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HD Radio Recording In the US?

unreceivedpacket writes "The public radio stations I listen to have been advertising their conversion to HD Radio format for some time. They advertise multiple channels, their second channel playing all classical, all the time. I am interested in purchasing a receiver so I can listen to this extra content, and was also hoping to find a receiver with a built-in recorder so I could time-shift programs that are not otherwise available as legal pod-casts. My initial queries have returned few models that support any kind of digital recording, and the existing ones seem out of production or sorely lacking features. Is this the state of Digital Radio in the US? Are there any legal recording devices for HD Radio? Any good solutions for recording and time-shifting, perhaps through Linux?"

17 of 303 comments (clear)

  1. Liberate the Spectrum. by Erris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Liberate the specturm or you will suffer digital restrictions. Vista's checking of line voltages to make sure no one has clipped on an analog recording device should tell you where all of this is going. The RIAA has been screaming about "radio pirates" for 50 years. Digital broadcast gives them a way to close the "analog hole" they so dread. If the makers colude with broadcasters, only "authorized" players will have keys to decode "HD" signals. If the specturm is liberated, everything will be high quality because no one but big publishers wants to degrade music.

    --
    DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
    1. Re:Liberate the Spectrum. by Devistater · · Score: 5, Funny

      The submitter?

    2. Re:Liberate the Spectrum. by hansamurai · · Score: 5, Insightful

      What's replacing radio?

      The Ipod? That's been around for years and the people who want one already have them and have stopped listening to radio years ago.

      Podcasts? One of the only mediums that has a lower signal to noise ratio than radio.

      Sirius/XM? Meh, I know one person that subscribes to them, I don't think they're growing very fast anymore, if they ever did.

      Streaming radio? Legislated into oblivion last year or the year before.

      TV? Been there, done that.

      Radio is sticking around, it may be becoming less relevant to your ears but I doubt you've listened in years anyway. Radio is free, and the ultimate road companion. Plus it won't be going away simply because of weather related announcements.

    3. Re:Liberate the Spectrum. by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      sweet so how does that radio work getting traffic reports when I am sitting on 696 just outside novi?

      Oh wait, they DONT. Oh well I am sure they work great for the 78 year old lady that has to live on $600 a month. that $50.00 a moth charge for broadband is worth it....

      1 dinosaur radio station has way more listeners than all your internet radio stations all rolled together have.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    4. Re:Liberate the Spectrum. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who cares if radio is locked down

      Only citizens.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:Liberate the Spectrum. by postbigbang · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Consider the chaos of other countries that have even small portions of open spectrum. Nothing works subsequently, and you'll get some trucker with a 10kw transmitter in Arkansas over powering your TV, radio, cell phone, and WiFi because of the broadband noise produced.

      Free spectrum would be like removing the lines on the highway and the lane markings at intersections. Go ahead.

      --
      ---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
  2. Go Satellite instead... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Satellite Radio is a much better choice for this than the joke that is HD Radio.

    The Sirius Stiletto 2 is a great little radio, with full time-shifting capabilities.

    1. Re:Go Satellite instead... by jandrese · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The downside is of course that while Satellite radio works everywhere, HD radio only works if you're within 50 feet of the transmitter. I live in an area theoretically covered in HD channels, but actually pulling any of them in reliably requires a substantial antenna and a very good tuner.

      I really think the FCC screwed the pooch by giving Ibiquity a monopoly on HD radio with their halfassed system. Now you can pay a licensing fee to build the receiver for a service that barely works at all. I was originally excited about HD radio too because I thought it would be like Digital TV, where you can distribute a crystal clear picture out to where the channel would normally get a bit fuzzy and deal more elegantly with having channels directly adjacent to yours (a big problem around here, where sometimes stations will have stations on either side of the dial and most radio receivers will end up mixing your signal with the adjacent ones randomly when you're driving down the road). Instead we have a system where you practically never get an HD lock.

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      I read the internet for the articles.
  3. HD Radio adapter for computers by kriston · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Please visit www.rush2112.net for an adapter and controller for the Visteon HD Radio car unit and the one from Directed Electronics.
    It can be used with a number of satellite radio recorders like SatAmp to record broadcasts and timeshift. It also comes with a demo and development kit if you like that sort of thing.

    http://www.rush2112.net/mkportal/modules/oscommerce/product_info.php?products_id=39

    I have his XM and Sirius adapters. They all work on the same principle by talking to a vehicle OEM tuner via the RS-232 port that they all have.

    --

    Kriston

  4. Please read before posting... please! by Red+Flayer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you know of a solution, don't write it in this discussion!

    Please be aware that not everyone who browses slashdot has our best interests at heart. Any commercial method to circumvent DRM will be jumped upon by our broadcast content overlords. Any non-commercial method will be legislated out of existence... the longer the media cartels remain in the dark, the longer we have to enjoy our right to timeshift content.

    Like usenet... the first rule of usenet is that you don't talk about usenet.

    Sorry for the pessimism and tinfoilhattery, but this entire ask slashdot question just screams "honeypot" to me, even if that wasn't its intent.

    --
    "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    1. Re:Please read before posting... please! by Free+the+Cowards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You know that whole business of "information wants to be free", not being able to hide information that anyone can obtain freely, etc.? Well it cuts both ways. Just as they can't protect their content, you can't protect your methods for getting their content. So don't bother trying.

      --
      If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
  5. Re:Minimal /. relevancy I think by electricbern · · Score: 5, Funny

    You might have missed the memo about Slashdot's new algorithm.
    if (article.contains("Linux")) {
    frontpage.add(article);
    }

    --
    alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls /dev > il && tail daemon.log'
  6. Amazon by krgallagher · · Score: 5, Informative

    A simple Amazon search turned up quite a few models. Some have optical out. One has an iPod dock.

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    Insert Generic Sig Here:

    1. Re:Amazon by Ichoran · · Score: 4, Informative

      The one with an iPod dock only tells the iPod the title of songs so you can buy them later.

      Not too useful if you want to time-shift something that isn't a song. And since you could just go buy the song in the first place and have it at any time you wanted it without even waiting for the radio to play it, if you're interested in time-shifting it's probably not for songs.

  7. HD Radio is a Farce! by PocketRadio · · Score: 4, Informative

    HD Radio/IBOC jams on both AM and FM and suffers from dropouts, poor coverage, interference, bland programming, and almost zero consumer interest: http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/

  8. Re:Read and think before spew? by Goody · · Score: 4, Informative

    Let me rephrase my previous post. While you can pass two beams of light through each other, and you can pass two radio spectrum waves through each other, this is totally irrelevant to radio interference. Beam the two waves, whether visible light or radio spectrum into a receiver and while they can add and subtract, they can destroy information to the point where the intelligence can't be extracted. If you take the simplest model of a carrier modulated with intelligence by turning it on and off, one can create a interfering signal that is turned on when the intended signal is turned off. Match the phase and amplitude perfectly and no technology in the world will extract the signal, hence interference.

    To say that interference is a big lie is an outrageously simple and wrong conclusion.

    --
    Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
  9. from a broadcasters perspective.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm a broadcast radio engineer. i'm a tad biased, so to speak:

    1. A privately held codec has no place on the public spectrum. Any hobbyist should be able to build a receiver without paying a license fee.

    2. from an operational standpoint it's death to AM at night. First adjacent channels (ie 1000khz & 1010khz) HD's will interfere with analog signals via skip: listening to distant AM signals (DX'ing) at night will be a thing of the past, especially as solar activity increases over the next 5 years.

    3. We as broadcasters have failed to provide meaningful content on the main signals, and now we're polluting media channels with bad content and no revenue. We've failed to promote hd in any meaningful way. The only clear winner is not the broadcaster nor the listener, but the ibiquity corporation.

    the actual question?
    i don't believe it does HD, but the radioshark is a analog device which does what you're looking for:
    http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/radioshark