High Definition Radio and New Content Alternatives 305
An anonymous reader writes "Many people are aware that satellite radio is a viable consumer option thanks to massive marketing campaigns. What many people do not know is that an alternative, High Definition Radio, exists in most major US markets. IBM DeveloperWorks explains how HD Radio works and why the masses may soon be scrambling to adopt this technology and expand it to alternative content as fast as possible."
It may be digital.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:4, Insightful)
One day, your precious (almost) commercial-free satellite radio content will go the way of commercial-free cable TV content. Prices will go up, and amount of content will go down owinf to commercials creep in "to pay the bills".
Looks into crystal ball
I predict that in the not-too distant future satellite radio stations will be just like their terrestrial ancestors.
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:3, Informative)
I wish I had mod points. When I buy a newspaper or magazine, I get ads. When I pay for cable, I get ads. When my brother in law pays for AOL, he gets ads. Go to the Movies recently? Yep, you pay at the door and then still get ads. Ok, ok, at least public radio and TV don't have
Your point? (Score:2)
But what's your point in pointing this out? Does the fact that things may change in the future somehow make XM or Sirius a less attractive proposition now?
If it gets to the point where they're no longer worth the s
Re:Your point? (Score:3, Insightful)
The innevitable encroachment of commercials to sattelite radio doesn't change the fact that it's great now. However, the point of bringing it up is that people use the lack of mind-numbing commercials as the major selling point of sattelite radio (see original post). I'd bet that in the future, when commercials have discovered and populated this frontie
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:3, Informative)
a) Think that's gonna last forever? XM is several billion in the hole, and neither them nor Sirius has had a profitable quarter yet. Right now, they're doing a US-Soviet Union style cold war, spending like drunken Republicans until one of them goes bankrupt. At that time, the winner will be able to capture the whole market, and will then start raising subscription fees, and having limite
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:4, Informative)
So, on an HD Radio station that is not serving up any subchannels, the sound quality can easily blow away satellite. But once you start adding the HD2 and HD3 subchannels to the mix, which most stations will do, the sound quality argument falls apart.
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Faint praise. In a world in which most music lovers listen to low or no compression audio through decent electronics, we in the radio industry are rushing to provide an sonic experience I avoid on-line. As an industry we're slitting our own throats, and doing it for no other reason than the ability to program more channels of generice tripe in dramatically lower audio quality within the sam
Re:It may be digital.. (Score:3, Informative)
"Average bitrate", eh? How about some actual numbers, then?
No way the bitstreams are 4-6 times the size (Score:4, Informative)
Additionally, most stations are giving up the higher 96Kbps bitrates in trade for multiple streams that range from 32Kbps to 64Kbps. This is on par with Satellite and does not differentate the two in a significant way.
Some college radios are converting to digital ... (Score:2)
High Definition Radio? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:5, Funny)
Veav: I would do weird things with my kids.
Veav: Their first language will be BASIC.
Veav: They'll be running around yelling "10 print daddy, 20 print daddy, 30 print can I have some candy, 40 input x?"
Chef Brian: So Veav, I take it they won't be functional members of any society?
Veav: And I'd be all "X = NO!"
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:3, Informative)
Then move onto Fowler's Modern English.
Faulty acronym expansion (Score:2)
In this context, HD does not stand for High Definition; it stands for Hybrid Digital.
a big bucket of Meh (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand it is a fully digital signal without paying a monthly subscription fee.
Re:a big bucket of Meh (Score:2)
Of course, NPR in glorious HD Radio is...well...talk.
-h-
Re:a big bucket of Meh (Score:2)
Re:a big bucket of Meh (Score:2)
I can't even think of the last time I intentionally bought a (FM, broadcast band) radio. I'm almost certain that most of my non-techie friends probably can't; to most people, radios are things that come built-in to your car, or your CD player, or your clock radio, or occasionally separately in some small package you can carry around. But generally they're cheap, built-in devices.
I don't think you're going to get people to spe
Re:a big bucket of Meh (Score:2)
Oh, that's just the start... I work for an all-news/talk NPR station that is now in HD, and we're looking at HD2 - giving digital multicasting, data streaming, etc... So, tune into us for long in-depth reporting, get bored when we start fundraising, so press a button and a buffered traffic and weather report comes out (updated every 5 minutes, say), and then return seamlessly to the show.
Re:Counterexample (Score:2)
DAB? DRM? (Score:4, Informative)
Why the US has to be different once again I haven't figured out.
Re:DAB? DRM? (Score:2)
The promise of better quality didn't happen because the stations all overcompressed so much a lot of their stuff is on a par with AM.
Digital radio is also available cheaper via DTT (£40 for a TV receiver that does radio, vs. £80 for just a radio..or you can stick with £5 for your FM radio that you probably have already).
Not met anyone with a DAB set yet.. they won't get wide adoption until they're as cheap as standard radios.
I don't see the motivation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are in your car, you won't be able to tell the difference between HD Radio and plain-old FM Multiplex (unless your car is so well soundproofed that it poses a danger to everyone else on the road because you cannot hear horns/emergency vehicles/etc.)
If you are at home, for the cost of an HD setup you can get a HELL of a lot of music, or listen to sat radio.
Now, *IF* they were *replacing* radio stations with a pure digital block, then I could begin to see the advantage.
But I fear this will be just like HDTV - the broadcasters will use it to transmit FIVE TIMES THE COMMERCIALS! not actually transmit really good content.
Now, *if* auto makers start shipping HD radio in cars by default (or at least as part of the top of the line radio systems)....
Re:I don't see the motivation (Score:3, Informative)
Not true - in addition to higher quality audio and the potential for surround sound, HD Radio has error checking built in, so you don't get multipath interference effects (picket-fencing).
Now, *IF* they were *replacing* radio stations with a pure digit
High Definition Radio? (Score:4, Insightful)
Definition: Sharpness of an image (as seen by the clarity of detail) formed by an optical system. Definitions of definition on the Web [google.com]
Fidelity: A term used to describe the accuracy of recording, reproduction, or general quality of audio processing. Definitions of fidelity on the Web [google.com]
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2, Funny)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Sess, Baby... can I call you "Sess"?... anyway... Sess... what you clearly don't understand here is that "fidelity" is so nineteen-sixties. This is a new age! And we're not talking Aquarius. Har! Sess, Baby... the consumer is hip and modern. Its the Information Age and they want new, new, new. "High definition" is a term they already know. It's all the rage in television and that's just the bleeding-edge, early adopter, high-profit target in consumer electron
Buzzword Radio (Score:4, Funny)
Re: High Definition Radio? (Score:2)
Marketers market, they know little to nothing about what they are marketing.
They came up with "High Definition Radio" because it sounded cool like "High Definition TV".
Kinda like how many of the analog speakers in the 80s and 90s were marketed as "digital" when they were not.
Interactive is the future. (Score:2, Insightful)
I won't pay for anything until I get Launchcast in my car. Having the ability to access tons of stations and rate songs is where its at. If I don't like a song... *poof* I'll never hear it again! It's the greatest thing since sliced bread. Also, I can have a mix of music from rock to classical on one station. Satellite and HD radio can't do that.
http://psychicfreaks.com/ [psychicfreaks.com]Re:Interactive is the future. (Score:2)
-Rick
Not really (Score:4, Insightful)
People aren't buying satillite for higher quality (although it IS), they are buying it for content (O&A, Stern, etc) and for commercial free music. Not just commerical free, but typically genres that are totally ignored by traditional radio and in a censor free format.
Re:Not really (Score:3, Informative)
The sound quality is roughly on par with 96kbps MP3. Comparing to a 128kbps MP3 makes it obvious that the MP3 has higher sound quality.
Re:Not really (Score:2)
Which one do you think the broadcasters will do?
1. Transmit the same number of channels at much higher quality.
2. Transmit 10* as many channels at the same or lower quality allowing them to massively increase their advertising revenue for negligible cost.
We've been through this is europe already. The answer is 2.
Re:Not really (Score:2)
The sound quality is roughly on par with 96kbps MP3. Comparing to a 128kbps MP3 makes it obvious that the MP3 has higher sound quality.
Worse than that, particularly the XM/Sirius talk stations. They know they can get away with a much lower bitrate, so they do - between 12-24 kbps.
Low signal Stregth (Score:2)
Re:Not really (Score:2)
First up is the Sirius Sportster I had hooked up to the aux input of my Blaupunkt San Jose. Switching between a song on Sirius Hits 1 and the same song encoded at 128kbps on an mp3 CD in the head unit was a *glaring* and *obvious* improvement in sound quality.
Next up is an Audiovox XM unit hooked up to the aux input on a nice new Panasonic deck. Exact same story.
Next is my JVC Arsenal head unit with Sirius tuner built-in connected to the hide-in-the-dash Sirius receiver unit. Agai
Re:Not really (Score:2, Insightful)
Yay! (Score:2, Insightful)
Bitrate (Score:3, Informative)
That article was all very interesting in a "how do I squeeze yet another subcarrier in" sort of way, but it didn't actually mention what bitrate it is going to transmitted did it?
Wikipedia has this to say which clears it up a bit
Interesting to preserve backwards compatibility, but not as technically innovative as DAB...Thanks to Sirius (Score:2)
I have 67 channels of commercial-free music, plus tons of non-music entertainment channels, comedy, sports and other channels at my fingertips. I trust them to provide worthwhile content much more than I trust Clear Channel.
Re:Thanks to Sirius (Score:2)
Re:No Thanks to Sirius (Score:3, Interesting)
Is it p
My prediction (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My prediction (Score:2)
To all the DAT bashers out there, get a clue, DAT was basically the DLT or LTO or of the Pro audio world for over a decade. Just because you weren't jamming to it in paren't basement, doesn't mean it was a failure anymore than "Tape is Dead," get it? Back on topic however, I predict exactly 0 demand for higher definition radio. FM is fine by 90+% of the population. In fact I think a more apt quip might be, I pr
New Technology (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually low-resolution (Score:5, Insightful)
HD Radio has many many problems, notably that its sideband transmission scheme crowds out adjacent low-power FM stations. Basically, it's Clear Channel's master plan to finally kill off the local competition. Oh, and guess who is a major investor in iBiquity and its patent portfolio? Yeah, Clear Channel.
So have fun with your "HD" Radio. It's a great way to crowd three times as many commercials and mindless corporate pop music crap into the same FM band, while destroying local stations, implementing DRM, and removing fair-use rights. Joy!
Re:Actually low-resolution (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty soon, the usefulness of broadcast radio will be gone, and everyone will *have* to subscribe to some DRM'ed d
Re:Actually low-resolution (Score:2, Funny)
Not going to work (Score:2)
You could rig an illegal high-power transmitter. That'd be quite funny - iPirate Radio!
Re:Actually low-resolution (Score:2)
There are other interesting aspects of HD Radio as well. NPR is using the HD radio technology on FM mainly to provide multiple audio streams per station to meet the needs of different audiences, rather than enhanced audio quality.
Re:Actually low-resolution (Score:2)
When I read HD Radio being described as something not many people know about, I figured it must be because the author has the luck of not listening to any Clear Channel radio stations. Little wonder Clear
HD does not matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Satellite is still better because I can get it anywhere in the US, Canada and Northern Mexico (Assuming you are in the US), you never have to hunt for "good" stations while on the road, there are no or very few commercials (Howard Stern is 3 or 6 minutes per hour, if that) and the content is MUCH MUCH better.
The problem is that normal radio or HD radio is pretty much broadcasting crap. No matter how good it sounds, it is still crap.
Re:HD does not matter (Score:2)
Re:HD does not matter (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think much of it to be honest and I listen every day.
It's also $13 per month not $15.
Re:HD does not matter (Score:2)
The problem is that normal radio or HD radio is pretty much broadcasting crap. No matter how good it sounds, it is still crap.
There's usually one or two stations in an area that play decent content with
That's not even a concern (Score:2)
It's a good thing that you'll still have your normal radio around, then, isn't it? I don't go to CNN to hear my local news, and I don't go to XM to hear local traffic and weather.
"If you want just music out of your radio, you can get an iPod for really cheap these days."
Let me know how often that iPod plays a song you haven't heard before, or a song you've managed to completely forget about. Or any song
Next-Gen Radio over the pond... (Score:2)
It has taken a lot of effort to get people to make the jump to digital [for both radio and tv...], and switching to yet another format simply won't work, if it requires new things for people to buy.
OFCOM [the UK version of the FCC, if you like] seems to be leaning towards possibly int
uh-huh, sure. (Score:4, Insightful)
They said the same thing about cable TV.
As long as the FCC keeps such a tight rein on who gets to set up a transmitter, we'll always have the same schlock on the radio, HD or otherwise.
Re:uh-huh, sure. (Score:2)
Certainly cable isn't the greatest, but don't you think it has gone a long way towards giving people more choice? Granted, most of cable is dominated by big companies (who also buy out the smaller ones that come along), but most people went from 3-4 channels in the 60s to 40 or so channels in the 80s, and now with digital cable, 100+. You might think 90% are crap, but you have a greater number left in that 10% these days.
That said, I gave up cable a year ago and got
Downside to HD Radio (Score:3, Informative)
In addition, there is apparently a big problem with interference, referred to as "hash" by the posters.
http://groups.google.com/group/ba.broadcast/search ?group=ba.broadcast&q=iboc [google.com]
Satellite radio fees (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine there's enough people that think like me to make any free digital radio the defacto standard/most popular.
Re:Satellite radio fees (Score:2)
Ummm.. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Ummm.. (Score:2)
That's another good thing about satellite.
Although the FCC doesn't think people are strong enough to hear an impolite word, neither Sirius and XM will destroy a good song by bleeping out words.
HD Radio? (Score:2)
Coming when? (Score:3, Informative)
a) it's nearly impossible to buy an HD Radio
b) the ones that you can find are several hundred dollars
c) XM and Sirius got there first
d) the quality is not necessarily better enough to interest people
e) There are significant reception and quality problems.
Sure, the broadcast trades keep talking about HD as The Next Big Thing, but really no-one has figured how to sell it to the public. For 95% of people FM is more than OK, and besides, everyone already has an FM radio that has more or less the same programming.
Heck, even HD radio owners aren't all that impressed [hear2.com].
As has been pointed out by some commentators [hear2.com]:
What does Drew Carey know about HD Radio? (Score:2)
These guys don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
What they care about is that:
1. Music is commercial free
2. The content is very well grouped and partitioned by genre and not TOP 40.
3. The audio is uncensored.
The end quote was such a load, "Who will be the HD radio Howard Stern?", no one thats who. Because HD Radio is the same station broadcast on the same frequency, only digitally. Who cares. This is BS
Ads anyone? (Score:2)
And the likes of Clear Channel and Infinity have problems differentiating formats for their owned stations. Who believes that they won't just time shift content on the additional channels?
New tech, old school broadcasters (Score:2)
HD Radio (IBOC) Information and Audio Samples (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.opengeek.org/2005/03/hd-radio-thoughts
Wanting to know what it sounds like? It's not really high-defintion as it is low noise. You can find audio samples of HD radio as well as samples from a lot of other comparable technologies here:
http://www.opengeek.org/2005/03/hd-radio-analog-f
Have some samples to add? Get hold of me and I'll get them up.
I collected these samples and wrote the paper linked above out of personal interest. I'm not employed, nor have an interest in either Ibiquity or the radio industry in general. Just joe listener wondering how badly his radio will get hosed! (Short answer, FM mode is no biggie --either people will like it or not. AM mode sucks hard and will make a mess of the medium. Knife the baby quick!)
Enjoy!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:In conclusion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:In conclusion (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:In conclusion (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In conclusion (Score:2)
I guess it's a good thing that college radio doesn't cost anything to listen to, unlike satellite radio.
Re:In conclusion (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:In conclusion (Score:2, Interesting)
HD on the other hand is (to me) just an extension of traditional radio. It's a general replacement, not a niche. It's l
No way possible? What about... (Score:5, Insightful)
2.) Lower cost. Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't XM and Sirius both subscription services?
3.) Embedding. XM or Sirius haven't made their way into car or home stereos as a standard feature. AM/FM antennae have long since. I didn't understand all the technical details from the article, but it sounds to me that there's not much needed beyond a decoder for the HD broadcast to be playable.
4.) Standardization. The article mentioned this format has been accepted by the FCC as a standard. Again, I don't know the details of satellite radio, but it sounds like the equipment is not inter-compatible.
5.) Independent operation. Stations handle the production and distribution of their programming themselves, instead of passing off the latter to the satellite owners. I tend to think of this as a good thing.
That's how I see it anyway. I'm no expert on this, so I welcome more information or rebuttals of my points. I'm also no fortune-teller, so I'm not saying HD is going to kick butt, but I disagree that it's too late to grab market share.
What about 'em? (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Lower cost. You pay for radio either way. With terrestial radio, you pay with your time -- of
Re:What about 'em? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the Chicago area, there are a couple of stations that don't have mega-blocks of commercials, and little or no talk -- 97.1 WDRV (The Drive), and 104.3 WJMK (Jack FM).
The Drive plays mostly decent classic rock tracks, with a little bit of DJ (non-annoying type), little commercial, whereas Jack is no DJ, and only a few minutes of commercial breaks, and they play anything (it seems that I can always find music on one of those two stations).
If it weren't for those two, I'd have gotten satellite a long time ago.
I suspect... (Score:2)
For one thing, I already pay (too much) for Dish Network--which has SIRIUS "built in" to the America's 200 package--their most popular. Also, I am fine with local radio, since I mostly listen to sports and political talk when I'm driving anyway.
Now, that's just me, but I suspect I'm pretty typical. MOST people are my age and eve
Re:Free beats non-free every time (Score:2)
It seems to work well for them, too.
Re:Free beats non-free every time (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to work well for them, too.
There, I fixed that for ya. It's called primitive accumulation of capital: you take what was free and charge people for it. Marx got a lot of things wrong, and Bakunin was certainly right about where communism leads, but let's not throw out the baby with the bath water.
Re:I'm done with radio (Score:3, Informative)
I thought the same way before I tried a three-day trial streaming sirius [sirius.com]. It's not the greatest quality stream, or even really a good quality stream, but they played a lot of music I didn't know. I liked it so much that I listened to it pretty much straight through the trial, even though my mp3 collection is ripped at a much-higher quality 192kbps vbr.
That's the appeal of Sirius for me. They play a lot of music I'd never hear anywhere else, and they have a lot of good stations from many different genres.
Re:I'm done with radio (Score:2)
I wouldn't live without satellite radio these days, because it works where
Re:Does this really beat Satellite? (Score:2)
Re:Does this really beat Satellite? (Score:2)
Re:i do satellite (Score:2)
Well, not all of us are cross-country truckers like you. Some of us spend 95% of our time within one metropolitan area.
Re:Open standards? (Score:5, Informative)
Not that there were any shortage of alternative, open and unencumbered digital audio transmission formats out there (Digital Radio Mondial being my personal favorite), the FCC went straight for the one owned by the corporation. So if you want to broadcast in HD, you'll pay a tithe to iBiquity every year. As if community and college and other small radio stations needed yet another bill to pay.
I wonder how much iBiquity paid for their little government reach-around? Hope they think they got their money's worth. I'm staying with FM, thanks very much.
I'd like to know when we decided it was acceptable for the Government to make a standard out of some company's proprietary format. It ought to work so that if you submit your format as a candidate for standardization, you agree to relinquish all rights to it, and transfer all IP that's related to it into the public domain or to a holding body. Don't want to do that? Fine, it doesn't need to be used -- there are more than enough alternatives that could have been instead.
Re:Radio execs don't get it (Score:2)