C'mon, aaron, back down the rhetoric. You can engage in debate without getting nasty.
I assume you refer to Armstrong's suicide. If you read any objective biography of Armstrong you know he was not a textbook example of emotional balance or stability. It's hard to say for sure precisely why he jumped out of a window, let alone blame it on his fight with RCA over FM. People who knew him thought, with his reckless bosun's-chair antics on the Alpine tower, he had a death wish. Co-workers had been predicting and anticipating his death for decades.
Patent royalties are one thing. Licensing to the end user is a whole different league. Give me the callsign of one station who paid direct royalties to somebody for broadcasting in FM. Or FM stereo. Or NTSC color TV.
You made my point for me when you cited the VHS vs. Betamax war. The superior Beta system failed (at least in the consumer marketplace) because Sony wanted excessive licensing fees to manufacture using the system. VHS's developers were more reasonable to deal with. The Sony Betamax is a marketing lesson obviously lost on iBiquity.
As for your statements about - I assume you refer to Disney vs. Sony in the VCR litigation in the 9th Circuit of the 1970s - I miss your point in your comparison with HD Radio. (Is that an ironic note from history or what? Imagine Disney, of all companies, trying to kill home video.) And I don't know what you're talking about with recording music off the radio. Why would the NAB care whether people recorded music off-air? Or did you mean the RIAA?
Yes, I know nobody associated with the development of HD has commited suicide. But there's HOPE! (Lighten up, just kidding!)
