The decade's 30 biggest tech flops - HD Radio

[kfbkfb]

http://reviews.cnet.com/2300-33_7-10001201-16.html?s=0&o=10001201

HD Radio (2003-?)

Kirk Bayne
http://avdtv.tripod.com/avdtv.htm

 

[mmnassour]

Satellite radio is also in there! ;D

 

[pocket-radio]

Around the 1920's or so.. mechanical tv was introduced to the market. It had a big metal disc with pin holes. The disk was mounted in the back of the set and turned. Thankfully, analog TV came around that was much better!

So, we have HD.. It's like mechanical TV in that's interesting and some broadcasters are experimenting with the system. Just like early mechanical TV broadcasters did. HD radio will be replaced with a better system. History repeats itself. The FCC is pushing for the best wireless internet system money and power can buy. The FCC has it's eyes on the white space once used by analog tv.

And Pandora will replace satellite radio. Pandora is pushing automakers to be standard equipment in every car. Pandora is free and out of the box..

 

[kenglish]

The biggest problem with HD Radio is, it's FREE.

So, with no fees and commissions for the retailers, there's no incentive to try and sell it (just like Digital OTA TV). Hence, the piles of boxes of HD Radios sitting on the bottom shelves, with no price tags, no display models, and no interest.

 

[Savage]

Actually - IMO - it's not HD's FREE-ness that's its biggest problem. The co-biggest problem is: nobody wants it but broadcast groups who have "developed" it, a self-interested aggregation thereof (The HD Alliance) and the company (largely owned by the "development" radio station companies) holding the proprietary rights to it, who wants to market it on a monopolistic licensing revenue-grab model.

Try convincing yourself that you've come up with the greatest rutabaga-and-Brussels sprouts-and-tripe sub sandwich in the world. Build a big deluxe stand at the football stadium and hype Hurl-A-Sub to the high heavens at the next home game. Let me know how many you sell. (No demand = no sales.)

The OTHER co-biggest problem with HD: it mostly works like crap, except in ideal near-lab quality reception conditions. (As long as there isn't any interference.) It's The Digital Radio System For Rural Nebraska.

I will now pause to allow both IBOC boosters who frequent this board (all the while loudly protesting they're not pro-IBOC) to jump in and point out how -14 dBc or -10 dBc will fix everything. (Does everybody recall how iBiquity/The Alliance promised everyone as recently as two years ago that 1% of analog power for digital would work just fine? And how they insisted - until NPR demonstrated it wasn't true - that digital power absolutely equalled analog?? What was that, 18 months ago?)

 

[kenglish]

I really have to agree with you on the part about the HD Alliance.
I wonder how things would have gone without the licensing fees, etc. And, I personally think there were some things left out....it seems kind of limited in it's abilities.

I wonder what would happen if we REALLY re-invented broadcast radio. Maybe put all the transmission under one or two "transmission enablers" in each market. Make a couple of huge data channels that carry everything. Leave room to innovate, with Program Guides, surround sound, extra-high quality broadcasts for some formats. Make it possible to really utilize the spectrum that's available.
And, make it an open system, where anyone can play around with it and try new innovative ways.

 

[Tom Wells]

I really have to agree with you on the part about the HD Alliance.
I wonder how things would have gone without the licensing fees, etc. And, I personally think there were some things left out....it seems kind of limited in it's abilities.

I wonder what would happen if we REALLY re-invented broadcast radio. Maybe put all the transmission under one or two "transmission enablers" in each market. Make a couple of huge data channels that carry everything. Leave room to innovate, with Program Guides, surround sound, extra-high quality broadcasts for some formats. Make it possible to really utilize the spectrum that's available.
And, make it an open system, where anyone can play around with it and try new innovative ways.

To me, its greatest limitation is that it does not reproduce or improve upon the wide area coverage of MW analog at night.
I enjoy my daytime choices in local radio, and I REALLY enjoy having a completely different set of choices at night, with
faraway choices from over half the nation, and Canada, too. If IBOC could do that, I might be its biggest booster.
Instead, it ruins what I feel is radio's strongest advantage. I already know how Mr. Eduardo feels about this, but I'm speaking here as a
listener who doesn't CARE what the business "viewpoint" is. I want my WSM back, without the hash, please.

 

[kenglish]

I was thinking more about FM HD.

AM HD is always going to kill the adjacents. I wonder what the DRM system, with no analog component, would do...if it had it's own channels, though.
Maybe Canada would allow someone to experiment, using some of those freed-up AM channels they have up there.

Trouble is, most US broadcasters would be hard-pressed to justify buying more spectrum, so it's probably IBOC (of some kind), or nothing.

 

[rbrucecarter5]

AM HD is always going to kill the adjacents.

Trouble is, most US broadcasters would be hard-pressed to justify buying more spectrum, so it's probably IBOC (of some kind), or nothing.

FM HD kills first adjacents as well. Not as big an issue here as it is in the East.

I vote for NO digital on radio! The loss of adjacents and increase in the noise floor of both bands is too high a price to pay. HD TV had neither problem.

 

[SUPERCASTER]

Actually - IMO - it's not HD's FREE-ness that's its biggest problem. The co-biggest problem is: nobody wants it but broadcast groups who have "developed" it, a self-interested aggregation thereof (The HD Alliance) and the company (largely owned by the "development" radio station companies) holding the proprietary rights to it, who wants to market it on a monopolistic licensing revenue-grab model.

Try convincing yourself that you've come up with the greatest rutabaga-and-Brussels sprouts-and-tripe sub sandwich in the world. Build a big deluxe stand at the football stadium and hype Hurl-A-Sub to the high heavens at the next home game. Let me know how many you sell. (No demand = no sales.)

The OTHER co-biggest problem with HD: it mostly works like crap, except in ideal near-lab quality reception conditions. (As long as there isn't any interference.) It's The Digital Radio System For Rural Nebraska.

I will now pause to allow both IBOC boosters who frequent this board (all the while loudly protesting they're not pro-IBOC) to jump in and point out how -14 dBc or -10 dBc will fix everything. (Does everybody recall how iBiquity/The Alliance promised everyone as recently as two years ago that 1% of analog power for digital would work just fine? And how they insisted - until NPR demonstrated it wasn't true - that digital power absolutely equalled analog?? What was that, 18 months ago?)

HD radio is all hype and no benefit to most listeners. It makes a simple, cheap, reliable service with good coverage, that everyone already has, everyone understands, can use, most are satisfied (analog radio listening) and creates unnecessary complexity, expense, noise, interference, dropouts, delay, rebuffering, antenna fiddling, and frustration. Any slight quality improvement is overshadowed by HD radio's poor programming, short range, poor reliability, increased interference, encoding artifacts, noisy listening environments and small low fi speakers.

 

[kenglish]

I'm still trying to figure out what you guys are talking about when you say "adjacents".
Here in the big city, there's somebody already broadcasting on every channel ;D .

(Man! I miss the 70's days of sitting in Southern Maryland with a Radio Shack 10-element FM yagi and a rotor. In those days, I could get a DIFFERENT station on every spot on the dial, and sometimes get a different one just by re-aiming.)

 

[ddsparxx]

(Man! I miss the 70's days of sitting in Southern Maryland with a Radio Shack 10-element FM yagi and a rotor. In those days, I could get a DIFFERENT station on every spot on the dial, and sometimes get a different one just by re-aiming.)

I did something like in the mid 2000s in Fauquier Co., VA with a yagi on top and with a modified FM tuner, the stations and translators were heard on nearly every frequency at any time.