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FCC Approves Digital Radio, Kills Satellite Merger
n8willis writes "...Just saw this AP article on Excite news: the FCC has just approved the first upgrade in broadcast radio technology in decades. It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed. The tech comes from some company called iBiquity, and unlike Sirius or XM satellite radio, there will be no charge for listening. Some radio buff want to tell us what they know about this concept?" And wiredog writes "The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics.
RIAA,baby.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
voted 4-0
Excuse me if this may seem like an extradinarily ignorant question, but wouldn't an agency that has as much power as the FCC be better served with a voting panel with an odd number off members?
It's things like this that delay early adoption of technology (at least in my eyes).. People will hold off on buying anything until a clear 'winner' emerges from this mess. I was considering Sattelite radio, now I see this. What to do?
Maybe I'm just bitter at losing my pants on Sattelite Radio stock..
I am the lord of the pun. Dance Knave!
the FCC has just approved the first upgrade in broadcast radio technology in decades. It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed.
How much "bandwidth" does this new digital radio take up? Will it be something we have to contend for 10 years down the road when 802.11X takes off?
Does anyone have a link to a good tutorial on how things are looking? Is there still a lot of "premium" airwave space for wireless internet to grow into, or are we heading towards another battle with corporate america?
The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Dude, RIAA is gonna be the biggest fan of this... Only not. Will radios no longer come with tape decks? Line outs? Speaker connections? Perhaps they'll only enable the audio out if the proper DRM key is inserted? I like the idea, but in the current climate, something tells me this is going to have an uphill battle.
-k
Does anyone know if this will require a new receiver in order to be utilized? If so, how long before these come to market?
CD quality music broadcast over wireless technology... for free?
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Ibiquity's IBOC system Sucks. Plain and simple. Am quality sounds like a 56k rated mp3. The side frequencies are hosed for advertising, and FM is no better, the side frequencies, are again hosed, and the sound quality is NOT CD, it's not even 128k!!! It's like 112! Seriously, the fcc is smoking the reefer. They cannot let this happen to radio.
----
djzooky.com
I Like Cheese.
It would also be excellent of they would realize that with modern technology, they don't need to use so much of the radio spectrum for one TV or radio station. The spectrum is scarce, but the scarcity is largely artificial.
This is encouraging. I just hope that this sort of thing continues and the FCC adapts to modern technology.
Whoo hoo!
.... blech, what a broken piece of hardware THAT thing is :-)
...
:-)
This means my DirecTiVo is going to stay around for a while!
I was afraid that Dish Network would push the Dishnet PVR on us once the merger went through
Besides, DirecTV broadcasts in a higher quality than Dish does -- better picture, better sound, better service.
I'm glad to see we're not going to be subject to Uncle Charlie (Ergen)'s pet wishes and peeves
Now if we can avoid being bought by Rupert, we'll be OK
--NBVB
now with digital signals, you can fit more stations on the local spectrum since digital will not "bleed" like analog does. better sound, and in 10 years or so, more choice...I can definatly see the end of satelite radio if local stations can keep up on the content.
True capitalism = lots of similar companies = jobs for everyone who wants one.
But it's not, it's pure opiate.
Both HDTV and Digital Radio employ an incredible amount of bandwidth. And we aren't talking about bandwidth in a wire where if you add more wires (or upgrade to fiber) you can magically fix the problem. There is simply a finite amount of broadcast bandwidth available, period. Widening the channels as these schemes require crowds out highly necessary bandwidth uses such as radio astronomy (including SETI), marine rescue channels, military radios, CBs (don't laugh, a lot of rural people depend on them) and of course cellphones.
The real solution to our problem is to decrease the amount of useless bandwidth wastage out there, like the badly-named "SciFi" channel (aka the Pseudo-Science channel. XFiles, I'm looking at you). But no lawmaker is interested in reducing the opiate that The People are getting, so you can say goodbye to anything meaningful being done via broadcast in the US.
I thought I remembered hearing, a few years ago, something about AM radio going digital starting sometime around October 2002. The original plan, as laid out by the in this news brief (and that's DRM as in "Digital Radio Mondiale", not the DRM we all know and hate) from the Digital AM Radio development Consotium, called for digital AM broadcast to start in 2001. Whenever digital AM does start (if it hasn't already), there may well be an AM renaissance, with many AM stations getting back to musical programming. The only other thing I remember right now is that I believe there are going to be multiple digital channels layered in with the analog broadcast, to give a quality of sound never heard before over free broadcast.
A war between the entertainment cartel and the defense industry over controlling infrastructure? Or is it just another plain-old standards battle?
I don't like listening to today's radio, except for public radio in my area. (Santa Cruz) The last radio station I really liked was 105.3 before they got rid of Alex Bennett.
I hope this doesn't lead to a battle for standards. I don't need to be fiddling between FM1, FM/D1, XM, CD, etc. I just want to hear decent music.
Of course, if XM offers Phil Hendrie 24/7 cross-country, I'll be signing up immediately.
I can't that the RIAA is going to be happy with broadcasting Digital CD quality music for free without some sort of DRM provisions. Anybody know if the Digital Radio will include any sort of Broadcast Flag to disable recording? The article has Commissioner Kathleen Abernathy claiming that "We don't get many items where it's a win-win for everyone. There's no down side." From what I've seen, the RIAA sees a downside anytime there is Audio content that is digitized without protection.
Favorite quote from article:
Digital broadcasts use the same language as computers - a series of on and off electronic pulses.
Now that is insightful!
First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Can it be "CD-quality" at about 96 kbps? We'll see.
A good site for learning more about IBOC is Radio World Online.
"The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 to adopt digital radio technology created by iBiquity Digital Corp., a company backed by large broadcasters including ABC and Viacom. "
I don't have a lot of confidence that this new technology won't be tainted with nasty things like DRM, forced commercials, etc.
"The digital broadcasts will be free, unlike the subscriber services offered by Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio Holdings, which beam music and talk to radios from satellites."
Yeah, until they want to start offering "Premium" channels.
"Supporters say the new technology will bring CD-quality sound to FM broadcasts, an end to static for AM and new data features."
The term CD-quality gets thrown around to loosely. I'm assuming the stream uses a lossy compression scheme like streaming MP3, OGG, etc. It may be good, but probably not truly CD quality.
Digital simulcast of your local stations gets you just that, your local stations.
I am perfectly happy to pay XM my $9.95 to bring me Fox News, BBC World Service, C-Span, CNET Radio
In this case the saying that you get what you pay for really does apply.
-jon
Actually Dish Network had intended to keep the networks separate for the foreseeable future. Their's and DirecTV's satelite systems are not compatible and it would cost BILLIONS to deobit and replace the DirecTV satelites. It would also cost Billions to replace all those recievers and I guarantee you consumers aren't going to buy new equipment. They would be more likely to get cable. IMO, this isn't really a bad or good thing. Combining Dish Network and DirecTV would have provided a strong competitor to monopolistic AOLTIMEWARNER, ATT, Charter, and Cablevision. Dish Network had promised to give up some satelite slots to Cablevision too so that they could start a satelite competitor. On the other side of the coin, we will still have two satelite competitors and DirecTV will most likely become the property of NewsCorp (if their hacking doesn't kill it) pretty soon. Now all I want is my NFL Sunday Ticket on Dish Network (coming next season).
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
Three reasons:
- Companies had extreme fears of perfect digital copies of works from the radio that were the same as what was on store shelves. Now that they have a better product, SACDs, to sell, they can afford to give away lower-quality versions for comparatively small radio licensing fees.
- Digital broadcasting equipment has finally come down in price, and, more importantly, the proliferation of digital tuners and MP3 receivers have proven that electronics can be built into car audio players at low cost.
- Finally, Sirius and XM have been making some waves with their coast-to-coast, good stations, but that's really more of a retention quality than a marketing quality. (How do we know if we like a particular DJ if we've never heard the station, which we wouldn't if we don't have the system?) Their biggest, best marketing move is "universal reception, digital quality." The digital radio folks can't promise the former, but the latter can be done very easily. After so long, the radio stations, which feared losing the listeners to CDs if they let them record their favorite songs, have come around to, "Well, if we don't give them the quality, someone else will--at a better profit margin!"
- And a fourth, bonus reason: with the slump in computer sales, Circuit City needed something new to sell the geeks.
;)
JousterYes, but with the clarity of digital radio, maybe I can finally hear and understand the fast talking 'legalese' at the end of some of the promotional ads....
I believe they were trying to use cable companies as the reason for merging since satellite customers only make 25% of the pay TV market, but a large amount of DSS customers have no other choice but satellite. Go take a drive in a rural area and you will see a dish mounted on top of every trailer.
Oh great, that's all I need...
Digial quality Britney, Christina, and a bunch of Boy Bands.
Excuse, me, I think I'll Pass.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
But, I could see this end up like digital TV as well, where it's hindered with restrictions, requires expensive equipment, and will ultimately (likely) result in the FCC forcing it upon us. I can see five or ten years down the road when my beautiful vacuum-tube antique console stereo won't have any radio signals to pick up! Ultimately, sadly, this is probably a way for the big shots to control more and more of what we listen to and how we listen to it, not to mention it'll probably make obsolete the nice, expensive receiver I purchased recently (thinking I'd use it for years to come).
Why can't the cronies at the FCC get it through their thick, ugly skulls to LET THE MARKET dictate what happens! C'mon, it's basic economics. Look at satellite TV and digital cable. No government agency forced this upon us, but people buy it in droves! Granted, digital radio isn't being forced on us (yet), but it's probably on the horizon.
Digital Radio is already up and running in the UK, although very few people are listening to it!
I work for a large ILR station and whilst we now broadcast digitally, I don't think anyone is really interested in promoting the fact in the short term.
The cheapest standalone DAB radio is £99. I think there is a USB device for a PC which retails around £50. Most people have 5-6 radios to replace if they want to go digital! Plus there is no portable, battery powered solution right now.
Listening numbers may increase in the next couple of years as car manufacturers start to build DAB tuners in to the cars, as Ford will start doing shortly.
Most of the national digital radio broadcasters also get their channels carried on the Sky Digital TV platform otherwise they would have next to no listeners!
In Europe, we use a standard called Eureka 147, which is referred to as Digital Audio Broadcasting or DAB. This is incompatible with the system that is being proposed for the USA.
Then there's the content problem. Existing stations merely rebroadcast and most of the new specialist stations are automated so you may as well listen to your iPod anyway. The only group seem to be doing anything useful with the technology is the good old BBC.
I work as a DJ for a community radio station (WTJU wtju.radio.virginia.edu) and we just discussed this system at a recent meeting. It costs a fortune (in community radio terms) to upgrade to this system _and_ it requires a new device on the listener's end. iBiquity's ubiquity (sorry, I had to) could easily kill off another whole bunch of community radio stations, possibly mine.
Did the big guys (Clear Channel, etc.) know this would be the case when they lobbied for it? Of course! They're simply trying to kill off more competition.
As it is, community radio stations are having a really tough time. WTJU's FCC license is owned by the Univerity of Virginia (which provides _some_ support for the station), which means that they can sell it to the highest bidder if they want. This is happening all over the place to financially strapped universities. When an FCC license goes for 10+ million dollars, and their budget from the state is skimpy, it's a pretty attractive proposition for the schools.
This blows.
-Dan
p.s. So do the unrealistic reporting regulations for internet broadcasting of radio. WTJU could have it's payments to BMI, ASCAP, etc., for internet broadcasting paid for by a non-profit (can't remember which one, it's something along the lines of PBS), but we can't afford to keep track of all of the information they require with the filings.
http://www.ibiquity.com/navframe.html?03content.ht ml
I have to be careful not to say too much, since as their site is semi-Slashdotted, it's hard to say how much of this is public info and how much is "iBiquity proprietary" (I work at one of iBiquity's equipment partners, and have been working closely with some aspects of their system)
Basically, when the FCC allocated the current FM spectrum, they allowed for a LOT of channel spacing for special features in the analog sidebands and also to take into account inferior receivers/bad transmitters.
Modern transmitters can now output a much cleaner spectrum. Specifically, the FCC allocated a "guard band" around each FM channel, where an ideal FM station shouldn't have emissions but is allowed to "spill over". The guard band power can only be 1/100 of the power of the main band, but thanks to the SNR advantages of digital modulation, a digital signal needs only around 1/100 the power of an FM signal for the same range.
So IBOC can allow an FM signal and a digital signal to coexist on the *same* channel. A cleaned-up FM signal in the main band, and a digital signal in the "guard bands".
An eventual upgrade path is an all-digital signal, replacing the FM portion with a digital signal for greater bandwidth. This is a while off, due to the compatibility issues and also due to technical issues.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I think that can be sort of assumed.
I think that that receivers will not be the problem with market penetration - We've seen from the pricing of Sirius, etc. units that it won't be TOO bad.
The barrier to adoption will be the broadcasters. It's going to be an EXPENSIVE upgrade for them.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
This standard broadcasts in the sidebands of the current FM channels, usuing NO additional spectrum. No extra interference, no extra channels needed.
As for FM quality, you obviously don't live in an area with lots of tall buildings, or one far away from the transmitters.
What would be really cool is if they use it to start transmitting 4.1 audio streams. Mmmmmmm.
...that I don't listen to the radio now that I have a CD-changer in my car. Certainly, I'm not the only one who despises the radio. I stopped listening because of too many commercial breaks, too LONG commercial breaks, inconvenient commercial breaks, and ridiculously short playlists.
Sometimes when i'm just driving to work, I get the tail end of a song and then 17 minutes of commercials. I hear one song, and then I'm at work. It's just not worth it.
yeah, no kidding about the dish compression. i was at costco watching dish on one of the hdtv plasma monitors right next to an ota (over-the-air) signal, and the ota blew dishnet away. i would not push inferior technology on people simply because there was no other alternative, so i am *certainly* glad the merger was not approved. oh, and as for digital cable, i'd rather NOT see ads with my program guide, kthxbye.
The FCC should have at least chosen a different digital modulation scheme, that although may not be backwards compatible, would enable bandwith to open up. I would rather have 500+ channels from multiple local vendors than 20 ClearChannel/ABC owned station all broadcasting the same useless fucking Eminem/Nelly song over and over. Right now the FCC is not taking applications for any more FM radio stations (although thousand try to apply). The move to digital would have allowed more people to enter the market, but instead the FCC didn't open up bandwith using a different scheme.
Also, why a proprietary audio encoding scheme? Why not open source, royalty free Ogg Vorbis? And a good digital encoding scheme doesn't need to have fixed bandwitdh requirements, either - some channels could be 8kbps mono, while other channels could be full 1Mbps surround+data/video, all using the same decoder/tuners.
I think its time to drop AM/FM/VHF/UHF entirely.
Actually, everything I read made it sound like they had to have their revised plan in before the FCC voted, and the companies had just this week asked the FCC to delay the vote while they presented a revised plan, which the FCC did not do. I think this vote effectively kills this merger, and I really see GM selling Hughes/DirecTV off to the highest bidder at this point. Rupert Murdoch fought vigorously to prevent this merger, so I'd be surprised if someone besides Murdoch ends up with DirecTV.
The revised deal that Dish/Hughes was basically an offer to create/improve other satellite competitors since the FCC's major problem was that this merger essentially created a satellite monopoly. The first part of the plan was to lease space on their spectrum to Comcast, who is starting their own satellite service. Comcast has the spectrum to offer satellite service everywhere in the US except for the West Coast, and Dish/DirecTV would've provided them with the necessary spectrum to offer nationwide service as well as the ability to offer more channels. The second part of the plan was to offer other companies the ability to resell and bill for DirecTV/Dish service, similar to what DirecTV currently does with Pegasus in certain parts of the country.
"player 4 hit player 1 with 0 stroms"
This is all well and good, but the DJ is still gonna talk over the start and ends of the song, thereby fucking up your nice digital recording.
He's complaining about bandwidth being wasted on the airwaves . And his example (and the follow-on example from SomeoneGotMyNick are both Cable-only channels. I would LOVE an explanation how one relates to the other.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
sure, it's a "standard," but think about this for a minute. gm vehicles have been coming with xm for a while. what happens to the people that bought xm? what about people who want digital radio but have a radio they want to keep, or a high-end head unit that they bought for quality but can't get any models with digital? car radios need to be more like home stereos. we're dealing with products that are basically a closed system, no expandability which need to be replaced whenever we want a new feature. not to mention that of the few forays into this matter, only a few are truly useful, namely the car stereos with line inputs. screw the "xm ready" proprietary hookups. it needs to be more universal.
then again, i want a toilet made out of solid gold, but it's just not in the cards, baby. sorry for the rant.
What if(tm) someone launced a satelite "dedicated" to high-quality radio broadcasts? Wouldn't that have conserved some of the "earthly" bandwidth apparently being wasted on this-and-dat(tm)? A "side-effect" would be that the channel(s) would be (potentially) available globally..
This is expensive and yada yada; move the rainforests to another planet, and so on.. It still should be possible to do this, technically.
- In space @ 96khz someone is bound to hear you scream..
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Please see Digital Radio Takes to the Road specfically the section on IBOC (In-band/On-channel). Specifically see this figure which presents how the data is added to the current AM and FM channels.
The main reasons it's taken so long are technical.
IBOC has a lot of technical requirements that strain even modern transmitter technology to its limits. Old-school FM allows a relatively primitive transmitter to operate *extremely* efficiently since FM contains no information in the amplitude of the signal. Hence, a class-C amplifier can be used, which is pretty simple and on the order of 60-80% efficient.
Digital techniques have amplitude information in the signal. Hence, the amplifier has to be linear, which means that good 'ole class C is out of the question. Most linear amplifiers are at best 50% efficient, and that's theoretical. (Cutting edge technology allows 45-50% to be achieved with the linearities required, but it's a LOT harder than building a simple class-C amp.)
Meeting the iBiquity specs means that transmitter manufacturers need to use the latest and most modern technology they can, stuff that's cutting-edge even for people who have been doing linear amplifiers for a long time.
It's not as much of a problem with digital TV - These guys are AM to begin with, hence have been using reasonably linear systems from the beginning.
Try searching for example /. for "CD quality", just in the "stories" part this string is matched hundreds of times. When did "CD quality" become the standard for excellent sound quality. And why? Is it because you can call anything to be of "CD quality" - if your quality prooves to be crap, then just select a lousy CD.
Although this might sound like a joke, it would be interesting to back-trace whether someone or some organisation started marketing this standard actively some time in the recent history. Or is just an accident?
It suffers from the same problem as web radio. You're sending a digital stream to a user's reciever. Even with a flag, a user could bypass it and copy digital quality music from it. At least that's the theory behind the taxes that web radio must pay to the RIAA.
Essentialy that $.0007 (for now, legislation is in the works to change it) is to pay for the users who will copy the music off the streaming station. Analog broadcasters don't pay it because they're analog. They wanted digital to pay it because it would mean web radio never got a chance to foothold and give them some competition. The RIAA wants it so they can line their pockets, unlike ASCAP/BMI (that most web radio stations pay and all analog pay) that goes right to the artists.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
If this substantially increases the range of local FM stations, suppressing static until the signal's at the point of total breakup, it's just an enhanced advertizing venue to the RIAA people. Their canned programming lists -- and they already feel in control of that area of music distribution -- can just get to more people.
They understand radio, it's a broadcast medium, not a point-to-point one.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
An ancient system, low quality muzak, Subsiderary Communications Authorization - commercial free elevator music! It's supposed to be a pay service for offices etc, but with the right decoder from Ramsey Electronics and connection to an FM set (has to pickup before deemphasis as it's up around 67Khz in the audio). Little known and fairly easy to pick up. But there's only one left in my metro area, probably they're dying off. I love it, I really do! There's no commercials, no vocals or words, nothing offensive or nerve wracking, no politics, news or sports, just plain, bland wallpaper music, ALL the time, heheh.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Yeah, the Dish PVR really sucks, doesn't it. It runs Linux, it's completely hackable, is standards complient, and you don't have to pay $10 or whatever for a monthly subscription just to get your program listings. What a lame product. Yes, the early versions were a little buggy, but it's mostly worked out now. The TIVO was bug-free from day 1?
If ANYONE really thinks that preventing this merger is in the public interest, I'd really like some of whatever they're smoking. The FCC is bought and paid for by the CATV industry, as we've seen before with the must-carry rules for satellite and local rebroadcasting rules. Let's look at the facts:
1) Without a merger, it is not cost effective for either company to rebroadcast local channels is ALL markets. This means the cable companies will continue to have a monopoly on local content in these areas (yes, a lucky few can use an off-air antenna, but I don't know anyone that can get a decent signal this way). Echostar has committed to provide local service to ALL US markets within two years if the merger goes through.
2) Echostar has committed to having a flat pricing model across the US. This means that in order to screw the rural customer, they would have to raise their prices so much that they would be much higher than CATV in markets where it is available. Since the the vast majority of wealthy markets (big spenders on PPV & movie channels - where providers make the big bux) are well covered by cable, it would not make economic sense to screw the poor rural customer to lose the rich suburban customer.
3) An argument has been made that DirecTV users will need to shell out for new equipment. Echostar has stated that NO ONE will need to buy new equipment to receive the same services that they currently receive. They will provide new equipment for people that subscribe to services that are moved to DVB from the proprietary mess that DirecTV uses.
4) Neither Echostar or DVB have subscriber bases big enough to compete with cable companies for program purchases. This means that they pay more for programming that they resell, and have a harder time keeping costs down. That said, they are STILL well below most cable pricing.
People need to understand that although a merger will create a monopoly for DBS, it will create competition for TV providers - which is what really matters to joe consumer. Until satellite can deliver LOCAL broadcasts into all markets, they can't reasonably compete with cable - most people are not willing to give up local news and local used car dealer ads.
The cable industry already has a monopoly, and they have lobbied the FCC very hard to keep it. This merger would ruin the monopoly they have had over the majority of american households for 50 years.
Who honestly believes that anything the cable TV industry is FOR (preventing this merger) is in the best interest of the public?
I agree with him, if anything, the original post is the troll.
One of the biggest achievements to HDTV was achieving increased quality *IN THE SAME BANDWIDTH*
The only really solid specification throughout the development of HDTV was that it had to fit in the existing 6 MHz channel spacing.
I believe they extended this to allow multiple "standard definiton" channels per 6 MHz channel. Something like 4. So with digital techniques, broadcasters can use their spectrum four times more efficiently. (Either 4x the pixels, or 4x the content at "old" resolutions).
IBOC one-ups this by fitting CD-quality audio into what is currently *waste spectrum* in the current FM band. (All channels are taken, but the channels are widely spaced. IBOC fits quite nicely in the guard bands of each channel.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Funny, the site seems to be slashdotted:
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/TiVo_20Car_20Radio
What's this Submit thingy do?
The total guard band power for IBOC is approximately 1/100 of the analog FM carrier power for the same range covered.
So not only is it more efficient spectrum-wise, it's more efficient RF power wise.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Arrgh. Must proofread TWICE next time.
4) should read:
Neither Echostar or DTV (DirecTV)
To make this post worthwhile, here's a glossary for the uninitiated:
DVB - Digital Video Broadcast. The worldwide standard for digital satellite TV. Echostar (Dish Network) uses this standard. Video is MPEG-2, audio is generally Layer 2.
CATV - Community Antenna TV. An old term for Cable TV, from the days when they simply rebroadcast a signal from a big antenna on mountaintop, without no special programming.
DSS - Digital Satellite System. The proprietary standard that DirecTV uses for video broadcast. If the merger goes through, this will likely be replaced by standards-complient MPEG2-DVB equipment over a few (many) years.
TV - TeleVision. Probably the largest single reason 60% of americans are fat and lazy.
You may just have to kiss your public radio goodbye as well. The FCC just gave iBiquity a monopoly over something that ALL radio stations will be required to have in the next few years, like HDTV. However, iBiquity is charging thousands of dollars upfront for the encoders and will charge monthly for the use of their equipment! This is a bad thing!
I work with a college station in VA that gets alot of funding from the university, and this development will raise operating costs exponentially. Only large commercial stations will be able to afford these digital broadcasts in the long run. What is it about iBiquity that warrants a government sanctioned monopoly?
A sig! What kind of person do you think I am?
XM/Sirius address completely different markets.
XM/Sirius provide consistent radio channels anywhere in the country.
IBOC provides digital capability for local content.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
It allows "CD quality" digital signals to be simulcast by stations along with their traditional analog feed.
Sounds like a "digital audio transmission". Don't radio stations have to pay (a lot) extra to broadcast that due to the Digital Performance Right in Sound Recordings Act of 1995?
If not I think I'm going to start my own radio station - over 802.11b.
Some FAQs
:)
Some technical FAQs (from the BBC)
We've had DAB in the UK since 1995. (Don't know why the UK is so ahead on some of the broadcasting innovations, but hey. Maybe it's the BBC
Takeup has been slow, gradually starting to take off with a) Cheap (~150USD) sets and b) digital radio being able to be received on Digital TV sets as well
Sound quality is excellent, reception seems miles better than analogue radio, usability great - tune via genre, station, etc. Newer DAB sets have track/ artists info displayed on the set.
I haven't yet succumbed, as I get many new channels through my DTV set, and also as I live in London where there are many, many local/ pirate stations to choose between
If I lived outside a city, you betcha.
http://milkshake.dexy.org
XM... :)
(i) has commercials. Not much, 5mins/hr, but still. Who'd notice if it went up to 5.5, then 6?
(ii) Own by Clear Channel. The same people who killed radio. Ok they didn't do it all by themselves
Sirius...
(i) more expensive. $13 as opposed to $10/month for XM.
(ii) All commercial-free channels.
I love radio. My favorite thing when I can't sleep ( which is very often ), is to go for a long drive and listen to the radio. Some of my best memories as a child is going out for sunday drives with my dad, talking and listening to the radio. But as so many have pointed out, radio is slowly losing its soul.
It seems satellite is the only way to go. But I'd bet that if ClearChannel's XM wins the greater market share, then satellite will suffer the same fate as AM/FM.
As usual, I'm betting on the underdog. XM is own by ClearChannel/DirecTv and a much of others, but sirius seems to make up by delivering a more appealing product.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
2 good articles over at Wired. One on the approval of the digital standard and another on the merger rejection.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
The satellites won't need to be replaced, since they all operate in the same band. A communications satellite is nothing more than a "bent pipe in the sky" - it just retransmits whatever it receives. It doesn't know or care about the signal itself, or even if it's digital or analog. (Hence the name "Echostar").
Replacing the consumer's equipment WILL cost a lot of money, however. Echostar has stated that they will replace a customer's equipment if it is necessary to receive the same programming the currently get. No one will need to "go out and buy" new equipment to keep their service.
(another minor nitpick - GEO satellites are rarely "deorbited". Because they are so far out, it would take much more fuel than they carry (especially at end of life) to deorbit them. Instead, they generally use the last little bit of fuel to push them a little bit out past GEO orbit where they won't get in the way of anything.)
That's a lot of channels
Now, the reason that you can't have 99 radio stations in a given market is because the FCC has established what are called Basic Trade Areas, or BTAs. Each station on a given frequency is assigned a BTA that is determined by running a longley-rice propagation model based on tower height and the effective isotropic radiated power, EIRP. There are 3 classes of FM stations, and each is allowed a certain tower height and a certain EIRP. Once the propagation model is run, it is overlaid with the US Census Bureau's population density models to determine how many people that FM station will cover. Once that FM station is given its BTA with so many recipients, any new station that applies for a construction permit, REGARDLESS OF THE FREQUENCY OR LOCATION, must PROVE that it will not interfere with that stations BTA, if the propagation model run on that proposed station shows at all that it will be throwing power into the established station's BTA in a manner that will reduce the number of people who can receive the established station. Due to the nasty nature of reactance modulated radio (FM), there is a high potential for intermodulation distortion, third order products, and many other nasty phenomena that will cause interference to desired stations. The capture effect of FM can mitigate this to some degree, and this effect is precisely the reason FM was chosen for its band.
Herein lies a problem with massive digital broadcasting. Sure, if you chose a datarate, say 128kbps, and used digital modulation such a QPSK, 16QAM, or some other amplitude/phase modulated signal, you would use less spectrum, but you have to be MUCH more careful about interference and signal to noise ratio. FM does not require a huge S/N ratio to work, and it only has to be about 3dB above an on-frequency interferer for the capture effect to fix the problem. However, digital modulation methods aren't so immune. In the case of something like 256QAM, the symbols are very close to each other in magnatude and phase, so it doesn't take much noise to corrupt a symbol.
It should also be noted that the FCC has settled on an amplitude modulated method (8VSB) for DTV in the US while Europe uses COFDM, which is a lot more like FM (because it's orthogonal, COFDM has much less intersymbol interference). I'm aware of tests run by a consulting firm in the DC area that showed conclusively that COFDM was the better choice over 8VSB. FM is also used for the audio subcarrier in analog television.
So, the moral of the story is, you can't just have more.... :)
Ibuiquity is on channel FM. A digital carrier is inserted at a level about 20 db below the main carrier. Because of the 'capture effect' of FM modulation, a signal 20 db down will not interfere with the main (analog)FM signal. However there is a caveat: The above is true only when the FM receiver is in full limiting (strong signal). With a weak signal, all bets are off. By the way, Ibquity runs with a (MASSIVE) 96 Kbits/sec, using a modified form of APT-X compression. Try listening to a 96K MP3 file and you'll get the idea of how good (or bad, depending upon your point of view) Digital FM will sound. By the way, Digital AM radio by Ibquity runs with a (HUGE) 32Kbits/second stream. It just don't sound too good....
This is a very timely question. It is answered in this article and this op-ed.
Basically, because Senator Leahy is holding up several judicial nominees, the Republican have fired back and put holds on several Democrat nominees, including Jonathan Adelstein, a staffer for Senate Majority leader Daschle and the current nominee for the 5th FCC spot.
Traditionally, the FCC is filled with 5 commissioners, the majority and minority leader of the House and Senate choosing one each, and the President choosing the Chair.
This is actually a big mess right now and causing some to observe they have not seen this type of rancor EVER in the Senate (and that is saying a lot).
Meanwhile a gripe about the moderation system. I think it is ridiculous I can't mod any posts under this article now that I have chosen to add something to it. I comment on articles I am interested in, and I mod in threads I am interested, but I can't do both...that sucks (and yes, I understand the reasons to do so. But given the choice, I would rather comment than mod, but the best is to be able to do both).
Yes. Okay, we bought ours on day 1, but didn't set it up until a few weeks later (it was my Christmas gift) -- still we were running 1.0 and it was rock solid. The stability has actually decreased over time: in the 2.x line I had to do the unplug to reset trick twice. Other than that, bug-free from day 1.
-"Zow"
Such a thing would be a pretty quick road to FCC license revocation...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The FCC and DOJ were particularly concerned that the merger of DirectTV and Echostar would effectivle create a monopoly. Charlie Ergan and the rest of the advocates of the merger argued that the merger was necessary in order to effectively compete with cable. The problem is that in many areas of the country (rural areas, and more than you might think) consumers have a choice of either satellite or nothing. So, the merger would have effectively been a 2:1 and created a monoply in many areas of the country. While it's true that competitive efficiencies may have increased in some urban areas (big satellite company v. cable), the FCC's general policy is that creating competive efficiencies in one market isn't worth creating a monoply in other markets.
I call bullshit! The Republicans did the same thing to Clinton for six years. This is simply what happens when the White House and Senate are held by different parties. You can't expect Dems to approve the conservative right to life'rs that Bush sends up there. Toward the end of his term, he will send up a load of more centrist appointees (with hidden right-wing gems mixed in) to try to get some seats filled prior to a dem taking over. It happened with Clinton and Bush the First, it'll happen again. Don't sweat it too much.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
Both have commercials.
.. I mean public radio any more.... but come on, their commedy channels are so "live and uncut" that they have a form you can submit to turn them off if you dont want your kids to tune them in by mistake :)
All of Sirius' music is commerical free, the other 40 channels have commercials.
Maybe 1/2 of XM's music channels have commercials, but depending on what you listen to you might never notice it. If you like classic/alternative rock (Top Tracks, Deep Tracks, Fred, Ethel, The Loft) you never hear commercials. Same goes for Jazz and Classical, of which only 1 out of 10 channels has commercials.
Now if you listen to Top 20, KISS, The Heart, MTV radio, VH1 radio.... well then you get commercials..
as far as ClearChannel's investment leading to dull boring content.... ok I'll admit on XM you get NASCAR while Sirius gives you three different channels of PBS........ um thats bad right... not that I listen to DNC
-jon
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's Digital FM really about?
Here's all you need to know:
(Yes, the article is about LPFM.)
"What it comes down to -- again -- is money, pure and simple. If an LPFM station takes a slot on the FM dial, then it's one less corporate FM station that can make money off of that allotted frequency. Another argument posed by NAB was that, with the appearance of digital FM, corporate radio stations need all the bandwidth they can get because digital FM takes twice the amount of bandwidth needed by conventional FM broadcasting [emphasis added]. Corporate FM wants to give you, the listener, "CD quality" sound. Digital FM has failed to produce the desired effect, thus making "hogging the FM dial" another groundless NAB contention.
"With Kennard out of the way, the current FCC Chairman Michael Powell is considerably less tolerant of LPFM. And why not, since the NAB is one of the most powerful lobbies in Washington, DC, and can pretty much whip out its wallet and buy whomever they want."
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Here is a list of stations that is CURRENTLY testing this technology. I have no idea what type of receiver you need for this.
WNEW-FM (102.7) in New York; WETA-FM (90.9), WHFS-FM (99.1), WJFK-FM (106.7), WAMU-FM (88.5), and WTOP-AM (1500), in Washington, D.C.; KLLC-FM (97.3), KDFC (102.1) and KABL-AM (960) in San Francisco; WILC-AM (900) and WPOC-FM (93.1) in Baltimore; WNOP-AM (740) in Cincinnati, WPST-FM (97.5), and WBJB-FM (90.5) in Central, N.J.; KWNR-FM (95.5), KNPR-FM (89.5), and KSFN-AM (1140) in Las Vegas; and WGRV-FM (105.1) and WWJ-AM (950) in Detroit; WWMO-FM (98.9), in Orlando.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
As far as I know, DirecTV doesn't put a lot of error correction into their signals... loss of a block of data just scrambles up your picture.
You're forgetting something, though... a digital signal takes up MUCH less space than an analog one, especially when you're encoding voice or music (MP3 or Vorbis, anyone?). Since the signal is much smaller, you can encode error correction in the remaining bandwidth.
This means that what you're listening to through the speakers isn't a real-time signal... it's delayed slightly because you want an opportunity to not only receive the primary signal but the redundant error-correction stream as well.
If you were to interleave all of this data over a period of 30 seconds, you could conceivably have a drop-out of about that long in the signal and still have full-quality audio playing out the speakers.
Of course, if your signal drop-out exceeds the available correction data, you're right in that you'd get nothing (or something other than static).
All opinions presented here aren't mine.
The 721 is available now... check Ebay or any of the online retailers. I just ordered one, in fact.
And the standard I referred to is MPEG-DVB. This is the international standard for TV broadcast. It also means that you can (on the DishPlayer and 501, at least) pull the original MPEG-2 program stream from the drive and edit it on a computer. This is the only way to edit content with NO analog stage, from the content provider (in most cases) all the way through your DiVX encoder. Granted, I'm sure the MPAA isn't real happy about this "feature", and the 721 may store the stream encrypted, but having the content MPEG-2 is a big start. Even if you can pull the content off the DirecTIVO, it will be in the proprietary encoding used in DSS, or it will have been re-encoded/transcoded by the TIVO hardware - not sure if it records the satellite transport stream or not.
I wasn't thinking of it in the original post, but another standard it uses is USB... so you can use off the shelf ethernet adapters, instead of some funky custom hack the TIVO needs. For what it's worth, Echostar runs their GPL compliency web server on a 721.
And yeah, the drive upgrade issue is a pain, but all of the vendors go to some effort to make that difficult. Tivo doesn't exactly make it a supported process, either.
"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
If you think your typical FM station is going to broadcast CD quality music, dream on. They are incapable of broadcasting FM quality music. The average FM station has a program director who doesn't think his signal is competitive unless every last decibel of dynamic range has been exterminated. They use multi-band compressors to get 100% modulation in every frequency range. They don't care if it sounds like shit, with high distortion and no dynamics.
The problem is that there is no way to broadcast in a format that's compatible with current DSS and DVB receivers at the same time - they are completely different formats. It's much easier for a single, large company to manage a conversion to new hardware, than for two smaller companies to come to an agreement that will force one to replace ALL of their consumer hardware, at least for consumers that want to receive locals.
I'm sure they are looking at ways to make a receiver that will work on both standards, but that won't help the millions of existing receivers.
It's definately a good idea - I would do it by creating a new company to handle the local content for both parent companies - but the format conversion is a real problem. Another lesson in benefits of being standards complient...
(to be fair to Hughes, DSS was chosen before DVB was finalized).
RIAA Sues Radio Stations for Giving Away Free Music
...
LOS ANGELES--The Recording Industry Association of America filed a $7.1 billion lawsuit against the nation's radio stations Monday, accusing them of freely distributing copyrighted music.
"It's criminal," RIAA president Hilary Rosen said. "Anyone at any time can simply turn on a radio and hear a copyrighted song. Making matters worse, these radio stations often play the best, catchiest song off the album over and over until people get sick of it. Where is the incentive for people to go out and buy the album?"
According to Rosen, the radio stations acquire copies of RIAA artists' CDs and then broadcast them using a special transmitter, making it possible for anyone with a compatible radio-wave receiver to listen to the songs.
cpeterso
Well being as the Red Book standard defines CDDA to be stereo, 16 bit, 44.1 kHz audio, then I suppose I can only assume they've figured out a way to transmit the 1.3 mbit/sec rate used by CDDA data over the gaps between the FM stations. That's quite impressive! Well, given they losslessly encode it, you can expect perhaps a rate of only 50-75% of that.
Anything else and they better stop advertising "CD Quality" audio. I'm really sick of people using "CD Quality" to describe anything they want for their own marketing purposes. Microsoft is actually trying to claim that WMA at **64 kb/s** is "CD quality". Disgusting.
--
grep "xercist"
Call me simple, but it seems to me that if two satellites merged, they'd both be killed.
Why on earth does the FCC need to get involved?
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
Satellite lets you have all the channels no matter where you are in the coutry
A few years ago I did quite a bit of flying over Japan. I noticed that there seemed to be some sort of "Superstation" up and down the country. As soon as one broadcast began to fade from my scanner, I could tune in another identical broadcast (though on a different frequency.) If something similar was done in the U.S., but all on the same freq, there could be a digital superstation from coast to coast.
1. Would current FCC rules allow this?
2. Does anyone here know what the deal was with the station in Japan?
Evil is the money of root.
"The Federal Communications Commission has voted 4-0 to reject a $26 billion merger between satellite TV providers Echostar Communications and Hughes Electronics."
Hughes and Echostar were saying that such a merger would give them the hardware to give more areas access to local stations through the satellite signals. Now that that's fallen through, it seems the only way I'll get decent reception for Enterprise is by paying ~$12 a month to Cox for their lifeline service.
Or does anybody know of a decent low-profile VHF/UHF antenna?
Digital radio? What's the point in shelling out extra $$$ just to hear the latest Clear Channel tripe with slightly better sound quality? Crap is crap, no matter how it's encoded.
If public radio stations installed this equipment, the cost may be justified. If not, I'll save my cash for Sirius.
Silly question: How about a digital radio with a digital audio out interface?
(I can hear the RIAA rolling in the aisles now...)
Actually, even without the Echostar/DirecTV merger, small DBS dishes have done serious harm to local cable systems anyway.
Because both DirecTV and Dish Network can offer hundreds of channels of programming, they already can do things that very few cable systems can do. I mean, things like multichannel HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and TMC first started on DBS systems. And DBS systems are a sports junkie's delight: you can get ESPN's multichannel packages for college football and college basketball, and on DirecTV you can get multichannel packages for MLB, NBA, NHL and NFL, which allows you to see almost every game in its entirety. How many cable systems are capable of such enormous programming choices?
Because of the design of DBS systems, they may by 2010 be the primary means to deliver 1080i HDTV programming to most of the country, since it'll be vastly cheaper to transmit HDTV programming by satellite than by upgrading cable systems to support 1080i HDTV.
ascap (american society of composers and authors) does some of the tracking for authors.
What we certainly don't need is the McDonalds of radio, where everything is exactly the same across the whole country. As Mr. Pibb pointed out, with ClearChannel, most radio stations play almost exactly the same thing already.
We need more small, community-based radio stations that are actually connected with and serve the people in their area. Not something that broadcasts a bland national inoffensive monoculture, and not dozens of radio stations owned by the same company.
You might think by my signature that I'm a bit biased here, and I am
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Haven't seen too much that would imply intelligence. Raw animal cunning and an undying hunger to enslave the world to her perverted will perhaps, but not much brains. Look how far she got with HillaryCare and tell me again how smart she is.
Democrat delenda est
This isn't MP3.
This isn't OGG.
This isn't PAC.
This isn't VQF.
This isn't AC3.
This isn't RA.
This isn't MPEG-2.
This isn't WMA.
This isn't MP3Pro.
This isn't VOC.
This isn't FLAC.
This is something different. The bitrate at which it operates is not relevant. The subjective effect of this compression scheme is something to be determined by a skilled listener with a good playback chain with a typical amount of bit-rot in the stream, not wild guesswork.
You're doing noone else a favor by spreading FUD in any circle, let alone yourself. Until you have listened to the system for yourself, just shush.
Thanks.
Kid-proof tablet..
I agree with you, and with the parent to your post, but I was thinking more along the lines of a commercial free (yeah, right!) subscription service as an alternative to satellite. Could we just tune into one "superstation" freq, select a "channel" on that freq, and drive coast to coast with music in the genre of our choice?
Evil is the money of root.
Just a post to cancel moderation - the stupid system magically gave a flamebait to one of the posts at random!
...contribution when that "contribution" is in the form of Fox News and relentless bias in favor of the Republicans.
Hughes Electronics was the object of a bidding war between Charlie Ergen and Rupert Murdoch. There are four reasons:
Many were surprised when Murdoch walked out of negotiations with DirecTV's board when the board member from GM seemed to be persuaded (by his boss) to side with Echostar. Given the vital importance to NewsCorp of getting a US satellite property, it didn't make sense that he would just give up.
Now it is pretty clear he walked out of that meeting thinking he could buy DirecTV for less after his cronies in Washington shot down the Echostar merger. It's much easier to buy something you want badly when there are no other bidders.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.