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Would DXing still be fun if radio was all digital now?

Nick said:
I believe HD at 100% analog power would be decodable out to the 30 dB contour. HD at 1% is decodable out to the 50 dB contour currently. A 30 dB signal can barely be heard in analog but can be heard perfectly in HD (may not be reliable but all we want are the call letters).
Click to expand...

I, for one, enjoyed dx in order to listen to choices the local market did not offer.
But that was when things weren't quite as homogenized as they are now.

I recently was able to listen to WCCQ 98.3 for country, because there is no country station in Chicago, but WFMT put on iboc
and now 98.3 is "The Buzz".

AM still offers this some degree, but iboc is doing its best to make this impossble, which is a big part of its appeal to
the stations who use it. "You may not want to listen to what we have to offer, but we're sure as &^%# gonna make sure you can't listen to anything else."
 
Nick said:
I believe HD at 100% analog power would be decodable out to the 30 dB contour. HD at 1% is decodable out to the 50 dB contour currently. A 30 dB signal can barely be heard in analog but can be heard perfectly in HD (may not be reliable but all we want are the call letters).
Click to expand...
As long as there is no interference, I agree. But the slightest amount of co-channel interference & that conclusion flies out the window. Does anyone know if the "pure HD" mode will be fully contained within the standard +/- 200khz window or will the pure HD stations (if they ever do exist) interfere with each other's adjacents? If so, there goes that 30dbu reception.
 
I personally think the current HD system is majorly flawed for multiple reasons.

Before stations started converting to HD in the USA, I was thinking of a few criteria I would want for a digital system, including...
1. The ability to 100% decode a signal out to the place where (assuming you're using the same antenna) an analog narrowband QRSS CW signal would be 10% copyable by a seasoned ham.
2. The ability to differentiate between stations on the same frequency. Even if all the graveyards (Class C or Class IV) were running 50kW each, you would be able to pick and choose which station you wanted to hear from the multitude of stations on the same frequency.
3. Brick-wall adjacent filters. If you used a receiver with an extremely narrow bandwidth (a few hundred Hz, for example, on AM), you might have a signal within 3dB of the peak just inside the station's main spectral mask.... but as soon as you leave that mask, the signal completely drops out, even if you're literally standing a few inches away from the transmitting antenna.
4. No interference with analog radios. If you sat next to a digital station with an analog radio, you wouldn't even be able to tell their signal was on the air... AND you would be able to hear a distant analog signal that's 0.1dB above atmospheric noise, even if you're standing at what would be the 614,000mV/m field of a MW station on the same 1000kHz frequency.

Since IBOC doesn't meet any of those requirements... what would be a better alternative?
 
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