The state of HD. The REAL story

[FLjack2]

Tom Taylor reported that All News 106.7 did some practice sessions of the 106.7 HD-2 channel over the weekend. Was that reported here?

Not that I know of.

Which proves my point. HD is worth ZERO!!!! If even the 'radio' people on this board did not know about it and report it, do you think any 'regular' person knew about it?

No one listens to HD because no one has access. Reality is; HD is worthless.

So when people on these boards go on and on and on about what stations should do with their HD channels, here is proof that it does not matter.

 

[wpb1999]

I reported that here. That's where he got the information.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

The problem with HD is it's a day late, dollar short.

Ibquity got it wrong. 8 years ago, they should have been GIVING away the chipset licenses to auto radio and consumer electronics manufacturers to get them into the hands of the public, and bribed the auto makers the way Sirius/XM did to put them in the dashboard of every new car sold in America. They didn't. Like Sony did with MiniDisc and Betmax, they had a great technology on hand but were too greedy and piggish to set it free at the right time. If they had played their cards right, HD radios would be as commonplace in cars as Sirius/XM is, and more people would have access. Stations would spend the money to stream the HD channels, most do not, citing cost of bandwidth and not enough listeners. A round robin effect if you ask me.

The idea was to come up with something to give terrestrial radio the bandwidth and level the playing field with satellite radio. But they, much like the industry in general, IGNORED the effect of the Internet. As cellular providers started building 3G and now 4G networks, and devices like the iPhone and Android showed up 3-4 years ago, people now can get any audio (and video) content anywhere they want, even rolling down the road at 60+ mph.

HD Radio doesn't interest most consumers, and most don't know about it. In this market, there aren't many choices on HD radio that you can't get elsewhere. The only thing HD subchannels get used for is to justify putting up translators like Journey 97.9 and such (nevermind the FCC rules TECHNICALLY prohibit what is taking place, but the FCC has turned a blind eye, something they are becoming good at doing in many areas lately).

In this market, up until a few days ago, there were TWO stations with unique programming very different from their main (analog and HD1) programs, that would be WSB-HD2 which plays a very soft AC format (like WDUV in Florida, a top billing soft AC station) and WYAY-HD2 which had Smooth Jazz. Everyone else has either their AM talkers, or "one off" formats of their main stations. All the promise of diverse, different and choice programming like you get on paid subscription satellite radio or Internet radio isn't there.

I went out and bought a relatively cheap JVC HD enabled aftermarket car stereo for my Hyundai last year. It was on sale for $79. It was money well spent. I like radio, when I travel, it's something for me to play with finding HD stations. I enjoyed the 106.7HD2 immensely, gave Verizon a break streaming, but it looks like it's gone at least for now. Only thing left on HD2 is WSB, which does have one thing going for it: it's commercial free at the moment. The radio also has line in jacks and a CD deck that plays MP3/WMA files. It actually has a very good sounding and performing receiver front end.

Sidenote, the quality sound of full bandwidth HD like WNNX 100.5 is very good, even the HD2 and HD3 channels of some sound WAY BETTER than the HORRIBLE 32kbit compression of satellite radio. I would NEVER pay 14.99 a month for audio that sounds like it comes out of a trash can.

I wish Ibiquity would have done it right, but like so much in corporate America, everyone wants to be king and not be creative. We see how that works out don't we...

 

[jabba17]

I am glad to know there are other folks who think satellite sounds like crap. No commercials and no reception issues (except in heavily forested areas and under structures), but I would happily take fewer channels that sound better.

 

[taylorengineer]

The programming folks can't even figure out enough formats for the analog side much less the additional channels created by IBOC.
Why is it no one will do a bluegrass HD channel? There would be quite a few people who would buy the radios if someone did the format.....and advertised the programming. Same for blues. Comedy? Cumulus found there was some demand for that when they put it up in St Louis.
Flashport is correct when he says Ibiquity screwed this pooch from the getgo. A textbook example of how NOT to introduce new technology.
We need new programming ideas and we need them quick!!!Has our society become so homogeneous that there is no demand or need for other programming? There are certainly niches to fill and those who find a way to do it just might make a profit.

 

[sounddguy]

In this market, up until a few days ago, there were TWO stations with unique programming very different from their main (analog and HD1) programs, that would be WSB-HD2 which plays a very soft AC format... and WYAY-HD2 which had Smooth Jazz.

There is actually a third very good use, WABE. D1 carries their main air signal. D2 is classical music all the time, no National Talk Radio and
D3 carries all the other "public radio" type shows that they can't squeeze in the main schedule.

It took WSB a long time to get D2 running reliably. Some days it was there then some days not. I've had to add an outside antenna
to get a solid signal in Lilburn / Stone Mountain. (But that also got me my HDTV signals from the locals.) Smooth Jazz on WYAY D2 was great.
Now I'm back to Watercolors on XM. Yes the quality is not as great, but it's consistent. I can also get my decades as the mood strikes me and
punch up traffic anytime I want it.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

Didn't realize that about WABE. I have been able to get WJSP in HD in certain places in Cobb.
106.7's HD2 was back alive over the weekend with great smooth jazz again, even the ID3 information displayed correctly. It actually sounded better, not sure if they've adjusted the bitrate since their HD1 is now voice only mono, but it sounded awesome. Then yesterday, HD2 is dead air, same today.

Is it just me or is the HD encoding hardware/software buggy? Is it running Windoze LOL? I notice 96.1's HD was down too. 97.1 the River appears to have changed their 97.1HD2 to sound more like Rock 100.5, lots of 70's and 80's harder hitting classics like Zepplin and such.

 

[taylorengineer]

96.1's HD signals might be down due to a combiner failure at their main site. 94.9 and 96.1 have, from time to time, been operating at the American Tower backup site where they may not have HD. The burn happened last week and it may be fixed by now - I have not heard.
I don't know of any station who has backup equipment for IBOC. And since the IBOC transmitters are basically computers which also create a RF signal they have all the same problems as your desktop computer. We had a hard drive failure a couple of years back and lost a power supply one Fourth of July. Since there is very little audience listening to IBOC most engineering staffs don't break their neck to get them back in service.

 

[MRFLASHPORT]

I figured as much, and with budgets being what they are, I can imagine that "truck rolls" are only for total fails of facilities. It's how it is in my industry (public safety communications). We're trying to find money to meet and FCC mandate to narrowband most of our VHF/UHF conventional systems. Of course, vendors (you know who) are pushing proprietary digital systems down our throats. Problem is they are telling broke people you need to buy a new Escalade when you can't even afford to keep 4 bald tires on your old Ford Fiestas.

FWIW, 106.7's HD2 is back up. Sounding great, so maybe there CE is reading (notice it came back within about 2 hours of my post). Great job, they've got a great signal on 106.7, and I'm surprised how well the HD coverage reaches. I'm quite a bit away from the transmitter. The only thing that knocks it out is a few spots on South Cobb Dr where Georgia Power has crappy lightning bugs that radiate nice spurs up and down the VHF spectrum up to about 250MHz. I've been complaining about this since my first radio shop gig in the summer of 1994 out of high school. We had the contract with the city, back in those days, we had two VHF 150MHz repeaters for FD and PD, and 3 remote RX sites. The one receiver nearest those noisemakers was always offline, the comparator just ignored whatever it heard on its input, or would blast noise bursts through now and then, waking up night shift dispatchers (and officers).

Ga Power could have cared less. They were glad when the city moved over to the Cobb county 800MHz trunking system in 1996, they stopped getting complaints.

I guess since no one watches OTA TV and there isn't much VHF other than 8 and 11, no one really notices noisy power line buzzsaws like they used to in the old analog days. But it drives my poor car radio nuts, and wipes most HD out, except the strong ones like WSB and WNNX.

 

[TheBigA]

Why is it no one will do a bluegrass HD channel?

There is, just not in Atlanta.

We need new programming ideas and we need them quick!!

This is one of those catch 22 things. New and different doesn't get recognized until it becomes mainstream. Then it's not new and different any more.

I agree with mrflashport. The only way for anything to become popular is for it to be free. I haven't paid for a computer program in years. If it's free, it's for me. Cheap cheap cheap. And we complain about all the greed. Which is the better virtue? Cheap or greed?

 

[musichead1029]

The Dinosaurs vs the Innovators

The only way for anything to become popular is for it to be free. I haven't paid for a computer program in years. If it's free, it's for me. Cheap cheap cheap.

Apple's iThingies aren't free, or even cheap, but they're widely popular. Quality and utility (and status symbol branding) is how they do it. True, the 'radio' industry is a niche market, but only until it evolves into a content deliverer.... to all those iThingies. The standalone FM receiver will be relegated to emergencies when the power and the cell/internet grids are down. Probably as a chip in a modern LED flashlight, and notably lacking power-draining "HD" features.

And we complain about all the greed. Which is the better virtue? Cheap or greed?

People who don't understand economics complain about 'greed'. Capitalism isn't 'greed'. Ibiquity brought a solution to the table in a niche market (the fading old school standalone terrestrial radio) and programmers signed up so they wouldn't have to go through AM Stereo again. Consumers and manufacturers saw no need to do so. Now the content providers are using the web to get the multiple channels of programming out to consumers' devices of choice. TunedIn and I-Heart are the delivery systems competing with Ibiquity, and Ibiquity is losing. But Ibiquity and its predecessors made the bets up front and put up the bucks which they are now trying to recover in licensing fees and by adding flashy video interfaces to car radios (brilliant).

Meanwhile the FCC, aka the government, puts up artificial roadblocks to multi-use bandwidth and tries to muck with the internet under the guise of 'neutrality'; now that's 'greed', power-hungry nanny political sloth style. And the pols don't have any guiding principle like profit to motivate them to act virtuously and productively. Hence a 90% disapproval rating for government greed and a 90% approval rating for free-market attractively designed high priced iThingies. And crickets for standalone HD receivers, whose time, if they ever had one, has most certainly passed.

 

[jabba17]

Methinks HD will continue to flounder unless there is 1) a digital cutover like they did with TV (probably won't happen unless somebody else wants that spectrum and they want to compact the band), 2) an "all-channels" rule like they did with UHF (that's a maybe), 3) an all-digital FM x-band using TV channels 5 and 6 (78-88MHz, IIRC), possibly with a mandate like they did with the AM x-band (too many other people want that spectrum) or 4) iBiquity gives away the tech as aggressively as Sirius/XM does to saturate the market with receivers (which could happen if iBiquity goes BK and the FCC or someone else buys the tech to give away).

 

[taylorengineer]

Re: The Dinosaurs vs the Innovators

The only way for anything to become popular is for it to be free. I haven't paid for a computer program in years. If it's free, it's for me. Cheap cheap cheap.

Apple's iThingies aren't free, or even cheap, but they're widely popular. Quality and utility (and status symbol branding) is how they do it. True, the 'radio' industry is a niche market, but only until it evolves into a content deliverer.... to all those iThingies. The standalone FM receiver will be relegated to emergencies when the power and the cell/internet grids are down. Probably as a chip in a modern LED flashlight, and notably lacking power-draining "HD" features.

And we complain about all the greed. Which is the better virtue? Cheap or greed?

People who don't understand economics complain about 'greed'. Capitalism isn't 'greed'. Ibiquity brought a solution to the table in a niche market (the fading old school standalone terrestrial radio) and programmers signed up so they wouldn't have to go through AM Stereo again. Consumers and manufacturers saw no need to do so. Now the content providers are using the web to get the multiple channels of programming out to consumers' devices of choice. TunedIn and I-Heart are the delivery systems competing with Ibiquity, and Ibiquity is losing. But Ibiquity and its predecessors made the bets up front and put up the bucks which they are now trying to recover in licensing fees and by adding flashy video interfaces to car radios (brilliant).

Meanwhile the FCC, aka the government, puts up artificial roadblocks to multi-use bandwidth and tries to muck with the internet under the guise of 'neutrality'; now that's 'greed', power-hungry nanny political sloth style. And the pols don't have any guiding principle like profit to motivate them to act virtuously and productively. Hence a 90% disapproval rating for government greed and a 90% approval rating for free-market attractively designed high priced iThingies. And crickets for standalone HD receivers, whose time, if they ever had one, has most certainly passed.

Excellent post!
Radio does have one big advantage over internet delivered content. Bandwidth. You can multicast programming to an unlimited number of people with radio. Each internet listener uses a little bit of the "fat pipe" and the capability is certainly not unlimited.
When we first started using IP based remote gear we could use the 3G networks with good results. But today, in many markets, 3G is un-usable for audio codecs. In Atlanta, they are not very useable during drivetime hours. 4G still works well but it's only a matter of time until these systems start to choke from user loading.
As I've said before, the best solution might be a hybrid system which uses IBOC channels for programming delivery and Ethernet for adding unique elements (GPS based ads, traffic reports etc.) and for listener interaction with content providers.
I think the main problem is a stagnation of programming ideas which the bean counters can understand, and wrap their tiny little minds around. There are plenty of people, like myself, with ideas.......but the folks who run radio are too frightened of failure to dare try them. It's all 'bout da money........

 

[TheBigA]

Re: The Dinosaurs vs the Innovators

I think the main problem is a stagnation of programming ideas which the bean counters can understand, and wrap their tiny little minds around.

The bigger problem is programming ideas that the public can wrap their tiny little minds around. As evidenced by the music and TV choices people make every day. Programmers do lowest common denominator because it works.