>>None of the research says that anyone cares about these issues. Just geeky DX-ers in their moms basement.<<
Clearly you know very little about these folks because the basement is usually a horrible place to dx! :
As for the rest of your missive, it totally overstates the effectiveness of HD Radio. And, you seem to be in some little clique where people would spend $200 on one of these POS radios if they could get smooth jazz. I'd like to submit that the dx interest group is almost certainly much larger than that Algonquin Roundtable of yours.
In general, there are 3 main issues with HD and all three are potentially fatal:
1) The product rollout has been slow, involves bulky and expensive units and provides big boxy (and battery sucking) products to a marketplace where portability is king. People adore iPods and you give them something that looks like a Polaroid camera from 1975! Furthermore, aside from some of the more expensive component-type HD Radios, most of these units do not perform well when it comes to reception of HD stations, which brings me to....
2) The technology annoys more than just dxers. The digital sidebands are absolutely murder on AM; particularly at night. As much as the coneheads at Ibiquity and those who are in the tank for them want the laws of physics to be repealed, they won't be. So you have issues with propagation on AM and the signal interfering with other stations IN THEIR HOME MARKETS. Furthermore, AM HD f-s up reception for hundreds of miles in many cases, but the technology sucks so hard that you can only depend on a usable range of one-tenth that. Even then, it bounces in and out of lock as you travel. Not to mention that the sidebands take up half of the bandwidth that was formerly used for analog audio, rendering that flat to the 99.97% of listeners that tune in via analog radios. Face it, AM HD is faulty and like a horse with 2 broken legs, it needs to be turned into dog food.
FM's issue is similar, but not as bad. To get the subchannels, you need a rock-solid signal - the range is less than half of the analog. Go over a hill in Westford and you lose lock. Turn a corner in Andover and you lose that HD-2 signal you were listening to in the car. And, it may not be listenable again until you get back to that spot. To power them up would mean interference with nearby stations, so you have that problem to address. In other words, they're trying to shoehorn too much into too small of a space. Honestly, a new slice of spectrum that would be digital only is the better solution. And it would sell much better.
3) Apathy. No one cares! You poke fun at dxers? Everyone else pokes fun at the dozen of you who are HD proponents. An answer to a question that no one asked. Insipid marketing, lousy products, none of which is in tune with where technology is headed have conspired to make HD Radio obsolete before it even gets off the ground. Nobody is buying into it! For every one person you show me who has an HD radio, I'll show you 300 others who don't have one and who don't plan to buy one. And, a solid percentage of your HD radio owning group are unhappy with their purchase and won't buy another.
By the way, the marketing has been awful! I could hire the Three Stooges to do a more effective campaign armed with a hammer and two cream pies! The "stations between the stations" was the only line that ever even seems to address the concept of added value and they don't feature that anymore. Tagging? So what. That would have impressed people in 1991, but not now. It's not a fatal flaw and is thus not in the numbered paragraphs above. But it is yet another failure of the HD Radio group. And it belies their ignorance and the poor planning that has become a hallmark of HD Radio.
So, yes, digital may be the future. But perhaps not with HD Radio - and certainly not on AM. Give it up.
