High Definition Radio is Here

nfranzen submits this story/advertisement: "Yesterday, I had the opportunity to buy the first High Definition (HD) Radio in the United States. HD Radio, invented by iBiquity Digital, adds a digital channel to the sidebands of an existing analog FM signal. The technology is still pretty new, but I can tell you first-hand that listening to my favorite local FM station in HD sounds just like I am listening to a CD. Well, except for the commercials (grin). Here are some links to local TV news coverage and a news release for more info. HD receivers will hit the open market following the Consumer Electronics Show next week in Vegas." We had an old story about the FCC approving these digital broadcasts in the FM radio bands.

Comments

Too Little, too late.

[ackthpt]

I bought into satellite a year and half ago and rarely listen to regular broadcast anymore. Audio quality is good enough and far fewer annoying DJ's and commercials. The only reason left to catch local broadcasts is traffice reports.

Worth it? Yeah, I spend an average of an hour a day driving. It's definitely worth it.

All digital?

[Cat_Byte]

Is this all digital or dual mode? I still steer clear of all-digital networks of cell phones simply because the range is shorter. Instead of getting static when the signal gets weak it just shuts off. Anybody know if this is the case on these things?

Re:All digital?

[mlyle]

Yes, you can tune in plain FM stations with a HD-FM receiver.

BTW, digital cellular is popular with the carriers not only because of spectrum efficiency, but because of superior link budgeting with lower output power. The range is actually better on digital cellular protocols (whether TDMA or CDMA) than FDMA/AMPS. The reason why your user experience is better with analog is that there is so much more analog stuff deployed. This is likely to change (not exactly a ton of AMPS equipment is still getting deployed).

Data compression reduces signal bandwidth. And reduced bandwidth means less noise in the band where the signal is, and also means that the signal, since it is less wide, is stronger. This translates to better S/N and thus better link budget. Also, there are things like coding gain which you can't make use of with analog transmissions.

I don't know how the HD FM divides output power/spectrum to the subcarriers. But it is likely that you can still get a perfectly clear digital signal when the analog FM station would be unlistenable.

Re:Solution looking for a problem

[daBass]

Two words: multipath distortion. Seen as ghosting on your TV, but also a big problem with radio in both mountainous as urban enviroments.

Forget IBOC - The rest of the world has DAB

[rueger]

"HD" Radio (formerly known as IBOC, or In Band on Channel), is an inferior technology which many have found less than awe inspiring. It's adoption in the U.S. is the result of politics and money, not technological superiority.

One reviewer above described IBOC thus: "Let's start with audio quality. It's my opinion that the current 96kb/s codec is incapable of reproducing even a simple male voice without generating objectionable artifacts. It gets worse with music. On the classical cut the strings were thin and harsh. For those of you who are broadcasting contemporary formats, the codec removes sibilance unnaturally, changes the timber of symbols and makes back up vocals strident. This is not CD-quality by a long shot. In fact, during my listening test I found that our station's plain old analog signal sounded better than the 96kb/s codec."

At the same time that the U.S. has locked themselves into IBOC, the rest of the world has been moving ahead with Eureka 147 DAB, a purely Digital technology without the legacy concerns. Fifty countries and counting, with DAB building steadily, especially in Europe.

The USA Stands Alone

[TimSneath]

It's astonishing to see how far the USA is prepared to be isolated from the rest of the world when it comes to technological standards like this. The rest of the world is switching to Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) for digital radio as a replacement for FM, with countries like the UK being particularly advanced in their adoption. Here's a map showing DAB adoption across the world - notice the big empty space where the US is? Instead the US have decided to go it alone with this hybrid solution that will be the NTSC of the radio world. What a pity...

I've had a DAB radio for six months now and have been really impressed with the sound quality, ease of tuning and extra information that's displayed with each broadcast. No more trying to guess the band playing a particular song - it scrolls automatically along the LCD display. Want to see what stations are available? Just scroll through the list, rather than speculatively twiddling a knob and trying to identify something through the white noise. There's a whole world out there that the US is missing out on...

Instead of more bandwidth

[HiKarma]

Not that more bandwidth is bad, but the real excitement in radio these days is new ways to use it, more features.

For example, since it's so easy and cheap to do, why not a car radio with Tivo like functions:

a) Recording multiple stations at once, letting me switch among the recordings, FF, pause and rewind among them. Heck, with software radio record _all_ the stations, all the time.

b) Know the local traffic stations (ie. traffic every 10 minutes on the 8s) and record that slot and give it to me at the touch of a button, or better still just tune in some digital traffic service that will tell me only of my route.

Ditto the news, always record the latest newscast, let me hear it any time I want.

c) Of course let me pause and resume. Also record my favourite talk shows (NPR for example) like Tivo, and let me play them.

d) Have a speech interface so I don't have to look at the radio to select programs or tune it or otherwise control it! Just give me a little wheel or 4-way control on the wheel similar to what MP3 players have.

e) And of course, what I am now playing with is using an MP3 jukebox to forget about radio entirely, exept for news, traffic and weather.
I download NPR programs into the jukebox to listen to them. I can even record Morning Edition in the early morning and listen to it in the morning commute, except with FF and pause etc.

Plus of course, music, which Mp3 jukeboxes do just great.

f) Speaking of radio, put 802.11 in the car MP3 player so when it notices it is parked in the driveway, it syncs up my latest music and audio.

More bandwidth is of course nice, but boring.
Think about cool features.