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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.
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Never confuse volume with power.
High definition photos of Mars and now High definition radio? I do believe /. is spoiling us.
--- any post that takes longer than 20 seconds to write, isn't worth writing
Um, it's digital, so there won't be any static. Poor signal will probably sound like a bad cell phone connection, with cutouts, echos, and "robot voices." I think I'd prefer the static.
"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.
Three Squirrels
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...