"Sony rolling out HD Radio products" USAToday

[dumber than a box of hair]

NO ONE HAS EVER NOT RENEWED THEIR ABILITY TO RECEIVE HD RADIO.

Try talking to retailers about their rate of returns. I have (suburbs of a major city, with plenty of HD signals readily available). In most stores (I asked the managers of about two dozen), it's pretty near 100%.

 

[radiopilot]

We in radio can program to whatever the situation is...

In Bumfield we can have...

Bumfield's Best country on 96.1

Bumfield's Hottest Hits on 96.1 HD-2

And Bumfield's Classic Rock on 96.1 HD-3...

Did I mention Bumfield's hot talk with "Put your morning show here" followed by Rush and Sean on the "Voice of the Valley-Plain-Shore-Desert-Golden Geometric Shape" is available on the graveyard channel in your town???

Clouseau

The problem with this is that in the town of Bumfield, no one bought the HD radios and could give a crap that HD is on the air, they are just as happy receiving the analog portion of the dial, in Bumfield the people have more pressing issues to contend with i.e.: high prices of gas, cost of food, college tuition, housing, utilities, etc. and the last thing they need to do is spend hard earned money for new tuners not in their budget...

So who in Bumfield is listening to HD radio = ZERO PERCENT except maybe for the radio geeks that live there and posts on these message boards.

Radiopilot

 

[clouseau]

The problem with this is that in the town of Bumfield, no one bought the HD radios and could give a crap that HD is on the air, they are just as happy receiving the analog portion of the dial, in Bumfield the people have more pressing issues to contend with i.e.: high prices of gas, cost of food, college tuition, housing, utilities, etc. and the last thing they need to do is spend hard earned money for new tuners not in their budget...

So who in Bumfield is listening to HD radio = ZERO PERCENT except maybe for the radio geeks that live there and posts on these message boards.

Radiopilot

I think what yu describe may well be the case for a good while. However as prices continue to go down, eventually you'll see HD like Stereo, IMHO. That is, it will just "Be there". Today you have to "Buy an HD radio". In the next few years I would suspect you will "Buy a radio... and it has HD". Ain't going to happen tomorrow, but very possibly someday.

Clouseau

 

[radiopilot]

The problem with this is that in the town of Bumfield, no one bought the HD radios and could give a crap that HD is on the air, they are just as happy receiving the analog portion of the dial, in Bumfield the people have more pressing issues to contend with i.e.: high prices of gas, cost of food, college tuition, housing, utilities, etc. and the last thing they need to do is spend hard earned money for new tuners not in their budget...

So who in Bumfield is listening to HD radio = ZERO PERCENT except maybe for the radio geeks that live there and posts on these message boards.

Radiopilot

I think what yu describe may well be the case for a good while. However as prices continue to go down, eventually you'll see HD like Stereo, IMHO. That is, it will just "Be there". Today you have to "Buy an HD radio". In the next few years I would suspect you will "Buy a radio... and it has HD". Ain't going to happen tomorrow, but very possibly someday.

Clouseau

You're probably right Clouseau, right now if I were to buy a component tuner it would have AM/FM/XM or Sirius built in with maybe an internet hook up for streaming web radio and perhaps a hookup for an Ipod type device, so you might be right BUT it will not be because I'm going into Circuit City to buy an HD radio... it'll be like 'Dolby' or 'Surround Sound' added to the component at very little value to me.

Radiopilot

 

[PocketRadio]

I think what yu describe may well be the case for a good while. However as prices continue to go down, eventually you'll see HD like Stereo, IMHO. That is, it will just "Be there". Today you have to "Buy an HD radio". In the next few years I would suspect you will "Buy a radio... and it has HD". Ain't going to happen tomorrow, but very possibly someday.

Clouseau

The price of the HD chipsets, plus the licensing fees to iBiquity, will always make HD Radio too expensive. Consumers do not go out and pay for stand-alone radios, but buy items with radios in them (e.g., alarm clock radios). Plus, poor HD reception, requiring AM-loop and mounting external FM-dipole antennas for table-top HD Radio, will never "fly" with standard AM/FM alarm clock radios. Consumers want plug-and-play, and not having to deal with this antenna nonsense. Good luck, displacing the existing 800,000,000 analog AM/FM devices/radios, and undermining the sale of 80,000,000 inexpensive analog devices/radios every year. HD Radio will be long-dead, before that ever happens. Guess what, instead of "having to buy HD radios", consumers will just "not buy" HD radios - consumers could care-less about terrestrial radio.

 

[wgliradio]

You have to wonder how many people will think they are hearing HD just because they have an HD radio... regardless if the signal is good enough.

I've seen people who think it's stereo just because there are two speakers

 

[PocketRadio]

That is a good point - the signal could have fallen back to analog. Just, like when people think they are hearing in HD, when they don't even have HD radios. I just don't see, how HD Radio could ever pull-off $15 plug-and-play alarm clocks - heck, our alarm clocks don't even have AM/FM and I didn't even consider it when buying them, because I just bought the cheapest one. The DAB alarm clocks start at about $60 - $80 and all have external antenna jacks - although DAB is at a higher frequency, they too have major problems with reception:

"DAB Reception"

http://www.smartradio.sg/reception.htm

If it weren't so sad, it would be laughable.

 

[Mike Walker]

Yeah the licensing fees, etc. will "always make HD too expensive". Why? Because Pocket said so. The same person who said we'd never see a sub 200 dollar radio (there are many), never see a sub 100 dollar radio (which is available NOW from Radiosophy), said no major retailer would sell HD, said there would never be 1000 HD stations, said the FCC would never approve the standard, said there would never be "as many radios as stations" (his own oft-quoted Bridge ratings shows nearly a half-million weekly HD listeners), said no major manufacturers would make HD radios (now they're made by the LARGEST companies...Sony, JVC, Kenwood, Yamaha, Sangean, etc.), said there would never be any factory radios, etc. Those are just his predictions I remember. And yet he continues to predict the future for us, with all the confidence and arrogance of Dick Cheney.

HD is a failure, in the same way the the "insurgency is in it's last throes".

 

[dbdigital]

HD is a failure, in the same way the the "insurgency is in it's last throes".

Wow, what a comparison; HD-R and the insurgency. And how appropriate.

db

 

[Tom Wells]

HD is a failure, in the same way the the "insurgency is in it's last throes".

Wow, what a comparison; HD-R and the insurgency. And how appropriate.

db

And both are misnamed. HD doesn't even mean anything, and "insurgency" is in the eye of the beholder.

But they are both disruptive.

 

[scanman1]

Oh well, if HD radio should fail, I have many fine analog tuners that I'd continue to listen to (the HD receivers do a fine job of receiving analog as well). 8)