Sony joins HD radio push

Japanese electronics maker will begin selling digital radios, making it one of the largest manufacturers to back the fledgling tech.

The story "Sony joins HD radio push" published May 29, 2007 at 5:03 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from Reuters expires after 30 days.

[bobby_brady]

HD Radio = more commercials

Radio is practically dead. I hate listening to radio. I get so sick and tired of having to listen to the dozen home loan and mortgage ads on my commute. The commute is bad enough, being forced to listen to tiring ads is worse. I gave up on radio and switched to XM and will stay with XM.

[koolkid1935]

Really?

I have had HD radio in my truck since for almost a year now, and I have heard no commercials to date on the HD sub-station that I normally listen to.

[jcassara]

HD Radio = More Choices

This is excellent news for listeners, stations, and retail outlets.

HD radio streams provide a wider selection to choose from from
your local stations, at digital audio rates much higher than XM or
Sirius. Yes, you may hear commercial breaks on these streams,
just as you will hear them on some XM channels. Running a
radio station is not an inexpensive endeavor.

Radio is not dead. And as long as the medium is cheap-as-free,
it will survive. Programmatically, it needs to re-invent itself,
because it has been steered by the "wrong lot" of people for the
past decade. It's my contention the "playgound of ideas" HD
offers will be an open doorway to that re-invention.

J. Cassara
Operations Manager
WDNA-FM

[maniac42]

HD radio = reduced signal strength

FCC rules limit the total power a station may radiate. HD radio requires some of the power to be shifted to a subcarrier, leaving less for the analog signal. The result for stations is a smaller range and smaller audience. The result for listeners beyond 30-40 miles from the transmitter is an unusable signal, either digital or analog. No amount of marketing hype can get around this limit.

[RF Warrior]

Nope, afraid not...

HD Radio does NOT equal reduced signal strength. The HD carriers are added IN ADDITION to the normal analog carrier, which is certainly not reduced. No amount of marketing hype is required. 50,000 watts of analog is always 50,000 watts of analog, no matter how many digital carriers are floating on either side of it. Sorry, but you are wrong.

Jeff Welton
Technical Sales Rep
former Field Service Tech
Nautel (manufacturer of broadcast transmitters - both analog AND HD capable)

[richbwood]

IBOC Does Not Reduce Analog Signal Strength

IBOC has no effect on the signal strength of a station's analog signal. However, the digital part of the signal is a mere 1% of the analog. A 10KW analog station will have a digital signal of 100 watts.

Kenwood loaned me a receiver. I drove a 100 mile radius of Western MA. The digital signals reverted to analog about 10 miles before the analog became noisy.

With a small FM attic antenna I regularly receive Boston stations about 90 miles away in analog. FM is line of sight, so there's no absolute limit on reception distance. It's a combination of height, power and terrain on the station side and the type and height of the receiving antenna. As a kid in Western MA I regularly listened to New York City stations about 125 air miles away - in stereo.

The analog signal is high-level combined (in most cases) with a second (digital) transmitter. Analog power isn't taken away to provide digital.

The reduced range is in the digital mode. The main digital signal blends back to analog. The HD-2 and HD-3 signals simply disappear.

My trip from Boston to Western MA had many analog signals strong at the 50 mile mark. Digital began to disappear at 35-40 miles. This is a hybrid system requiring low digital power. When all receivers are digital (an estimated 800 million receivers need to be replaced) the analog will be shut down and the digital power increased.

I expect that to be 2-3 decades from now, if ever.

You need to deal with radio propagation and ignore the marketing hype. The hype is for digital. Analog is the same as it's always been, technically.

Rich

[ddesy]

Okay....

Wake me up when you can get a basic HD radio for $50. Why should I invest $100+ in something that hasn't proven itself yet?

[eye2fun]

Wiki it First! Then read the Propaganda & Lies! ;)

OMG I'm sure if we wait long enough, besides causing more commercials and other ignorant gibberish, we'll soon hear it causes cancer. HD Radio is a compression codec developed over 6 yrs ago. It received approval by the FCC in 2002. It is a method of sending more than one compressed signal over the exact same frequency at one time. Thus improving quality to near that of a CD!

Less interference, less static and without increasing the cost to any extent in it's transmission. Yes you will have to have a receiver capable of transforming these digital signals into sound waves that you can hear.

But it will not make more commercials, no it will not result in weaker signals, and no it not even come close to giving males testicle cancer and woman the hibe-gebies in their right breast.

You won't pay more for the service and it's a technology that has been a long time coming. Don't judge it till it's out and nobody will be forcing you to buy into anyway. But will miss out on the quality and choices it will bring to radio! :)



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_Radio

[omegafiler]

This will only work if it's better quality than XM/Siruis

The only reason I don't use XM/Sirius is because the quality sucks compared to CD. It's just a bunch of compressed audio that makes FM sound almost acceptable. They decided that MORE channels was more important that fewer better QUALITY channels.

If HD radio proves to be at or near CD quality, it'll have my vote. Commercials or not.

[howard220]

XM

Oh, the music content is good, as are the choices, but the constant between-songs announcements and the loud-mouthed DJ's on the 50's and 60's channels are so damned annoying that I have to change the channel as soon as they come on. I would never pay for this directly; I'm forced to get it through DirecTV, who used to carry the superior Music Choice. I've complained by e-mail to the various "offending" XM channels, and they pretty much blew me off.

[gosmith7590]

HD Radio is a farce!

HD Radio is a farce:

http://hdradiofarce.blogspot.com/