GM pulling HD Radio?

I declared HD radio DOA years ago. Strangely it's carcass refuses to turn over. It was only in 2012 that I became absolutely certain. At the Radio Ink Convergence conference the word was that "AM and FM are being eliminated from the dash of two car companies within two years and will be eliminated from the dash of all cars within five years."  That was pretty decisive. Radio HD or otherwise was a dinosaur.

The expectation by most parties was that streaming services would eat radio alive. Pandora, Spotify, and TuneIn, iHeart, Beats Music, MOG, Napster, Mixcloud, WiMP, Sound Cloud, Hype Machine, Rdio.. and so many others are better able to get into a niche market than broadcast radio. Far better actually, many can be curated for the personal tastes of an individual. Radio cannot do that.But despite the announcements or 2 and 3 years ago I had not found my car dashboard to have changed much. But just a couple weeks ago there was a little side story on Inside Radio. Technology issues have forced General Motors to temporary pull HD Radio out of some GM cars.

"As for the other Chevrolet models that are seeing digital radio disappear in 2015 models, engineers are working to get it back into those cars as quickly as possible. But with the car industry’s 12 to 18 month manufacturing lead time, it could mean the issue will stretch into the 2016 model year. GM has been mum so far about its problem, but the Cadillac announcement may ease fears that the auto industry is rethinking its digital radio strategy."

But then just 6 days ago Radio World covered a related story.  GM removed HD from five 2015 models. Consumers still get really irritated about the pauses when switching batch and forth between analog and digital. So for at least a full year the following models will not have HD radios: the Chevy Traverse, Chevy Silverado truck, Buick Enclave and Regal and the Chevy Impala. But in most of those cases they are offering streaming (G4/LTE) connections.

Ibiquity of course offered the same benign press release dismissing the changes as a speed bump and reminding us that HD Radio is now available in 177 models... 

2009 Time Warp!

Remember back in 2009 when people thought HD radio would take off?


Pogue's Posts : HD Radio: Status Report

HD-2 simulcast

On hundreds of stations in America there is a second channel or even third channel you could listen to. No one is listening, but that doesn't mean it's not there. Only consumers with a HD capable radio can tune into this HD-2 channel and very few of them do. Conceptually it's a leap for consumers to understand that each frequency can carry more than one channel of programming. HD radios have generally failed to convey this in an easily understood interface. None-the-less, these stations are still there. Most of these stations are running original content, but increasingly on the HD-2 and HD-3 sub channels I am seeing simulcasts of other stations. Allow me to give a few examples.

98.1 KUDL in Kansas City is simulcasting 980 KMBZ-AM,on their HD-3 another Entercom stick. This approach makes a lot of sense as AM radio dies a writhing static and bleeding noise filled death. On their HD-2 is 1660 KXTR-AM, a classical station.
More here.

In Los Angeles 95.1 KFRG is simulcast on the HD-2 channel of 94.7 KTWV. Interestingly enough, Mt. Wilson FM Broadcasters owners of 105.1 KKGO asked the FCC to rule on that Viacom’s arrangement. the suggest that these simulcasts violate the FCC’s multiple ownership rules. I doubt very much this is a total simulcast, its probably a goulash of WFAN programming with local ads inserted.
In an interesting variation 660 WFAN-AM in New York is simulcast on the HD channels of three stations in Florida. In Orlando, HD-3 on 105.9 WOCL HD-3, in Tampa,on the HD-3 of 94.1 WLLD HD3 (94.1) in Tampa and in West Palm Beach the HD-3 channel of 104.3 WEAT. More here.
Most recently daytimer 820 WSWI-AM the University of Southern Indiana’s college station has begun simulcasting on the HD-2 channel 90.7 WPSR a 14,000 watt high school station. More here. I'll note now that this is the first case of a college station simulcasting on an HD channel at another station.

The power behind crystal radio sets

In the 1920s the U.S. Government actually distributed literature on making crystal radios. Soon crystal radio sets will no longer work. In February of next year analog TV will cease in favor of HD TV. It is expected by most parties that despite severe problems, radio will go the same way, both AM and FM if you side with Clearchannel's Jeff Littlejohn. Whenever that happens, if it happens, these simplest of tuners will die.

A crystal radio requires no direct power source. It is entirely powered by the radio waves it receives. This is the simplest kind of radio receiver. It's very difficult to name a single or most important inventor. But that didn't stop me from writing about many of them in the past. [Before you nit-pick I'll state for the record that this is the simplest of all radios.] I'll list the parts below but only one of them really needs additional explaining, the diode. I'll get into that in steps, but first lets' cover the radios components:

1. Antenna
*I've covered this here.

2. Coil
Loops of wire, usually copper. Tuning different frequencies is manages with fewer or additional turns of wire in the coil. Iit needs to be grounded. Coil + capacitor = resonant circuit.

3. Diode
This is where the crystal comes in. It's not a lump of quartz. The octahedral crystal is a lump of galena a.k.a. lead sulfide, an ionic compound of lead and sulfur. A wire contact is used to form a junction with the crystal until it forms a diode. The wire is called a "cat's whisker." I hate the name but that's the nomenclature. The wire is usually phosphor bronze. To tune, one literally had to probe the surface of the crystal until it generated sound confirming the complete circuit.

Note: There are also iron pyrite and silicon diodes but they are less sensitive. Modern crystal fans use germanium. The Schottky diode is a silicon diode. Walter Schottky's design was sound, and compensated for it's lack of sensitivity with greater efficiency. But suffered from thermal instability. In other words, it gets hot enough to break shit. See below.

More complicated was connecting the diode to both the coil and the earpiece. The normal heat of a soldering iron could damage the already irascible wad of galena. This was often instead soldered with wood's metal. Wood's metal is an alloy of bismuth, lead, tin, and cadmium. It has a melting point of under 160 °F. Still, it releases toxic fumes at that temp. This was really truly such a pain in the ass many people just improvised clamps.

4. Ground
You need to ground the circuit, this is usually between the antenna and coil.

5. Headphone
For a crystal set, these need to have high impedance.

The basic way it functions is that the antenna receives the signal. The coil stores the energy in it's magnetic field. Through it the wave energy moves to the diode. The diode rejects half of the alternating current converting it to pulsating DC current. This allows the headphone to work. If you fed AC current into an earpiece the alternating sides of the wave cancel each other out and you get an amplitude of zero. More here and here.

5.1-channel surround sound!

Apparently it was J.D. Power and Associates who did the research that indicated surround sound is a top feature that new car buyers want in their next vehicle. Bot those goobers also recommend the Altima. What the hell do they know? The reasoning is that drivers are used to surround sound from their CD players. And that it's embedded in most HDTV systems. So are we to expect it from radio? They say yes.

The downside as always with early adopters is that you can't hear it. There aren't any radio receivers for 5.1 channel surround sound yet. That didn't' stop them from showing it off at the last NAB conference though. As of April 2007, 100.7 WZLX in Boston is the first American radio station to broadcast in 5.1-channel surround sound on its HD channel.

To broadcast multi-channel sound on its HD radio signal, WZLX uses the new MPEG Surround technology provided by Fraunhofer IIS. This new MPEG standard allows broadcasters to switch from stereo to surround sound smoothly. The build was done with help from from Telos Systems and Fraunhofer.

WZLX has been serving Boston since 1948. That 100.7 stick then owned by the original WBZ. they were an early IBOC adopter adding an HD2 sub channel in 2006. It was programed as a deep catalog Classic rock channel branded as “deep cuts.”

BE SURE TO TUNE IN!

Friday the 14th pf September, 09/14/07 is a big day. The FCC has cleared all 90 IBOC-capable AMs in the us to use IBOC at night. HD radio after dark on the Am band has been cleared to go.

Predictions range from a reception apocalypse to "most stations will not have perceptible loss." The general consensus is that secondary and tertiary market stations will have "signifigant erosion."

My general feeling is that the low number of stations will prevent the apocalypse, but that things are worse than the boys at HD are letting on. Part of the problem is that there isnt' a practical way to measure the IBOC interference of skywave reception because propagation is totally reliant on highly varied atmospheric conditions. However, pretending that it's not there is even less practical. So tune in and listen, this could be exciting.

The HD Radio Brand

I read just this week at Bridge ratings that HD radio awareness has actually decreased this year. I know I'm a nattering nabob of negativity but read it here. It reminded me that HD radio is a meaningless term. Like the fake syndromes that marketing companies come up with to sell drugs that people dont actually need. Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) meet HD-2 Digital Radio!

The HD radio Brand came from HD television. Now HD television is actually high defintion. HD radio in many cases will be low def. Multicasting can lower audio quality. In radio the codec is IBOC, and owned by Ibiquity exclusively. So they have some control over branding you could say. But they seem to suck at it.

Here are some radio spots they did. You can actually hear listeners get more confused. Stations between the stations? Huh? Why would that require a special radio? A mascott named "Anne Tenna? Oy vey. The branding is just unfocused in general and with the highly technical nature of the product it's difficult to explain no matter what the metaphor.
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It's somthing they need to straighten out soon. IBOC debuts on the AM band at night which is creating a furor among sober engineers. Mexico is concerned enough to write the FCC, going so far as to suggest the interference will be so bad as to violate international treaty.

MULTICASTING

The initial purported purpose of IBOC was greater fidelity. As FM triumphed over AM so was HD.... Well that lasted about five minutes. When the consultants got ahold of the idea they realized what everyone else already knew, but knew was a bad idea. PAY RADIO.

Each HD station has the option of brodcasting one clear signal or multiple inferior signals. Currently they broadcast one analog signal and one HD signal. These hybrids are supposed to be phased out and radioland go all-digital but the FCC keeps pushing back the deadline.
The multicast idea starts innocently enough. The first HD multicaster was WFAE 90.7 Charlotte, NC. As usual Public Radio paved the way. They experimented with up to 11! channels one day last April. There were only a few models of HD tuners at that tie and I am uncertain if there were ANY that were multicast-capable. The initial talk is about splitting talk programming and music programming into seperate channels, or to have channels of all local traffic information. It all seems so idealist at the time, stations would provide programming because they could, because they wanted to, because their listeners would like it. NPR promises 24 more multicasting outlets by the end of this year. [It's rumored that Phillys local 90.1 WRTI intends to split Their Jazz and Classical programming into two seperate channels eventually. ]

Then came the consultants. At the time of this writing WRAL, WUSN and WJMK all have second channels of differnt music content. The second channel in this case becomes a testing ground for new music, an outlet for a dropped format etc... but the big talk is that the other channel could be subscription only. Let me say that again SUBSCRIPTION ONLY!

Oy Vey. So the model is that people will pay for local radio. So it's kind of like satellite radio except there are ads, and it you cant receive it 30 miles away... Normally I give technology the benefit of the doubt. People like new toys, more bells and whistles, more pomp and flash but this does not wow me. The idea of paying for local FM channels of low quality audio does not grab me. If any of you find it compelling please let me know why because right now I do not get it.