Merry Christmas to you too! I hope what I'm about to say doesn't alarm you too much.
HD Radio has always had a receiver issue. That's slowly disappearing. Almost 9% of the cars on the road in Houston now are equipped with HD Radios. As more and more HD radios hit the road, the more popular HD subchannels will become. I know for a fact that some of the AM to HD2/HD3 simulcasts in Houston have significant listenership. You wouldn't know it from the ratings because those stations utilize total line reporting from Nielsen, so the HD listenership is included in the audience estimates for the parent station - in this case the AMs. But God help the engineers at 93.7 if their 740 simulcast goes off, or the engineers for 100.3 if the 610 simulcast goes off. Complaint calls galore.
Do you even know what a 6 dB power increase is? It's a 4X increase in power. That's laughable?
You're also seemingly clueless about building penetration. Have you ever been deep in a commercial building, a large steel structure, and had the opportunity to turn HD on and off while actually listening to an analog radio? I have. Zero difference. What FM HD can do is deliver programming from sister AM stations inside that type of building where AM just doesn't work.
Wasting power? The current generation FM+HD transmitters are more efficient doing FM+HD at -14 dBc than the last generation solid state or tube boxes by far. A Nautel GV30-HD fed 208 WYE doing -14 dBc pulls around 105A at 23kW analog plus -14 dBc HD. The last generation solid state boxes pulled around 115A doing just analog. A Continental 816 tube transmitter pulls around 120A at that power level doing just analog.
Any relatively modern tuner does just fine with HD. HD has been around in force in the major markets since the mid 2000s. Has there been a significant drop in radio usership since 2005? No, there hasn't. Despite the proliferation of gee whiz alternatives, radio is still used by around 90% of the U.S. population. If radio had anywhere near the problems with HD that you claim, do you really think that would be the case? No, it wouldn't.
http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/reports/2014/state-of-the-media-audio-today-2014.html
I must say the tone of this posting is vastly improved. Thank you. And Happy New Year!
107.5 HD=2 was back the other day, by the way.
I really hope your glowing hopes for HD radio come true. Those hopes are tempered by some realities, though.
First off my hopes are completely selfish - that the formats I enjoy like Christian rock, eclectic, smooth jazz, dance, indie rock, the Point, and oldies stay on the air. It is an unpleasant reality that the moment HD-2 becomes commercially successful, the creative formats will all disappear, replaced by something mundane but popular.
Another unpleasant fact is that there is no analog fall-back plan for HD-2. It simply drops to silence until lock comes back. Several seconds of silence. If it is gone too long, the radio defaults back to the analog / HD-1 audio, which is, in most cases, not only different, but perhaps actually offensive.
As for the power increase, a power increase of 4 dB is a little more than double, not four times. But assuming I got the math wrong, I was talking about decades of signal fluctuation, that won't be helped by HD, given the lock times. Any of the streets under I-10 is a good example. HD drop, HD-2 silence. Every single time I have my wife, or any other individual in my car - they find the drop to silence annoying in the extreme and pretty much demand I change to something reliable. HD-2, 3 drop to silence is untenable. The system needed a backup plan. They didn't build it in. That unreliability will make the subchannels hard to monetize. Nobody wants to put up with the dropouts. NOBODY.
Just to get HD - I've bought the best HD radios on the market, the ones likely to hold a signal. KGLK, KHPT, KSBJ and several other require an outdoor antenna. Period. I live in West Houston, along Fry road. The Mo City signals decode HD without a problem, but something rim shot like KTHT? Fine in analog, it takes an antenna for HD. Outdoor FM antennas may have been fine in the audiophile era of the 60's and 70's, but with today's anal HOA's prohibiting antennas, and consumer apathy to hifi/ stereo setups - outdoor antennas won't happen. I didn't buy junk table radios - I have the Sangean HDT-1X and the little Sony wonder tuner - some of the best DX tuners made. They need outdoor antennas - period. That won't happen. So your building penetration HD-2's for saving AM - I don't see antennas popping up in subdivisions around here so people can listen to AM. No antennas at all. And I get my radio ten feet inside my building at work - forget AM and FM both. Not going to happen between the steel structure making a Faraday cage and bunch of computers and other equipment - anybody without a window office is hosed for radio reception. They stream or do without. HD-2 listening to AM? Don't make me laugh! Its not going to happen. I have a GE Superadio - and it doesn't work ten feet from the window. Up next to the window - its fine, even WBAP comes in like a local. Move it - lose everything including KTRH. FM - same thing. By the window, I get the extremely weak KSBJ translator. Move it ten feet away - every Missouri City stick is gone, and I'm along I-10 in Katy, pretty darn close. I expect my experience is typical. I'm a DX'er, I know how to do this stuff. The guy wanting sports from some AM on HD-2? No technical expertise at all - the first time they try it and it doesn't work, they are DONE with HD sideband reception forever.
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