ATSC hand held TV

[Chip Fetrow]

You seem to think I have a dog in that hunt.  I don’t.  I think IBAC is a stupid idea, and just causes interference, and with no real  benefits.

On AM, IBAC just rips up the first adjacent, and to a lesser extent, the second adjacent.  I find it pretty funny when big companies interfere with their own statins in distant markets at night.  Thankfully, many are waking up to that problem and at minimum, turning it off at night.

The data rate on AM is far too low to have any kind of fidelity, especially since iBiquity didn’t bother to license a decent CODEC.  FM is nearly as bad, especially when the data is so sliced up as to have two to four so called HD streams.

Around my house, I mostly have analog tuned radios.  It is amazing the noise in the sidebands on FM.  It is dreadful, and on several of my radios I hear it when center tuned!  It is just a really bad idea.

Sadly, at least on FM, it isn’t going away.  CPB has dumped a lot of money into equipping NPR stations to “HD.”

You would think iBiquity would know how to market “HD” Radio, but they don’t.  They CLAIM to have spent millions or even billions of Dollars promoting it.  They haven’t.  All that has been done is that “HD” stations have dropped in “HD” spots in place of unsold inventory.  It cost them nothing.  Even with all that promotion, try walking into Best Buy or Cell Phone Shack and buying an “HD” radio.  I was finally able to buy one at Radio — er, Cell Phone Shack, but I had to look it up on-line, prove to them they had several and find it for myself.

I have only found one sales person who knew what it is, at  Cell Phone Shack in Kent, Washington.  He told me all about it, and how little of it was actually on the air in the Seattle market.  I took him out to my van and showed him a complete FM analog/HD radio station, audio automation through coax, but no antennas since the tower guy had them.  He was not impressed.  Not enough bouncing meters and flashing lights.  My rented van spent a week on a mountain top near Seattle so we could drive test the signal.  I had to baby-sit it all night as we (by law) had to man the studio and transmitter or control point, and we had no separate studio or remote control point.  Kind of funny, in a sick sort of way.

 OH, and I get about 60 or even more analog stations at my house.  Ask me how many so called HD stations I can receive.  NONE!  HD is a bust.


On the other hand, I think you have missed something pretty key.  Nearly every car comes with a satellite receiver, or is satellite ready, and they come with HD.  It doesn’t work well, and many BMW dealers have been forced to swap out Blaupunkt radios which automatically default to HD, and it has to be turned off each time you start the car or change radios, but the radios have gotten to be more user friendly, and work better.

In the NE US, Southern California and Chicago area, many or most FMs are short spaced, so when the FCC allowed power increases for iBiquity most stations in those areas did not get power increases, though some did in one sideband.

Ask me why I call it IBAC.  It is not In Band On Channel, it became and is In Band ADJACENT Channel.

Nope, I would rather it just go away.

Now, if the FCC and broadcasters would just cut to some real digital radio, that would be great, but that is never going to happen.  Remember Eureka 147?  We could have done that, and the UK did.  They are actually shutting down analog transmitters.

By the way, used to receive NTSC from DC, Baltimore, weak Channel 8 from Harrisburg, and Channel 12 from Philadelphia.  Now, ask me what I can pick up using th same antennas.  No ATSC at all, only the Frankin FM from Arlington on Channel 6.

—chip

On Apr 28, 2014, at 9:57 PM, <wb4jfi at knology.net> <wb4jfi at knology.net> wrote:

> Hey, how's that RADIO digital transition coming???  Anyone selling those great digital radios for your car anymore????  (Yes, I came to Gannett while we still owned a significant part of the technology behind "Ubiquity",  I met some of the SRI and other folks involved in that, so I personally like COFDM).  How soon are the power-wasting ANALOG radio transmitters going to be shut down?  IBOC anyone?