I thought that was the reason for things like filing windows and auctions. Aren't they doing that already?
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Should the US do like Brazil?
- Thread starter davideduardo
- Start date
I thought that was the reason for things like filing windows and auctions. Aren't they doing that already?
In the case of Brazil, the answer is yes. ISDB-Tb, which is the TV standard of choice in most of South and Central America (the biggest exceptions are Caribbean countries and Mexico that went with ATSC, Cuba to the Chinese DTMB standard, and Colombia and Panamá which are running DVB-T2), is usually deployed on UHF.
Most countries are leaving low VHF with their digital television transition, no matter which standard. Some, like Colombia, are leaving the VHF band altogether.
Nope. Channels 5 and 6 are still there, in the same spots they've been in since 1945. So are Channels 2-4, 7-13, and 14-51 (for now).
You're confusing RF channels and PSIP, the digital code that tells the receiver what channel the station wants to be called. For example, a station that was on analog Channel 5 can actually transmit on Channel 17 (KPHO-TV Phoenix, in this case), and viewers can still punch in 5 or 5.1 (depending on the TV) and still get the station. PSIP makes it convenient for the viewers to find a familiar station, but don't directly tell you whether the station is transmitting on VHF or UHF.
Not really. If I buy something, that means I own it. Broadcasters don't own any spectrum. It's not even a lease. It's a license to operate.
OK, I see. And that seems like the right way to go about it, in the case of broadcasting. If the spectrum was sold outright to the various broadcasting companies, wouldn't it be impossible to order a station off the air because of wrongdoing by the station itself or the owner(s) personally? I'm thinking about what happened to RKO General 30 years ago, or the guy in Terre Haute IN who was convicted of sex crimes against children in the late '90s.
If you commit a crime, you forfeit certain rights, including ownership of property.
But I think if profit making companies owned the AM band, for example, they might be more proactive about dealing with the audio quality issues than the FCC has been.
Thank you for the clarification.
What threw me off was the move of several of our local TV stations here in the Seattle-Tacoma metro from VHF to UHF transmission when the DTV transition took place. That led me to believe that migration to UHF (channels 14-83) was nationwide.
For what it's worth, channels 70-83 were discontinued many years ago and 52-69 went away in 2009.
Channel 70-83 been gone since the early 80's by the wasy of Mobile
Channel 52-69 gone to Intenet & others
Seems like the TV Spectrum is getting smaller & smaller
Channel 52-69 gone to Intenet & others
Seems like the TV Spectrum is getting smaller & smaller
The one part of the spectrum that hasn't gotten smaller, and no one is allowed to touch, is the portion assigned for government and military.
In my view, when comparing US to other countries, it would help to also compare the government and military use of the spectrum in Brazil and Japan. I bet it's different.
Not in Canada, we're still using 52 to 69
ATSC is for TV. HD Radio is the proprietary system on radio in the U.S./North America.
I would not be surprised that the FCC gets rid of the AM band because of HD Radio's multistream opportunities. They can easily say that the subchannels on FM represent an opportunity to either move co-owned stations from AM to a HD subchannel or lease an HD subchannel to a displaced AM station owner.
They could set a transition date to sunset AM and then set another date TBD for FM to go all-digital (HD Radio). So for a while (hybrid-)analog FM will be the only general public radio service, until it transitions to all-digital (HD) FM radio like ATSC for TV. The only analog broadcasting service FTA for the general public may be NOAA Weather Radio (and perhaps the longwave signal of WWV).
The Insignia Tabletop radio may be the most popular radio because of its availability and the first-mover advantage. Something has to be done about lagging retail sales, especially in the electronics sector. This may reinvigorate the economy at least in electronics retailing, like the DTV transition did for widescreen, flat-panel HDTVs.
All-UHF Digital TV is actually beneficial to the cord-cutting consumer since most can get away with the UHF-only Winegard FlatWave Micro antenna. As the shell-shocked consumer becomes as thrifty as his grandparents during the Great Depression, demand for terrestrial television is going up. Congress and the FCC will be pressured to expand UHF again and keep all TV stations in UHF.
If you can discourage people from using cellphones, particularly the UHF-band stealing smartphone, European-style all-UHF TV is possible. Not only smartphones steal UHF spectrum, but they are very expensive monthly expense to the consumer. Whereas terrestrial television is free-to-air. All this privatization is making Americans poorer and beholden to debt-inducing monthly payments to some corporate entity when the previous use of the same spectrum was free-to-air. No wonder the economy is in shambles!
Change that to "Western Hemisphere" as Brazil is starting to use HD now, and Chile and several other countries look at going with the system.
First, the FCC has no other use for the AM band so they will be just as happy to let it slowly deteriorate at a pace set by the marketplace.
Many AMs do not have FMs with HD signals. Many non-major metro FMs don't have HD at all; at least 2/3 of AMs are in markets where there is no HD station locally. Many AMs in smaller markets could not afford the loss of audience and the increase in cost of a rented HD.
A bigger issue: there are essentially no HD receivers in home and work style radios, and that's where 2/3 or radio listening takes place. And only in recent years have any new cars had HD. Since the average age of a car in the US is 11 years, it would take a decade to even get in half the cars in the us.
But the kicker is that more an more people, particularly Millennials, consider their smartphone to be their radio... HD's current power consumption makes it unsuitable for cellphones so there are no HD enabled models anywhere.
This latest announcement was their chance, and they punted. Back when the TV commitment was made, the FCC and Congress both said that they'd never mandate digital radio as they did with TV. They've stuck to that promise. They won't be making any major change to radio technology.
Flat-screen TVs were an obvious improvement over tubes, so to compare them to HD radios is wrong. Plus you don't have to pay $1000 for a flat-screen. And I believe Insignia no longer makes the HD tabletop.
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No it does not. FM rose in popularity when the FCC mandated in 1967 that AM/FM simulcasts of most fulltime AMs should end. That forced the creation of new formats and services which, in turn, moved listeners to FM.
First, the cost differential is nothing new. Why did people in the mid-50's spend $500 for a TV set when a radio was $20? The answer should be obvious in term of the perception of "return on investment".
But the bigger point is that nobody is buying discreet radios any more. Radio's have to be part of something more inclusive like a phone or a car. Nobody will spend $10 or $50 or whatever to buy a radio.
The HD chip is too power-hungry for portables. And nobody wants to fiddle with connecting an Insignia to the average table or clock or kitchen radio that has no audio inputs. That's not just improbable, it's totally unlikely.
There is no plan to incorporate HD in any cellular phone. There are two reasons. First, the HD chip is a power hog and would drain phones very rapidly. But the killer is the added cost for the iBiquity fee which pushes the cost of the phone up. Add in the fact that small devices do not receive HD channels any too well anyway and you have a non-starter.
The NextRadio app can't "add HD" unless the radio in the cellular phone is capable of receiving HD signals. It's just a software front end to the chip already in the device.
I agree on the power hungry HD chip. I had a project where I needed a small FM radio. I looked at a digital FM radio that was small and would have worked great except for the power consumption. I have looked for a good portable HD radio and it's a tough search. I maintain a few radio stations and find myself having to "tune in" the main channel audio, sometimes on AM, the FMhd2 or 3 simulcast and then the internet feed. If all 3 are down it's most likely a studio issue since all three have dead audio. If the AM does not have audio while the FMhd2 does and the webcast is streaming then I have a problem with program to the transmitter. I bought a inexpensive car radio with HD for under $100 to fill the HD reception needs, this supplements my Sangean HDT-1 so for the rare instance I can tune in an AM-HD and listen to the FMhd3 to check for audio continuity.
But it all gets down to that I could not find a good portable HD radio. Trying to find an FM radio with HD and internet streaming is also tough. The broadcaster has all the tools they need to adapt or broadcast HD. The radio manufactures don't seem to be keeping up due to the changing listening landscape. It doesn't help that there is a licensing fee on both the broadcaster and receiver manufacture and a power hungry HD chip. Maybe the new owners of Ibiquity could come up with a less power/money hungry chip. I know they launched "Sparc" and on Amazon they have a able top model for $149.95. The other model SHD-TX2 is portable and costs around $79.00 but it's currently unavailable on Amazon. The Sparc SHD-TR10 is available on Amazon for $59.95 but no AM on this model. So to get AM reception you need to spend over $70.00 in a radio that will get HD and AM. In the end the market place will put AM to rest. Why would the FCC want to spend administrative money to do what the market place will do for free
But it all gets down to that I could not find a good portable HD radio. Trying to find an FM radio with HD and internet streaming is also tough. The broadcaster has all the tools they need to adapt or broadcast HD. The radio manufactures don't seem to be keeping up due to the changing listening landscape. It doesn't help that there is a licensing fee on both the broadcaster and receiver manufacture and a power hungry HD chip. Maybe the new owners of Ibiquity could come up with a less power/money hungry chip. I know they launched "Sparc" and on Amazon they have a able top model for $149.95. The other model SHD-TX2 is portable and costs around $79.00 but it's currently unavailable on Amazon. The Sparc SHD-TR10 is available on Amazon for $59.95 but no AM on this model. So to get AM reception you need to spend over $70.00 in a radio that will get HD and AM. In the end the market place will put AM to rest. Why would the FCC want to spend administrative money to do what the market place will do for free
I've had FM (analog) on my Moto G2 for the past six months. Works great although I rarely use it.
I don't think this is going to be happening any time soon.
How many people are going to be buying new radios?
How many cars are going to be equipped with new radios that can receive these signals?
Even IF they did that, would there even be enough room within those 12 frequencies to accomodate all those "New FMs"?
How many people are going to be buying new radios?
How many cars are going to be equipped with new radios that can receive these signals?
Even IF they did that, would there even be enough room within those 12 frequencies to accomodate all those "New FMs"?
That's funny because I had no problem finding my Insignia NS-HRAD on Amazon (actually sold by TBFTHREE DEALS) for $40 shipped. It is a portable but I haven't tried operating it on batteries yet (and probably won't because I bought it to use in my computer room). It is an FM and FM-HD only, no AM.
Another big mover was that the new FM's had few, if any, commercials. The only new format I remember in SFO was AOR and that wasn't a very popular format outside Haight-Ashbury and Berkeley.
I just did. If I wanted HD in my house I had to buy an HD radio.
My Insignia is a portable. I'm not sure what the run time would be on batteries though because I haven't tried (and don't really need a portable anyway so battery life isn't a consideration). I did run the audio out to my stereo and it sounds great. The Insignia sounds OK on its speakers but really good on a good set of earbuds.
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