Sixty years ago, the FCC required at TV new sets be capable of receiving UHF and VHF. Should HD be required on all broadcast radio receivers? HD is not really catching on. Manufacturers mostly don't do much to support HD and retailers don't seem to be doing much to sell it. Of course, broadcasters could be doing more to generate interest in HD (just as there was little interest in FM until the FCC restricted AM and FM simulcasting and broadcasters started offering new formats that generated public interest in FM).
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Should HD capability be required on all AM/FM receivers
- Thread starter Jean Luc
- Start date
Why? TVs were never required to be color. FM radios (or AM for that matter) were never required to be stereo. RDS was never required.
My previous car had HD Radio. My new one doesn't. Aside from curiosity as a radio nerd, I don't miss it. The few HD2/HD3 channels I might have been interested in listening to were useless because they kept cutting out. And any possible improvement in audio quality on the main HD1 audio was outweighed by the constant dropouts to analog mode.
My previous car had HD Radio. My new one doesn't. Aside from curiosity as a radio nerd, I don't miss it. The few HD2/HD3 channels I might have been interested in listening to were useless because they kept cutting out. And any possible improvement in audio quality on the main HD1 audio was outweighed by the constant dropouts to analog mode.
That's not true.
It was legislation in Congress (The All Channel Receiver Act), the FCC only implemented the law.
Thanks for explaining
On any requirement that HD be made mandatory, I think the opportunity for that ship had already sailed. Unfortunately, the way that HD was marketed when it first came out was that it was an "audiophile" feature and as a result, the auto makers saw it as an opportunity to offer HD as a "luxury upgrade" and nothing more. It wasn't until later when the "stations between the stations" campaigns started to come out where HD was being promoted for the reason it should have been heavily marketed on in the first place, the ability to offer more choices to the listener. The other issue is the proprietary nature of the iBiquity/Xperi system, which made it an even more expensive upgrade (ongoing royalties) for commercial stations to implement and create new stations. At least for noncommercial stations, the licensing fees are more reasonable and are not sustaining over a lifetime and still allows for the creation of HD2/3/4 services.
The problem with "the stations between the stations" campaign was that it added a geekiness component to the audiophile component, neither of which helped convince the vast majority of radio listeners that they needed to buy an HD-capable radio.
Another problem is how some radios and receivers tune the HD-2, etc. channels. Sangean models require you to tune the main station first. Only after HD reception locks in can you tune to the station's HD-2, HD-3, and so on channels. You can set a preset for an HD-n channel, but you have to wait for HD reception to lock in and for enough of a buffer to be read before you hear anything. That can take several seconds.
My Audi will display HD channels in a scrollable list, similar to how it displays XM channels if you subscribe, but if you pick an HD channel for a station that you hadn't already tuned to, there's again that wait for locking in reception and building up a buffer.
In short, the consumer's experience in trying to receive the channels takes some getting used to at best, and for many, is just suboptimal.
I think the fact that many HD-n channels are used to feed analog FM translators speaks for itself.
My Audi will display HD channels in a scrollable list, similar to how it displays XM channels if you subscribe, but if you pick an HD channel for a station that you hadn't already tuned to, there's again that wait for locking in reception and building up a buffer.
In short, the consumer's experience in trying to receive the channels takes some getting used to at best, and for many, is just suboptimal.
I think the fact that many HD-n channels are used to feed analog FM translators speaks for itself.
No. As long as the HD Radio system requires patent royalties for receiver manufacturers, it should not be required.
I have more than one HD Radio tuner, including one in my car. I basically never use them. There were at one time some interesting programs on HD subchannels locally, but the budget axe has mostly swung on those, and analog translators have popped up for a couple others.
I think the only unique programming on HD in my market today is the Spanish CCM network Vida Unida. I don't speak Spanish, so it's no loss.
I have more than one HD Radio tuner, including one in my car. I basically never use them. There were at one time some interesting programs on HD subchannels locally, but the budget axe has mostly swung on those, and analog translators have popped up for a couple others.
I think the only unique programming on HD in my market today is the Spanish CCM network Vida Unida. I don't speak Spanish, so it's no loss.
The precedent for requiring HD capability in all radio receivers would be the mandate during the digital TV transition that new TVs after a certain date needed to include digital tuners if they also have analog tuners. Superficially, that seems similar to requiring HD capability for radios, but even that comparison doesn't really hold up.
The difference is that the government justification for the TV digital tuner mandate was that broadcast stations were going to have to give up their analog transmissions by a certain date (now more than 15 years ago), but since HD radio is just sidebands of the analog radio broadcasts, there is no similar mandate for radio.
Aside from that, I think that the FCC stretched the 1963 All Channel Act that mandated UHF tuners and used it to cover the digital tuner mandate. Since the 1963 legislation applied to televisions, the FCC couldn't apply it to HD Radio even if they wanted to.
The difference is that the government justification for the TV digital tuner mandate was that broadcast stations were going to have to give up their analog transmissions by a certain date (now more than 15 years ago), but since HD radio is just sidebands of the analog radio broadcasts, there is no similar mandate for radio.
Aside from that, I think that the FCC stretched the 1963 All Channel Act that mandated UHF tuners and used it to cover the digital tuner mandate. Since the 1963 legislation applied to televisions, the FCC couldn't apply it to HD Radio even if they wanted to.
I was the Hispanic Broadcasting representative on the HD radio committee. The committees job was to try to enhance the introduction of HD by making sure that every market of significance had a broad range of unique and different additional formats on the HD channels.
I Hable discussions with our legal counsel at the time because I thought that collaborating on formats between competitive broadcasters might constitute collusion. For that reason, and a lack of general belief in the potential of HD, we discussed dropping out of the HD Alliance. Further, I believed that the group did not understand the dynamic and the needs of Hispanic listeners; I believe that HD should offer English language formats specifically targeting later generation Hispanics in the United States.
In any case, I do not recall any initial effort to promote HD as an “upscale“ medium. From the very beginning, it was supposed to be a mass market expansion of FM radio.
I always thought that the “stations between the stations“ campaign was confusing and purposeless. I expressed this in a number of conference calls with the HD committee and generally got negative feedback for making my statements.
The campaign was never intended to focus on audiophiles. I was on the industry committee of HD early ad adopters, and was on all the initial conference calls and meetings. I do not recall a single one that focused on promoting HD as an upscale or audio file extension of radio stations.
Bingo! There was considerable thought that nothing that required stations to spend extra money should be obligatory. Of course, an exception has been made for the various emergency broadcasting systems, but that has never been part of the profit motives that radio station owners have.
Any possible improvement in audio quality on the main HD1 is also outweighed by the HD2s and HD3s robbing away so many bits that the analog defaults to sounding superior.
32-48 kbit/s sounds better than analog only when that analog is noisy. But in a mobile environment, any signal that's averaging weak enough to yield continuous noise will also picket fence in and out of the digital's signal lock range, per your experience. That frequent muting then thwarts those low bitrates' sole opportunity to outshine analog audio.
And often, that's only on FCC paper. Many engineers run direct, point-to-point links from their studios to their translators figuring there's no reason to degrade perfectly good analog signals with the sound of IBOC's psychoacoustic coding artifacts. Which I have always considered ironic. It shows how insiders privately feel about the sound of low bitrate IBOC concurrent with their subjecting their audiences to that very same sound, on their main signals, by running multiple HD channels on each of them.
(And I've always felt that the bitrate for just one HD channel per FM signal is still too low to satisfy non-casual listeners versus good, clean analog FM reception... but that's an aside to everything above.)
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Why do you think Univision and Telemundo have never exploited secondary audio (either BTSC's SAP or ATSC's multiple audio channels capability) to provide english overdubs of spanish language programming for that audience -- or even non-hispanics who would be curious enough to watch despite the broken lip sync? KSCI 18-2 runs several Korean shows with hardcoded english subtitles, and before 18-1 became 24/7 infomercials, it used to have overdubbed Japanese programs as well. And of course, countless english shows have always been "transmitido en español en SAP." I would think that could work in the opposite direction...
I used to use my HD tuner in my car, but I'm too far west to get any HD stations from NYC without them cutting in and out. I can get the analog HD-1 without issues.
Why not? I do not agree that corporate interests should over ride public interests, workers' interests or any other interests. Welcome to Gilded Age 2.0.
At this stage, I do not feel that U.S. consumers want HD radio, or are remotely interested in HD radio. What started off as an interesting idea seems to be a complete flop. So the short answer would be no. I do not think it should be required. Rather, I’d like to see (specifically) car manufactures make car radios that work well, are simple to use, and get decent reception. Infotainment in new vehicles can be confusing. Adding a layer of HD complexity (especially if the interface isn’t designed well) is not a good idea.
I’ve never personally owned a vehicle with an HD radio. However, my partner’s Mazda has HD radio (which I’ve been able to play around with a bit). These are the observations I had with it:
1. The switch to HD from analog seemed to happen far too frequently, and it was a bit annoying. Given the choice, I’d rather just listen to analog. To be completely fair to HD, I don’t live in the best area for listening to HD (and I’d have to try it in a different market to say for sure that I dislike it), but I wasn’t wowed by my experience.
2. The on-screen information was a nice touch, but RDS can already do most of this.
3. It seems like there are some cool programs on the HD-2 and HD-3, stations. I could see this potentially being an avenue for broadcasting content that is more niche. Unfortunately, reception issues make it difficult to actually listen to these stations reliably though. There’s a reason why broadcasters are using translators to air what’s on their HD-2 signal most of the time.
I’ve never personally owned a vehicle with an HD radio. However, my partner’s Mazda has HD radio (which I’ve been able to play around with a bit). These are the observations I had with it:
1. The switch to HD from analog seemed to happen far too frequently, and it was a bit annoying. Given the choice, I’d rather just listen to analog. To be completely fair to HD, I don’t live in the best area for listening to HD (and I’d have to try it in a different market to say for sure that I dislike it), but I wasn’t wowed by my experience.
2. The on-screen information was a nice touch, but RDS can already do most of this.
3. It seems like there are some cool programs on the HD-2 and HD-3, stations. I could see this potentially being an avenue for broadcasting content that is more niche. Unfortunately, reception issues make it difficult to actually listen to these stations reliably though. There’s a reason why broadcasters are using translators to air what’s on their HD-2 signal most of the time.
What is the HD fee per reciverer?
IMHO : The only way you could mandate HD, is free to every manufacturer or else cars in the future will have a "Data Download Screen" for streams or podcasts instead of a radio.
IMHO : The only way you could mandate HD, is free to every manufacturer or else cars in the future will have a "Data Download Screen" for streams or podcasts instead of a radio.
HD radio should have never been proprietary. The FCC could have said that they would never allow HD as long as it is proprietary. Or at least allow it to only be proprietary for 10 years, then it must be open. HD should have been implemented in 2000, around the same time as digital TV. Then require every radio to be an HD radio after 2006 and drop analog AM in 2009 and analog FM in 2013.