Somebody finally told me they had a HD Radio!

[Chuck]

It'll be included in everything at some point.

Will it? I honestly don't know. I've thought about doing it just to interfere with a co-channel station that gives me HD interference. It might even be a handy to feed a translator a different format. I could do that, but are those really good reasons to adopt this technology?

 

[Chuck]

From what I understand, ROI was not even a part of the high pressure sales pitch. From the bits and pieces I've heard - the selling points were:

- Convert or you will be at a competitive disadvantage when all the other stations are HD.
- Convert now or we will raise the price.

Those are all return on investment hot buttons.

 

[nd2023]

HD came too late to be useful. It could have thrived if it came out in the early 90s when radio was the main source of music. Now with satellite radio providing hundreds of channels nationwide and smartphones providing thousands of stations worldwide, HD radio is too little too late. I can listen to a tiny independent Internet station, an HD2 station from 10 states away, or a local station anywhere with just my smartphone and existing car radio. Just wait until car radio manufacturers link the car radio presets to presets on TuneIn, ooTunes, iHeartRadio, Pandora etc. I can imagine that in a few years, car radios will automatically connect to a phone's data connection to stream Internet radio stations as soon as the phone comes in range. The technology is already there now (aux inputs, Bluetooth audio, 3G/4G data, iPod docks, radio apps), and it will just be integrated better so that the user will just be able to access their Internet radio presets as easily as their AM, FM, or satellite presets now. HD radio has no place. You can't even store HD2 stations as presets! Even satellite radio will lose its subscriber base once those new radios come out, since people won't want to pay for satellite radio when they have access to many more Internet stations. Local (analog) radio will also lose its listeners since all that's keeping listeners tuned in is the ease of access. Bandwidth gets cheaper and more plentiful every year, more people switch to smartphones every year, and the 3G/4G service gets faster and more widespread every year. We could have 320k AAC streams that won't drop out on a long road trip. HD radio is limited to 96k AAC and drops out well before the analog, and cannot be improved much. Individual smartphone bandwidth limits will increase with time as average usage increases (just look at how AT&T recently raised its limits from 2GB to 3GB because average usage increased.)

 

[Carmine5]

Well, it’s taken a while, but today, I actually had somebody tell me that they had a HD radio. It was my doctor, who was making chit-chat while poking and prodding. He knows I own a radio station.

He said he didn’t even know his car had one. The dealer never mentioned it. He discovered it accidentally when he tuned to the only HD station in the area and discovered their HD-2 channel. It seems he likes that one. (It’s a NPR station, and the HD-2 is classical.) He went on to say that it did not work very well, and was always dropping out, which he found to be very irritating.

To be fair, he is about 45-50 miles from the HD station, so the prognosis isn’t good. He said that mostly he listens to his ipod, so he really didn’t care. Of course, this means he is not listening to my analog FM station either, so I think everyone loses in this equation.

So, Chuck. Does this mean that you will be outfitting your transmitter plant with HD Radio? I'm sure your doctor would be pleased.

 

[Chuck]

Uhh, probably not. There is simply no return on the substantial (at least to me) investment. The only reasons to do it, at least from my point of view, is:

1. To interfere with a much larger HD station that I'm co-channeled with.

2. To feed a separate signal to a translator that is targeted to the city where it is located.

 

[tomservo]

There's at least one person in Louisville, Kentucky with an HD radio, as he mentioned it in a review of the iHeart Radio app for Android:

No HD radio???
Five Stars - david 1/31/12

I like this app but I am furious at clear channel radio for deleting Louisville KY hd radio stations..jerks!! I bought an HD RADIO BECAUSE OF THE ADS ON YOUR STATIONS AND AFTER I BUY ONE FOR MY WIFE,MOTHER AND MYSELF..THEY ARE WORTHLESS!!thanks again Clear Channel!

This is a comment for the streaming app, but he seems to be upset about losing HD stations in town. I guess they pulled them from online AND off air? I don't know enough about the HD radio stations in Louisville to tell if anything is missing online.

I do know that CC pulled the only HD sub I listen to in my area, a rebroadcast of their pea shooter AM talker. Since I'm streaming-averse (and it doesn't work in the boonies anyway, unlike HD) I just turned to Phil Hendrie on analog FM. He's more entertaining, anyway. So I don't know if I should thank Clear Channel sarcastically or honestly.

 

[nd2023]

Some people can get confused between an actual HD radio and a streaming radio app. I know someone who thinks he has HD radio because he can listen to a certain HD2 channel online with the TuneIn app. I had to show him my portable HD radio receiving that station over the air to convince him otherwise.

 

[KB1OKL]

I hooked up my Sony to my rooftop FM Yagi (seriously) last week after reading some of the stuff here, I can get most of the Boston HD-2's and 3's with the antenna. I have one question: Does anyone here realistically think HD is going to be a success? I heard the most boring bunch of sleep inducing programming on these ballyhooed secondary channels. The only way I could get the same range in my car if I wanted it would be to put a Yagi on my car... hardly practical and I ask, for what? HD is the most underwhelming gimmick I've ever experienced, I understand that a lot of you guys work for the industry and hope it's the second coming, but let's be real here. Some people here expect HD to take over the FM band and compare it to FM itself becoming popular, that's like comparing apples and oranges, it was the early content on FM that was different. I can remember early FM with the Boston Revolution WBCN on 104.1, it was very hard to get here in central MA on the stereos of the day just like HD now. We kept coming back though for the unique presentation on it despite how hard it was to pull that station in. Late 60's and early 70's FM was a whole new ballgame with a whole new audience, a cultural revolution adopted and made FM popular. What's new and unique about HD radio? The only advantage I can see is the lower noise floor but it's disadvantages highly outweigh it's advantage. Is commercial radio so desperate to be "modern and digital" that they'll cling to and continue to push this useless mode? Can't you guys see the writing on the wall, digital radio is bombing everywhere, no one wants it.

 

[tomservo]

No one wants it because it doesn't work well for most people and the programming is typical radio dreck.

I imagine if we had some sort of robust out of band digital setup that didn't drop out every other second, programmed with a real fresh perspective (i.e., not controlled by Clear Channel, Cumulus and their ilk) then it might be a different story.

It's sad but the only good HD subchannel in my market anymore is actually a radio reading service on a public radio station's HD-3. I took a road trip yesterday and listened to it for about 30 minutes and even though I was literally looking at the tower, it still kept dropping out. I don't expect perfection from this system but that was ridiculous. Add that to the other station who only operates an HD-1 but the sync has been 7 seconds off for years and CC's dropping of HD on their classic rocker that carried the flea power talk radio station, and there is literally nothing left here for me to listen to on the radio. :

 

[muiscmike]

For a brief period of time Z100 in Ft. Myers had cool jazz on their HD-, but they've changed call letters and have dropped HD. 96 K-Rock used to have a good mix of blues, southern rock, and outlaw country on their HD-2. They called the format Haney's Big House. Now the HD-2 simulcasts 770-AM ESPN Radio. The other HD substations only provide a slight variation of whatever format the HD-1 is offering. I had hopes for HD, but now I only use the Accurian HD radio in my bedroom for connecting my iPad, cd player, mp3 player to it.

 

[nd2023]

I only use my Sony XDRF1HD for DXing. Gee, wasn't that what the HD radio people wanted?