on one sideband is corrupted badly enough (e.g. by electrical noise, like on the Strip) it can automatically switch to the other sideband and use it. Simple form of error correction. I think it can also use a combination of both sidebands if either is too weak or corrupted to use seperately, but I'm not entirely certain of that.

"That smoke would probably render delicate electronics in hotels rooms inoperable within months, if not weeks. The TV in my room failled while I stayed there--packed with smoke residue inside. It was a non-smoking room. I can only imagine the attrition rate of electronics in smoking rooms. I won't go anywhere near the strip unless I am wearing a hazmat suit."

This is why I don't stay at the hotel connected to the Wildhorse Casino when I'm in Pendleton, instead opting to stay at the Red Lion in town (nicer place, anyways.) When I was in Vegas, I stayed at a Hilton in town (not near the Strip) but was called to a "party" at the hotel room of a friend who "just happened to be in town", on the Strip. Non-smoking room. I swear, the HVAC in that hotel was directly connected to the casino directly below! Ugh.

It permeates everything.

 

[KB1OKL]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

I was never able to receive any FM IBOC unless the station was coming in crystal clear in analog first.

 

[DarkStarPDX]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

I was never able to receive any FM IBOC unless the station was coming in crystal clear in analog first.

I've had pretty good FM HD radio reception, even during situations where the analog signal was almost unlistenable due to multipath.

 

[spunker88]

The only HD Radio I own is my XDR-F1HD. It usually needs at least 2/3 bars to get the HD call letters and 3/3 bars to get a steady lock. On the analog side it works wonders at bringing it weak signals and will get a stereo signal (no indicator but you can tell) with 1/3 bars. The only time the HD signal would do better than the analog one is if there was some sort of co-channel noise since it would only affect the analog signal.

In theory a digital system would have its advantages due to the cliff effect where it can tolerate more noise without a degradation in performance, and you see that with DTV. Of course once you get past the cliff point digital is at a disadvantage. HD Radio is such a poor implementation of digital broadcasting though its hard to compare.

 

[tomservo]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

I was never able to receive any FM IBOC unless the station was coming in crystal clear in analog first.

What part of Vegas were you in, and what radio did you use?

 

[KB1OKL]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

I was never able to receive any FM IBOC unless the station was coming in crystal clear in analog first.

What part of Vegas were you in, and what radio did you use?

This was at home here in central Ma. I have a Sony XDR-F1HD and lived in a very noisy environment and found that reception was consistently worse, When an analog station wouldn't come in well I couldn't get a lock on the station. The only station that was fairly consistent was an NPR station from Boston at about 40 miles from the transmitter. It's a 100 KW station and it did sound good but then again it also sounded good in analog, I then noticed that if a station had poor analog reception HD was even more difficult to receive.
I have moved and have an old Rat Shack FM Yagi on the roof and can get the Boston area FM's in HD but I'm not an FM DXer and have no interest in maximizing HD reception other than using the antenna which was here already. I threw a 75 ohm line on it for my Bose Wave radio which is not the most sensitive radio in the world and decided to check out HD with it. The Sony is back on a shelf in my closet and the Bose is hooked back up. Now if I as a DXer have no interest in it and do not want to tweak it for better reception how is a consumer who just wants something to work right out of the box going to react?

 

[tomservo]

Mediumwave or VHF FM, Zach?

Actually, a system like Ibiquity would probably be well-suited for an environment such as the Strip, given all the electrical noise. Went there once myself, about a decade ago. From experience, it's probably one of the absolute worst, godd-forsaken places on Earth to be in if you want to do any kind of serious analogue FM DXing!

Egad - how on earth would HD work if there is so much interference on the FM band? The HD system is weak enough as it is, I would think interference would destroy it.

I was never able to receive any FM IBOC unless the station was coming in crystal clear in analog first.

What part of Vegas were you in, and what radio did you use?

This was at home here in central Ma. I have a Sony XDR-F1HD and lived in a very noisy environment and found that reception was consistently worse, When an analog station wouldn't come in well I couldn't get a lock on the station. The only station that was fairly consistent was an NPR station from Boston at about 40 miles from the transmitter. It's a 100 KW station and it did sound good but then again it also sounded good in analog, I then noticed that if a station had poor analog reception HD was even more difficult to receive.
I have moved and have an old Rat Shack FM Yagi on the roof and can get the Boston area FM's in HD but I'm not an FM DXer and have no interest in maximizing HD reception other than using the antenna which was here already. I threw a 75 ohm line on it for my Bose Wave radio which is not the most sensitive radio in the world and decided to check out HD with it. The Sony is back on a shelf in my closet and the Bose is hooked back up. Now if I as a DXer have no interest in it and do not want to tweak it for better reception how is a consumer who just wants something to work right out of the box going to react?

Ah. Central Mass =/= Vegas. Your market has different challenges to reception than Las Vegas. With the band being as crowded as it is up there I'm surprised HD works at all, anywhere.

 

[DToTheJ]

Some of the folks in this thread seriously need to go to the RaccoonRadio School of Message Board Replying... :

 

[CaptainShowbiz]

I gave up on HD years ago, and I'm a motivated radio person. It may have slowly caught on with the public if it had worked well, without one having to string up ham-like antenna wires to receive it, but it does not. Then there's Ibiquity--please. Are we still paying royalties to the inventors of amplitude modulation and frequency modulation? The amazing thing is how radio clings to this failed idea. No better than Quad or am stereo.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Actually, AM stereo worked - so that WAS better.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

Now if I as a DXer have no interest in it and do not want to tweak it for better reception how is a consumer who just wants something to work right out of the box going to react?

We aren't trying to make you into a DX'er. But in general - signal strengths can vary so much - over 6 orders of magnitude when a plane flies over - that it is wise to throw everything you have at something as finicky as HD.

As for just wanting something to work out of the box - a Bose radio is a piece of trendy junk, as far as the RF section is concerned. That said - a decent antenna will make even a junky radio work better, so concentrate on the best antenna you can set up - then you can pretty much forget about it once it is put up. If you still have that radio shack yagi - it is an excellent choice. Attic may not work in this era of radiant barriers, try to get it outside. Hook it up to your Bose, it will probably work. The Bose is a little better than your average $100 boom box, but not much. If you aren't getting the reception you want, you'll have to get a better radio. There is a lot of guidance on fmtunerinfo.com.

Its not about DX'ing as a hobby. It is about hearing the station you want. I could give a rodent's posterior about DX for bragging rights or QSL's - I've almost never been in a location where they have the format I am interested in. It is DX or do without for me. Its about the music.

 

[tomservo]

Since the only local music station I regularly listened to flipped to a talk simulcast (in HD, still) I am of the "do without" camp now. There's just so much more online than on the radio and no stations I know of really play music that I have in my personal collection anymore.

That said, I don't get this fluctuation issue re: airplanes and the like. If you're in the 60 or 70 dBu contour where most listening happens it shouldn't be an issue. I live in the flight path a of a VERY busy local municipal airport and have crop dusters wakin' my butt up at 7 am every other day, but I've never lost HD because of them. The only time I've lost HD from local stations has been due to tropo, which is frequent and strong here on the coast. But that's only happened a few times in a year and a half that I know of, and when it happened it took all the class A's and distant C's out as well.